Paranoia is a thought process heavily influenced by anxiety or fear, often to the point of irrationality and delusion. Paranoid thinking typically includes persecutory beliefs concerning a perceived threat towards oneself.
The word comes from the Greek "παράνοια" (''paranoia''), "madness", from "παρά" (''para''), "beside, by" + "νόος" (''noos'') , "mind". Historically, this characterization was used to describe any delusional state.
The term ''paranoia'' was derived from the Greek term
''Paranous'', which roughly meant "beyond the mind". It was used to
describe a mental illness in which a
delusional belief is the sole or most prominent feature. In
original attempt at classifying different forms of mental illness,
Kraepelin used the term ''pure paranoia'' to describe a condition where
a delusion was present, but without any apparent deterioration in
intellectual abilities and without any of the other features of
dementia praecox, the condition later renamed "schizophrenia". Notably,
in his definition, the belief does not have to be persecutory to be
classified as paranoid, so any number of delusional beliefs can be
classified as paranoia. For example, a person who has the sole
delusional belief that he is an important religious figure would be
classified by Kraepelin as having 'pure paranoia'. Even at the present
time, a delusion need not be suspicious or fearful to be classified as
paranoid.
A person might be diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic
without delusions of persecution, simply because their delusions refer
mainly to themselves, such as believing that they are a CIA agent or a
famous member of royalty.
In modern psychiatry, paranoia is diagnosed in the form of:
- paranoid personality disorder
- paranoid schizophrenia (a subtype of schizophrenia)
- persecutory delusions (a subtype of delusional disorder).
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"Paranoia"
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