Paranoid Schizophrenia or just a deluded CTer?

[Skeptic Ginger]

I've seen more than one CTer who really seemed more like someone suffering from a paranoid personality disorder than just your usual CT believer. I was wondering how other skeptics were responding to CTers who seemed more mentally ill than just lacking critical thinking skills? Where is the line between the two?


A woman I had never met approached me in the grocery store yesterday and started warning me about the swine flu vaccine plot. After I tried a bit of evidence based responses she spread out into CTs about aspartame, the government secret ops and the Federal Reserve plot. With each one she asked if I had heard 'X*' and how could I possibly refute the CT if I wasn't aware of 'X'.

I have no idea why this woman approached me of all people. But by the 3rd or 4th CT I thought she might be having paranoid delusions rather than just being a fool who believed in all sorts of crap. None of the CTs were about someone after her individually, so I could have been wrong. Most psych patients I've seen with this kind of disorder create CTs involving themselves individually.

But it did make me wonder, how do we tell the difference and is there always a difference between mental illness with a paranoid component and just poor critical thinking skills and a tendency to believe CTs?



*Each CT had some supposed evidence if only I knew about I would surely believe.

 

[Pardalis]

I'm sure you are aware of fantasy-proned personality.

http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=84

That lady probably follows already a gamut of "woo"practices (new age and stuff).

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I'm sure you are aware of fantasy-proned personality.

http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=84

That lady probably follows already a gamut of "woo"practices (new age and stuff).

That explains Sylvia Browne, but not her followers.

While the fantasy prone personality you note is related, I was thinking more about paranoid delusions and CTers.

 

[Longfellow]

Been there -- done that

Skeptigirl, not so long ago I had an encounter eerily like yours right down to the (elderly in my case) woman approaching me to start a conversation in order to rail about the swine flu vaccine. I gently interrupted her and said I'd read up on those claims and found them wanting so she moved on to chem-trails. After politely listening to her for about 5 minutes, I came to the conclusion that something was likely very amiss in the way with which she sees the world and that no argument I could make, no matter how well articulated, would ever dissuade her. As a matter of fact, she reminded me of my wife and her Apollo Hoax belief but that's another thread.

How I usually respond to those among us who just don't seem to be 'all there' is to be as courteous as possible while making as gracious an exit from the dialog as quickly as I can. I've even been known to leave the queue at the druggist just to get away from them. Drives my wife nuts. Was she mentally ill? (the older woman, not my wife) I have no idea. Are hers and my world-views vastly different? Sure seemed so. The point is I doubted that this elderly woman was ever going to say anything even remotely interesting to me so why even bother listening? Is that a bit arrogant? Damn straight! We're all at least a little bit egocentric at times.

And as far as my wife goes . . . honey-bunny. . . everything you say is of the utmost importance to me.

 

[JoeyDonuts]

Confirmation bias coupled with pride and an elitist mentality their everyday accomplishments don't entitle them to - it can be a powerful and intoxicating combination.

Basically, they're shifting responsibility for failings in their own life on to whatever the conspiracy "target" might be. Or it could be completely ego-based. Or they might be true believers themselves, in which case they are most likely lost, barring some tragic and jolting event.

Their charismatic leaders might be true believers, or just con men. In either case, they are extremely adept in picking followers and telling them exactly what they want to hear. If you liken conspiracy theory circles to a highly disorganized internet cult, you'll be in the mental ballpark for the phenomena at work here...that's my understanding anyway.

 

[Praktik]

I think that since the whole mindset is so foreign to us it is tempting to chalk it up to mental illness, but sadly, I don't think that's the case for 99.9% of them.

Its in our nature as pattern-seeking individuals to place events in a matrix. Add in some alienation from government and the closed-loop of the CT world and its something that many people who are not mentally ill will fall into.

It is slightly bizarre that she approached a stranger to talk about this stuff, but then again I get approached by strangers now and then about "normal" political issues so I'm not sure there's enough info here to conclude that this is some manifestation of paranoid schizophrenia.

Also - while there is something "paranoid" to many CTs I think we should separate that use of the term from the clinical one. There are many "paranoid" CTs but we should see that as simply an adjective rather than a clinical use of the term.

 

[McHrozni]

Generally speaking, people who agree with one CT tend to agree with others. This woman is not exactly unique. Jason Bermas went on record a long time ago, and stated he believed in 42 most popular conspiracy theories, I believe?
I don't know if I could even name 42 conspriacy theories in all.

McHrozni

 

[LightinDarkness]

I think its hard to tell. Paranoid schizophrenics tend to buy wholesale into CTs because it surrounds them with people who agree with them that "they" are really out to get them. I think when dealing with people face to face one way that you might be able to tell the difference is how quickly YOU become part of the conspiracy.

