Paranoia is an unfounded or exaggerated distrust of others, sometimes reaching delusional proportions. The word comes from the Greek word paranous “distracted”, ultimately from para- “irregular” + nous “mind”.
It’s a popular psychiatric designation, occurring in the fraudulent Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) as “Paranoid personality disorder”. As “paranoid schizophrenic” it can also come under one of the several DSM headings related to schizophrenia, meaning “delusions of persecution”.
It’s also the subject of various jokes such as:
“The mental-disease-of-the-month club is being disbanded because during paranoia month all the members moved and left no forwarding address.”
“What does a paranoid have in common with the all-knowing master of time space and dimension that secretly controls all of our lives? … Right, like you don’t know.”
What is it really?
Paranoia is a dramatization, which is an irrational set of thoughts and actions coming about from the restimulation of past moments of pain and unconsciousness, often containing a phrase such as “You’re all against me.” Some drugs in particular can restimulate this type of behavior.
Various Other Restimulants of Paranoia
Newer antidepressants such as Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs) may have a side effect of paranoia. Smoking crack cocaine, marijuana, or taking LSD, methamphetamines or ecstasy (MDMA) can also cause paranoid behavior. The ADHD drugs Adderall, Concerta, Strattera, and Ritalin all have a potential side effect of paranoia. The psychedelic dimethyltryptamine (DMT) has a side effect of paranoia.
Being bullied may lead to a feeling that people plan to harm you, which can be misconstrued by a psychiatrist as a “mental illness” and considered a psychotic symptom for which psychotropic drugs can be prescribed, some of which then also have more paranoia as a side effect.
Addressing a person’s difficulties with getting a good night’s sleep, or with getting proper nutrition, may lead to improvements in psychotic symptoms such as paranoia.
Hypothyroidism, an insufficient production of thyroid hormone, can lead to paranoia.
A deficiency of vitamin B12 or folic acid (vitamin B9) can produce paranoia.
An allergic response to wheat, corn, cow’s milk, or tobacco can produce paranoia.
Undiagnosed and unhandled infections such as pneumonia, urinary tract infection, sepsis, malaria, Legionnaire’s disease, syphilis, typhoid, diphtheria, HIV, rheumatic fever and herpes can all cause such devastating mental symptoms.
Recommendations
One can plainly see that the symptom of paranoia has many possible triggers which are unrelated to any so-called psychiatric “mental disorder”.
Any medical doctor who takes the time to conduct a thorough physical examination of a person exhibiting signs of what a psychiatrist calls paranoia can find undiagnosed, untreated physical conditions. Any person labeled as paranoid needs to receive a thorough physical examination by a competent medical—not psychiatric—doctor to first determine what underlying physical condition is causing the manifestation.
The use of various psychiatric drugs, since they can themselves trigger a paranoid response, should be specifically avoided.
Any person falsely diagnosed as paranoid which results in treatment that harms them should file a complaint with the police and professional licensing bodies and have this investigated. They should seek legal advice about filing a civil suit against any offending psychiatrist and his or her hospital, associations and teaching institutions seeking compensation.
