Is paranoia increasing?

Daniel Freeman, Jason Freeman

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So if trauma and victimisation can lead to paranoia, are they – and hence paranoia – on the rise? For many of these experiences, the detailed data over time don’t exist. The ground is much firmer though when we look at crime figures. Being the victim of a crime – even a relatively trivial non-violent crime – is often an enormously traumatic event for individuals. In 2005/06, around a quarter of the adult population of England and Wales – approximately 10 million people – were victims of crime. That’s a vast number, of course, but it’s a big improvement on the figures for 1995, when almost 40 per cent of people were victims. Now, although crime has fallen over the last decade or so, this is small beer when compared to the dramatic increase in offences since the 1950s. In England and Wales in the mid-1950s, for instance, there were around five crimes per thousand of the population; in 1997 that number was 89.1. On the back of this rise in crime there is likely to have been a rise in suspiciousness.

Keeping it in perspective

Muggers, vandals, delinquent teenagers, paedophiles, rapists, corrupt officials, malicious colleagues, gossips, spies, and blackmailers – none of these are entirely the figment of our fevered imaginations. The trick, of course, is to keep a sense of perspective, recognising that these kinds of danger are rare and making a calm and measured assessment of risk (see Freeman & Freeman, 2009). When we look at the data on rates of paranoia, however, it appears that many of us are finding that trick increasingly difficult to pull off. At any one time, around a quarter of the population are having regular paranoid thoughts, with lots more people probably experiencing them occasionally (e.g. Johns et al., 2004; Freeman et al., 2008b; Rutten et al., 2008).
Levels of paranoia can be seen as a critical marker of the psychological and physical health of society. One study across 40 US states, for example, found that high levels of suspiciousness were associated not only with less social cohesion (e.g. membership of voluntary groups), but also with more deaths (e.g. from cancer) (Kawachi et al, 1997).
So should we expect more people appearing in clinics with severe paranoia? A rise in paranoia does not make that inevitable: services see only the tip of the iceberg of people with psychiatric problems; there is a reticence about disclosing paranoid fears; and the factors leading to more paranoid thinking may not cause the high levels of distress and social disability typically seen in clinics. But the answer to the question is simply unknown. Research into paranoia is at an early stage. This isn’t to say that it was ignored in the past, but rather to acknowledge that it was always seen as a symptom of something else (schizophrenia, for instance). As such, paranoia was of purely secondary interest, of significance only in so far as it could help in the business of making a diagnosis. We believe, on the other hand, that paranoia is an experience of such centrality that it merits study in its own right.
While much research has been done and more is in progress, we have a long way to go. A key strategy – yet to be initiated – would be to take regular surveys of paranoia levels among the general public. As these sorts of systematic data become available, we’ll know for sure whether our fears really have got the better of us and whether – as currently seems likely – the 21st century is truly a new age of paranoia.

Daniel Freeman is a Wellcome Trust Fellow at the Department of Psychology, Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London D.Freeman@iop.kcl.ac.uk   

Jason Freeman is a writer and editor

This article originally appeared in “The Psychologist”, published by the British Psychological Society. For more, and to subscribe, see www.thepsychologist.org.uk.

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