For example, there are quite a few in the CT movement who believe they are being "gang stalked" by large groups of people. When they explain this to you and you ask them why they would be important enough for The Elite (TM) to stalk, you usually end up as being part of the gang stalking group against them. I am more likely to believe the CTs promoting themselves as victims of gang stalking are mentally ill then just your normal delusional CT.

I think part of the problem when trying to draw the line between CT and mental illness is that, to the normal person, the absolute refusal of CTs to believe in reality based on evidence seems like something that could only come form mental illness. When you approach life in a logical and rational manner and believe in things based on evidence, those who do not could easy appear to simply be mentally ill.

 

[LightinDarkness]

It just occurred to me that I had a conversation with some colleagues about this a month ago over lunch. One is a professor of psychology as a major research university, and another is a doctoral student in psychiatry. Here is what I was able to surmise:

There is general agreement in the scholarly literature that there is a correlation between mental illness and belief in conspiracy theory. The theories behind the diagnosis of several types of illnesses (including paranoid schizophrenia) are not in dispute about this relationship.

The problem is doing any comprehensive research to quantitatively prove the correlation and the direction of the relationship. Traditional methods of medical research for mental illness won't work because CTers will not truthfully answer interview or survey questions, even if double blind, because They(TM) are likely involved. The other problem is that it is difficult to get some people to admit they are a CTer in the first place (causing systematic social desirability bias in respondents). Finally, the other major problem is that CTers themselves may not agree on what threshold of belief is required to be a CT, thus, there is no way to come to a general definition that will catch most of the population of CTers.

 

[zaphod2016]

There is general agreement in the scholarly literature that there is a correlation between mental illness and belief in conspiracy theory. The theories behind the diagnosis of several types of illnesses (including paranoid schizophrenia) are not in dispute about this relationship.

I'm no sociologist, but I have to think the recent "biased media" meme has a lot to do with it also. As a conservative, I can't watch the liberal media. As a liberal, I don't trust the establishment press. As a result, both groups are relying on less reliable forms of news (i.e. Alex Jones, youtube videos, etc).

 

[Praktik]

I'm no sociologist, but I have to think the recent "biased media" meme has a lot to do with it also. As a conservative, I can't watch the liberal media. As a liberal, I don't trust the establishment press. As a result, both groups are relying on less reliable forms of news (i.e. Alex Jones, youtube videos, etc).

Actually I was thinking about this exact thing last night, discussing the degrees to which "extremists" on "both sides" say unhinged things. Now I've been arguing against equivalency because I don't think adding up a "Dem" and "Republican" ledger really helps us understand what's behind their respective wingnuts and because it can lead one to believe that it's all a wash and that the extremisms cancel each other out.

But the more I thought about it I started thinking about the explosion of media outlets brought to us through the World Wide Web and through the expansion of choice on radio and TV.

Sure, movement conservatives had the pamphlets of the 80s and the "closed loop" of their thinking was already sealed. But nowadays with the internet the availability is just that much easier.

This goes for Truthers, anti-war movement and heck, even skeptics (a large part of my daily routine involves the skeptical blogs out there).

We can all go and read the **** that agrees with us. And we can do so much easier than before.

Now more rational individuals will still be able to navigate the swamps but part of me thinks that those prone to "closed loop" thinking have had a "hardening" of their positions over the past decade or so.

And I think that at least partially explains just how ******* crazy the Republicans are getting these days and the resistance of the Truth Movement to finally dying out.

This "hardening" I think is anethema to the discourse required for a democratic give and take.

 

[Brainster]

I do believe there's a continuum here, and whether one is actually diagnosed depends largely on how far along the continuum they are. There are several 9-11 Truthers who have been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia or other mental illness to my knowledge including:

Sean Fitzgerald. The Troofer who killed his father is pleading not guilty by reason of insanity, and in this case the prosecution agrees.

Mike Cook:

Cook's legal troubles began after he shared information to an aide about 9/11 being an inside job as well as telling the aide he legally possessed firearms, including a 45 caliber pistol locked safely away in glove box of his car.

Not surprisingly, the aide reported this to the authorities. I believe that Cook spent over a year in a mental hospital.

Clare Swinney:

I was wrongly diagnosed as delusional by the psychiatric staff of Ward 7 at Northland Base Hospital in Whangarei and held hospital against my will for 11 days in mid-2006, because I maintained the attacks of 9/11 were orchestrated by criminal elements inside the US Administration.

