Paranoid personality disorder is characterised by a pervasive pattern of unwarranted distrust and suspicion of others that involves interpreting their motives as hostile or harmful.
- Because individuals with paranoid personality disorder suspect that others are planning to exploit, deceive, or harm them, they are always on the look-out for possible insults, slights, or threats.
- Medical professionals diagnose paranoid personality disorder based on specific symptoms, including distrust and suspicion in many aspects of life.
- No treatment is effective, but cognitive-behavioural therapy may be tried, and drugs may relieve some symptoms.
Personality disorders are long-lasting, pervasive patterns of thinking, perceiving, reacting, and relating that cause an individual significant distress and/or impair an individuals’s ability to function.
Individuals with paranoid personality disorder distrust others and assume that others intend to harm or deceive them, even when they have no or insufficient reason for these feelings.
Paranoid personality disorder occurs in about 2 to over 4% of the general population in the United States.
It is thought to be more common among men.
Some evidence suggests that paranoid personality disorder runs in families.
Emotional and/or physical abuse and victimisation during childhood may contribute to the development of this disorder.
Other disorders are often also present. For example, individuals with paranoid personality disorder may also have one or more of the following:
- Schizophrenia or one of the disorders that resemble schizophrenia.
- An anxiety disorder such as social phobia (social anxiety disorder).
- Posttraumatic stress disorder.
- An alcohol use disorder.
- Another personality disorder (such as borderline).
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