Persecutory health

Cognitive neuropsychiatric models of persecutory delusions.

OBJECTIVE The major cognitive theories of persecutory delusion formation and maintenance are critically examined in this article. METHOD The authors present a comprehensive review of the literature, citing results of relevant functional neuroimaging and neural network studies. RESULTS People with persecutory delusions selectively attend to threatening information, jump to conclusions on the...

Cognitive and Emotional Processes in Persecutory Delusions

A cognitive model of persecutory delusions.

A multifactorial model of the formation and maintenance of persecutory delusions is presented. Persecutory delusions are conceptualized as threat beliefs. The beliefs are hypothesized to arise from a search for meaning for internal or external experiences that are unusual, anomalous, or emotionally significant for the individual. The persecutory explanations formed reflect an interaction betwee...

Paranoia, persecutory delusions and attributional biases.

An influential model of persecutory delusions put forward by Bentall and colleagues hypothesizes that persecutory-deluded patients avoid the activation of negative self-beliefs by making externalising, personalising attributions for negative events. The first study reported here used a new instrument for the measurement of persecutory ideation, the Paranoid, Persecutory and Delusion-Proneness Q...

Suspicious minds: the psychology of persecutory delusions.

At least 10-15% of the general population regularly experience paranoid thoughts and persecutory delusions are a frequent symptom of psychosis. Persecutory ideation is a key topic for study. In this article the empirical literature on psychological processes associated with persecutory thinking in clinical and non-clinical populations is comprehensively reviewed. There is a large direct affecti...