Journal article
Explaining paranoia: cognitive and social processes in the occurrence of extreme mistrust
- Abstract:
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Background: Paranoia – incorrectly thinking that others are deliberating trying to harm you – causes distress, undermines social interactions, and leads to withdrawal. It presents across multiple psychiatric diagnoses.
Objective: The primary aim was to determine the extent that cognitive and social processes may explain paranoia. The secondary aim was to identify explanatory factors that distinguished paranoia and social anxiety.
Methods: 10,382 UK adults, quota sampled to match the population for age, gender, ethnicity, income, and region, participated in a non-probability survey. All participants completed a paranoia measure and assessments of cognitive and social processes. Structural equation modelling was conducted.
Findings: 2586 (24.9%) participants described being mistrustful of other people. 1756 (16.9%) participants wanted help to trust more. 66.7% of variance in paranoia was explained by a model comprising (in descending order of importance): within-situation defence behaviours, negative images, negative self-beliefs, discrimination, dissociation, aberrant salience, anxiety sensitivity, agoraphobic distress, worry, less social support, agoraphobic avoidance, less analytic reasoning, and alcohol use. All explanatory factors were associated with paranoia and social anxiety. Ten factors were more closely associated with paranoia than social anxiety, including discrimination, hallucinations, negative images, aberrant salience, and alcohol use. Nine factors were more closely associated with social anxiety, including less positive self-belief, an external locus of control, worry, and less analytic reasoning.
Conclusions: Multiple causes are likely to be involved in paranoia. Cognitive and social processes may explain a high degree of paranoia.
Clinical implications: Multiple clear targets for intervention to reduce paranoia are identified.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 416.5KB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1136/bmjment-2023-300880
Authors
- Publisher:
- BMJ Publishing Group
- Journal:
- BMJ Mental Health More from this journal
- Volume:
- 26
- Issue:
- 1
- Article number:
- e300880
- Publication date:
- 2023-11-09
- Acceptance date:
- 2023-10-26
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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2755-9734
- Language:
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English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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1552855
- Local pid:
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pubs:1552855
- Deposit date:
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2023-10-27
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Freeman et al
- Copyright date:
- 2023
- Rights statement:
- © Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2023. Re-use permitted under CC BY-NC. Published by BMJ. This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.
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