Actually reading the article reveals that Clare was detained because she had told a relative that she thought she was being followed by the NWO, and that if it came down to it, she'd rather commit suicide than be killed:

Although I didn’t have the opportunity to tell Dr Abass this, I speculated that as a whole these e-mails were designed to prime me with fear for a subsequent encounter with a man, who looked the part of a cold-war assassin, which took place on June the 1st. This pallid-skinned, clean-shaven man with dark blond hair, who was dressed in expensive-looking black clothing and was sporting an army-style hair cut, looked completely out of place in mid-town Whangarei. He made a point of coming uncomfortably close up behind me while I waited at a major intersection in town on June the 1st. There was no reason for him to have come as close as he did, unless he had wanted to intimidate me, so I stepped several meters to the left, to put a safe distance between us. When the buzzer signalled that it was time to cross, I walked purposefully slowly and got directly behind him. When we reached the pavement on the other side of the road, he glanced backwards briefly, his cold grey-blue eyes scanning my face to see if I was watching him, and then he clenched and unclenched his right hand four times. I carried on walking and saw he’d stopped on a corner and was watching me, and then when I looked back again a few seconds later, he had gone.

I was absolutely terrified by this, particularly so as I was horribly conscious of the content of the threatening e-mails I had received in the days preceding this. (A Englishman who has been researching the New World Order, stated he has heard of these kind of tactics being used “often” to harass people in “the anti-war and 9-11 Truth Movement.” His letter to the hospital can be viewed at the end of this post). Consequently, with my heart thumping wildly, I strode to Police Superintendent Viv Rickard, who happened to be in the town Mall at the time, and told him I believed the SIS was threatening my life because of my work in exposing the truth about 9/11. Rickard said he believed me, but said he thought that others on the police force might not, so advised me to deal with him directly about the matter.
Subsequent to the encounter with the man dressed in black, I had a discussion with a family member about hypothetical scenarios and my very real fears, to the point at which I said that if it were between a man with a gun and tablets, I would prefer the latter. This was not about being suicidal, it was about preferring a non-violent death to a violent one.

I strongly suspect that there are others.

 

[Praktik]

Well Brainster you've provided some good empirical evidence here. Perhaps I'll have to reduce my over-estimation and say that 95% of truthers aren't clinically schizophrenic.

In these cases we actually have enough information to make the judgment that they were clinically ill - so likely there are more.

I would say though, that in nearly any demographic there are those who are mentally ill. It cuts across the spectrum. The real meat of the question has to be: are there some demographics where these cases cluster more frequently?

And I wouldn't be surprised to see slightly elevated levels among truthers given the nature of those ideas.

All that being said, we should refrain from actually accusing someone of being mentally ill - because #1 it shouldn't be something that we accuse someone of (like we do with murder and other things to be ashamed of), and #2 in most cases we will not have the data or expertise necessary to make that call.

 

[Orphia Nay]

http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200501/conspiracy-theories-explained

Paranoid schizophrenics are prone to delusions, tales in which random events become deeply meaningful. Some believe in complex conspiracies; others think they are Jesus Christ.

These stories sound crazy, but they may be the brain's efforts to make sense of its own internal messages, suggests Shitij Kapur, professor of psychiatry at the University of Toronto and vice president of research at the Canadian Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. In addition to other brain abnormalities, schizophrenics have too much dopamine. Just as addicts' desensitized dopamine systems make them feel that nothing matters, high levels of the neurotransmitter make schizophrenics believe that everything is significant.

I wonder if the reverse is true: whether CTs cause the brain to produce too much dopamine, and a snowball effect occurs whereby the believer latches onto more and more CTs.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

...
It is slightly bizarre that she approached a stranger to talk about this stuff, but then again I get approached by strangers now and then about "normal" political issues so I'm not sure there's enough info here to conclude that this is some manifestation of paranoid schizophrenia.

I wasn't implying I could diagnose this woman with any kind of certainty in a 5 minute grocery conversation.

...Also - while there is something "paranoid" to many CTs I think we should separate that use of the term from the clinical one. There are many "paranoid" CTs but we should see that as simply an adjective rather than a clinical use of the term.

That was my point. How do we know? Is there any data on the percentage of CTers who are mentally ill vs those just taken in with a particular CT or CTs? Is there a clear distinction or is it a matter of degree? Could we find a brain defect in some CTers that doesn't exist in others?

I'm very familiar with borderline personality disorders that include paranoid components.

The Free Medical Dictionary defines paranoid ideation as:

an exaggerated, sometimes grandiose, belief or suspicion, usually not of a delusional nature, that one is being harassed, persecuted, or treated unfairly.

Mind you, I am thinking this through via the thread, so my ideas may progress here.

