Tuesday, December 2, 2008

erk

Paranoia is a disturbed thought process characterized by excessive anxiety or fear, often to the point of irrationality and delusion. Paranoid thinking typically includes persecutory beliefs concerning a perceived threat towards oneself. In the original Greek, παράνοια (paranoia) simply means madness (para = outside; nous = mind). Historically, this characterization was used to describe any delusional state.
Sometimes in common usage, the term paranoia is misused to describe a phobia. For example, a person may not want to fly out of fear the plane may crash. This does not in itself indicate paranoia, but rather a phobia. The lack of blame in this case usually points to the latter. An example of paranoia, however, would be fear that the pilot is an alcoholic with no evidence to suggest such, and would crash the plane as a result of this.
A November 2008 study by Cambridge alumnus Dr. Daniel Freeman, Ph.D., D.Cl.Psy., of the Institute of Psychiatry at the hospital of King's College, London, suggests that paranoia is much more widely experienced- by about 1 in 5 Londoners. (wikipedia)

Oh God.

No comments: