Editing Paranoia (section)

==Causes==
===Social and environmental===
Social circumstances appear to be highly influential on paranoid beliefs. According to a mental health survey distributed to residents of [[Ciudad Juárez|Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua]] (in Mexico) and [[El Paso, Texas]] (in the United States), paranoid beliefs seem to be associated with feelings of powerlessness and [[Victim mentality|victimization]], enhanced by social situations. Paranoid symptoms were associated with an attitude of mistrust and an external locus of control. Citing research showing that women and those with lower socioeconomic status are more prone to locating locus of control externally, the researchers suggested that women may be especially affected by the effects of socioeconomic status on paranoia.<ref>Mirowski and Ross (1983)</ref>

Surveys have revealed that paranoia can develop from difficult parental relationships and untrustworthy environments, for instance those that were highly disciplinary, strict, and unstable, could contribute to paranoia. Some sources have also noted that indulging and pampering the child could contribute to greater paranoia, via disrupting the child's understanding of their relationship with the world.<ref name=D&F >Deutsch and Fishman (1963), p. 1408</ref> Experiences found to enhance or create paranoia included frequent disappointment, stress, and a sense of hopelessness.<ref>Deutsch and Fishman (1963), p. 1412</ref>

Discrimination has also been reported as a potential predictor of paranoid delusions. Such reports that paranoia seemed to appear more in older patients who had experienced greater discrimination throughout their lives. Immigrants are more subject to some forms of psychosis than the general population, which may be related to more frequent experiences of discrimination and humiliation.<ref>Bentall and Taylor (2006), p. 280</ref>

===Psychological===
Many more mood-based symptoms, for example [[grandiosity]] and guilt, may underlie functional paranoia.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Lake|first=C. R.|date=2008-11-01|title=Hypothesis: Grandiosity and Guilt Cause Paranoia; Paranoid Schizophrenia is a Psychotic Mood Disorder; a Review|journal=Schizophrenia Bulletin|language=en|volume=34|issue=6|pages=1151–1162|doi=10.1093/schbul/sbm132|issn=0586-7614|pmc=2632512|pmid=18056109}}</ref>

Colby (1981) defined paranoid cognition as "persecutory delusions and false beliefs whose propositional content clusters around ideas of being harassed, threatened, harmed, subjugated, persecuted, accused, mistreated, killed, wronged, tormented, disparaged, vilified, and so on, by malevolent others, either specific individuals or groups" (p.&nbsp;518).
Three components of paranoid cognition have been identified by Robins & Post: "a) suspicions without enough basis that others are exploiting, harming, or deceiving them; b) preoccupation with unjustified doubts about the loyalty, or trustworthiness, of friends or associates; c) reluctance to confide in others because of unwarranted fear that the information will be used maliciously against them" (1997, p.&nbsp;3).

Paranoid cognition has been conceptualized by clinical psychology almost exclusively in terms of psychodynamic constructs and dispositional variables. From this point of view, paranoid cognition is a manifestation of an intra-psychic conflict or disturbance. For instance, Colby (1981) suggested that the biases of blaming others for one's problems serve to alleviate the distress produced by the feeling of being humiliated, and helps to repudiate the belief that the self is to blame for such incompetence. This intra-psychic perspective emphasizes that the cause of paranoid cognitions is inside the head of the people (social perceiver), and dismisses the possibility that paranoid cognition may be related to the social context in which such cognitions are embedded. This point is extremely relevant because when origins of distrust and suspicion (two components of paranoid cognition) are studied many researchers have accentuated the importance of social interaction, particularly when social interaction has gone awry. Even more, a model of trust development pointed out that trust increases or decreases as a function of the cumulative history of interaction between two or more persons.<ref>Deutsch, 1958</ref>

Another relevant difference can be discerned among "pathological and non-pathological forms of trust and distrust". According to Deutsch, the main difference is that non-pathological forms are flexible and responsive to changing circumstances. Pathological forms reflect exaggerated perceptual biases and judgmental predispositions that can arise and perpetuate them, are reflexively caused errors similar to a [[self-fulfilling prophecy]].

It has been suggested that a "hierarchy" of paranoia exists, extending from mild social evaluative concerns, through ideas of social reference, to persecutory beliefs concerning mild, moderate, and severe threats.<ref name=Freeman05>Freeman, D., Garety, P., Bebbington, P., Smith, B., Rollinson, R., Fowler, D., Kuipers, E., Ray, K., & Dunn, G. (2005). Psychological investigation of the structure of paranoia in a non-clinical population. ''British Journal of Psychiatry 186'', 427 – 435.</ref>

===Physical===
A paranoid reaction may be caused from a decline in brain circulation as a result of high blood pressure or hardening of the arterial walls.<ref name=D&F/>

Drug-induced paranoia, associated with [[cannabis (drug)|cannabis]] and stimulants like [[amphetamines]] or [[methamphetamine]], has much in common with schizophrenic paranoia; the relationship has been under investigation since 2012. Drug-induced paranoia has a better prognosis than schizophrenic paranoia once the drug has been removed.<ref>{{cite journal|title=Amphetamine-induced psychosis – a separate diagnostic entity or primary psychosis triggered in the vulnerable?|journal=BMC Psychiatry|volume=12|pages=221|pmc=3554477|year=2012|doi=10.1186/1471-244X-12-221|pmid=23216941|last1=Bramness|first1=J. G|last2=Gundersen|first2=Øystein Hoel|last3=Guterstam|first3=J|last4=Rognli|first4=E. B|last5=Konstenius|first5=M|last6=Løberg|first6=E. M|last7=Medhus|first7=S|last8=Tanum|first8=L|last9=Franck|first9=J |doi-access=free }}</ref> For further information, see [[stimulant psychosis]] and [[substance-induced psychosis]].

Based on data obtained by the Dutch NEMESIS project in 2005, there was an association between impaired hearing and the onset of symptoms of psychosis, which was based on a five-year follow up. Some older studies have actually declared that a state of paranoia can be produced in patients that were under a hypnotic state of deafness. This idea however generated much skepticism during its time.<ref name="paranoia">Bentall and Taylor (2006), p.281</ref>