Understanding Paranoid Schizophrenia

Understanding paranoia
What is paranoia?
Are there different kinds?
Who is most vulnerable to these feelings?
What are the causes?
What treatments are available?
What can family and friends do?
Useful organisations
Further reading
‘The couple next door are listening in on me, I know it. I saw her in the street yesterday and she looked away.’
‘The postman is reading my mail. One of my letters last week was not stuck down.
He knows all my secrets.’
‘My son’s behaving so strangely; he suspects everyone of plotting against him. The thing is,
I daren’t talk about it when he’s in the house, in case he overhears. I’m getting paranoid about his paranoia.’
This booklet is aimed at anyone who wants to know more about paranoia, its causes,
This may also involve people hearing voices, which may comment on their behaviour, echo their thoughts or issue orders.
Paranoid personality disorder
Paranoid personality disorder is another diagnosis, which clinicians consider if the problem has been around for some time, perhaps since adolescence. Commonly, people will have little or no insight into their condition and will never have asked for treatment. Delusional or paranoid disorder
Sometimes, someone who functions quite well in day-t o-day life develops one particular dominating, paranoid idea, of great complexity, that puts them at odds with those around them. This is sometimes called a delusional or paranoid disorder.
It doesn’t usually involve hearing voices.
Other diagnoses that may include paranoid feelings are manic depression (bipolar disorder), schizoaffective disorder, severe anxiety or depression, and postnatal psychosis. Who is most vulnerable to these feelings?
This is difficult to say, because paranoia can be an element in over eighty different medical conditions. A third of old people in geriatric wards may be affected. People who are getting on in years, or feeling depressed, can easily start feeling they are
Paranoia is a particular attitude to the social world, and will inevitably reflect a person’s experience of intimate social relationships. So, a deep fear of dependency in people who experience paranoia could be due to disappointments in the past.
Suspicions about ‘hidden scheming going on’ can be the result of experiencing relationships that seem pleasant and charming on the surface, but which carry a hidden layer of anger and aggression underneath. This may have been suppressed and denied, but can still be detected. The feeling of a ‘double reality’ to seemingly innocent situations and events has its roots in real experience, and is quite common.
Thinking errors
In the hope of improving therapy, certain research focused not so much on childhood, family and relationship issues, but on the way someone actually thinks of themselves and of everyday events. It found that people with paranoia have low selfesteem in some aspects of their personality. To protect themselves, they tend to see other people’s intentions as negative, rather than risk finding any fault in themselves. They also have a tendency to jump to conclusions, and to be hasty and