Impact of stress on paranoia: an experimental investigation of moderators and mediators

Abstract

The results support and specify the role of emotional reactions to stressors on the pathway from vulnerability to psychosis and highlight the relevance of anxiety.

Associations among perceptual anomalies, social anxiety, and paranoia in a college student sample

“…Given their similarities it is not surprising that, although social anxiety and paranoia are typically defined as distinct constructs, recent research has found evidence of overlap between them in both psychiatric samples (Fornells-Ambrojo and Garety, 2009) and the general population (Lincoln et al, 2009). Findings from one study suggest that sub-clinical paranoid ideation may be appropriately categorized as a form of anxiety in some individuals (Freeman et al, 2008a); other research similarly links paranoid thoughts more broadly with different types of PERCEPTUAL ANOMALY, SOCIAL ANXIETY, AND PARANOIA 4 negative affect (NA) (Combs et al, 2007).…”

How Do Non-Clinical Paranoid and Socially Anxious Individuals React to Failure? The Role of Hostility and State Anxiety

“…Also, state anxiety was associated to an increase of paranoid beliefs following the presentation of a stressor. Lincoln et al [3] thus argued that state anxiety feelings may lead to paranoid beliefs hence giving support to Freeman and Garety's argument that anxiety is the link between neurosis and psychosis. Furthermore, there are studies that appear to suggest that paranoia is associated to both negative emotion and an aggressive temperament (Campbell and Morrison, 2007).…”

“…investigated a causal relationship for the establishment of depressogenic symptoms or moods that included the attributional diathesis (internal locus) x failure (external locus) interaction; see Metalski, Joiner, Hardin, & Abramson's, 1993 reformulated model of hopelessness and the mediating effect of self-esteem). Although there are advantages to this method, it is difficult to interpret the causal direction between stress and symptoms due to the complex interactions between the individual and his/her environment in day-to-day life [3]. However in spite of this model's shortcomings and to our knowledge of the literature, there aren't many studies that compare non-clinical paranoid versus socially anxious individuals's paranoid and emotional reactions to failure, which therefore shows the importance of studying not only situations of environmental stress but in particular social stress and also situations of negative social evaluation and loss of rank and their relationship to paranoia.…”

“…The few experimental studies conducted so far support the notion that anxiety could play a role in the formation of persecutory delusions rather than merely arising as a consequence of symptoms [2]. Indeed, a study by Lincoln et al [3] found an increase in paranoia to arise from a noise stressor in a healthy sample of individuals. The increase in paranoia was particularly high for those with high baseline paranoia.…”

Research Strategies and Priorities to Improve the Lives of People With Schizophrenia: Executive Summary of the Ernst Struungmann Forum on Schizophrenia

“…Evidence for the necessity of this view comes from many findings, including those on the impact of stress 20 or walking through an urban lansdcape 21 on symptoms such as paranoia and anxiety, as well as on the links between understimulating environments and expression of negative symptoms. 22 Problem-oriented medical information systems allow treatment planning to be organized around disordered pathophysiological processes, behavioral domains, and environmental stressors, and these approaches need evaluations for cost-benefits determinations.…”