Paranoia all too often leads to isolation, unhappiness, and profound d — Paranoia

"Only the severe end was even considered. There was no sense of spectrum. Paranoia was very much seen as inexplicable, un-understandable, if anything some kind of biological system that had gone wrong. I remember thinking that seemed very reductionalist, that there must be some kind of psychology to it. Once I started looking at it as a spectrum, once you make the connection to things such as depression and anxiety, it really opens it up. People with depression have higher levels of paranoia because of a sense of vulnerability and low self-esteem. Anxiety is linked too. But whereas anxiety may lead to fearing harm from a spider, or of being humiliated in a social situation, it doesnt lead to a belief that the spider or others intend to humiliate or hurt us. Its the attribution of intent that distinguishes paranoia."

"A paranoid man is a man who knows a little about whats going on."

"Its not paranoia if theyre really after you."

"We are bombarded with information about our alert status and were told to report suspicious-looking characters. That primes people to be more paranoid."

"Then I could turn around and justify that, by saying that it isn’t really paranoia if there really are people out to get you."

"There is no sort of them and us, it is not that most people dont have paranoid thoughts and a few people have many, it seems that they are evenly distributed across the population, or many of us have them, much more than was previously thought. And actually there is also evidence that societies that are perhaps more unequal, have less social cohesion, are all societies where there is a bit more suspicion in the general population. So paranoia certainly can be a problem for the individual, and I work in hospitals and see people who have severe experiences, but also its perhaps the mark of the health of a society, the levels of mistrust within it."