What my encounter made me wonder about was how often the mental illness version of paranoia encompassed CTs rather than just personal level paranoia. I was wondering if the idea a CT was specifically about the individual was a symptom of mental illness while the more general CT wasn't?

In other words, is there a differ difference when it comes to calling something a mental illness in a person who believes the FBI is after them personally and a person who believes there is a secret world government controlling much of their life?

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Now I'm wondering if the fantasy prone personality, the CT prone personality, and the pathological liar personality (differs from believing in the supernatural in that they just have a grossly distorted version of past events) aren't something we are seeing more often than just the misled person?

The approach to such people would be very different than the approach to the people the believers simply convinced.

 

[Brainster]

What my encounter made me wonder about was how often the mental illness version of paranoia encompassed CTs rather than just personal level paranoia. I was wondering if the idea a CT was specifically about the individual was a symptom of mental illness while the more general CT wasn't?

Yes, I think that's a very interesting point. In each of the three cases I cited, the real evidence of paranoia was not so much the 9-11 Trutherism as it was the belief that they were personally in danger due to their knowledge and dissemination of 9-11 Troof:

Sean Fitzgerald was in Thailand, spreading the word of 9-11 Truth when he became convinced the Thai secret service was after him while riding his bike one day. To shake his pursuers, he rode his bike the wrong way down a major highway and was hit by a truck. He called a Colorado "Truther" named Michael Woolsey from his hospital bed and implored him and everybody else to call Alex Jones and inform him of his plight. The theory apparently was that if Alex Jones knew about his situation, the New World Order wouldn't be able to
kill him. His father actually called into Alex Jones to advise old leatherlungs of the situation. For once, Alex acted sensibly, suggesting that the father contact the US embassy in Thailand. A few days later, the dad flew to Thailand and brought his son back home, and a few weeks after that, convinced his father was the devil, Sean entered his parents' bedroom while they were sleeping and stabbed the old man to death.

Michael Cook was apparently giving regular rides to his teacher's aide. Convinced he was in personal danger due to his 9-11 Trooferism, he decided to let the aide know that she was taking a risk by riding with him. To prove how serious he was, he showed her his gun.

Clare Swinney thought a man who stood too close to her at a crosswalk was giving her a threat to stop talking about 9-11 Truth.

So in each of the cases, the real indicator of severe mental problems was the belief that "they" were after him/her, not so much the grander conspiracy theory.

 

[zaphod2016]

We can all go and read the **** that agrees with us. And we can do so much easier than before.

This is an excellent point.

When I went hardcore Paulian in '08 I ended up in a Paul-aganda feedback loop for a few months. Paul-topia invaded almost every site I visited for a few weeks.

It was very surreal to watch how fast it fell apart. I felt like I had woken from a dream, unsure if anything I had learned in the last 6 months was true, or just a hallucination.

And after more objective analysis:

10% was well-meaning half truths
60% was deception through omission
20% was editorial that could not be objectively proven either way
10% was legitimate, objective fact

Your mileage may vary.

 

[MervinFerd]

Narcissism

Based on interactions with Truthers online, the most consistent characteristic is Narcissism. Necessarily, the Truther sees himself as vastly smarter, or braver, than all the learned experts who think he is daft.

Many do not seem paranoid: they speak openly of their knowledge of the Vast Conspiracy that can make hundreds disappear. With no concern that, if the theory were true, they would be in grave danger.

Trutherism developed in a way different than other CTs. It adopted a lot of techniques, and probably personnel, from Crank Science. Endless analysis of the supposed physics of building collapse, video analysis of internet compressed videos, thermite, etc. All very pseudo-technical. I think this means that TM pulled in a different species of Nut than the John Birch Society.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Based on interactions with Truthers online, the most consistent characteristic is Narcissism. Necessarily, the Truther sees himself as vastly smarter, or braver, than all the learned experts who think he is daft.

Many do not seem paranoid: they speak openly of their knowledge of the Vast Conspiracy that can make hundreds disappear. With no concern that, if the theory were true, they would be in grave danger.

Paranoia does not have to include imminent fear. Believing in CTs is paranoid whether you fear the CT or not.

True paranoid schizophrenics with significant disease don't necessarily hide under their beds. They'll gladly talk to you for hours about their delusions.

Trutherism developed in a way different than other CTs. It adopted a lot of techniques, and probably personnel, from Crank Science. Endless analysis of the supposed physics of building collapse, video analysis of internet compressed videos, thermite, etc. All very pseudo-technical. I think this means that TM pulled in a different species of Nut than the John Birch Society.

Lots of CTs fit this pattern. Look at the Kennedy assassination CTs. Look at the Roswell stuff.