Quote:
Originally Posted by alpot
Delusion: an idiosyncratic belief or impression that is firmly maintained despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality or rational argument, typically a symptom of mental disorder.
Delusions unlike hallucinations are not rooted in any sensory input (voices or vision). If these are just beliefs however idiosyncratic, I don't see how the dopamine theory explains it. The connection between dopmanine receptor blocking and delusions is unclear to me.
Specifically, my son (16) has had the cops called on him twice for no fault of his and after watching police brutality videos has developed a legit fear of cops. He feels his (pacing, stimming and other odd behaviors) are target for bullies to get him in trouble with the law. His fear of cops has reached obsessive levels so much so that he refuses to interact with others because they will call the cops on him.
Would you say this is delusional thinking or fear rooted in reality?
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Your son sounds similar to mine, although mine's 29.
My son says that paranoid people are paranoid because really bad things have happened to them.
My son is also very fearful of the police due to a number of negative interactions with them and reading/viewing negative police stories on the Internet. Just yesterday he called me to report that he saw two police cars parked on the road with the officers talking to each other while he was out for a walk. That unnerved him enough that he needed to call me. A few hours later he had a difficult time at the grocery store. I'm not exactly sure what happened, but I gather that his paranoia was higher because he'd seen the cops that morning. So at the store he was even more nervous and stiff acting, and he's afraid he creeped people out or scared them because he was acting oddly. But he was acting oddly because he saw the cops and wondered if they were talking about him and if they were going to confront him and begin asking him questions about where he was going and what he was doing there and so on - which has happened to him on a number of occasions.
I guess my point is that fear generated by actual events might spread to other neutral areas of a person's life and it might infect their personality and thinking. At least that's how
I think of it.
It's not clear to me that your son is delusional from what you've said. My son is definitely paranoid and obsessive. He has also been delusional in the past. A tiny few of his delusions have been bizarre, but most are things that could really happen: people are spying on him or plotting to hurt/kill him, people are breaking into his home and taking his things, etc., etc., etc.
As to the dopamine theory, I don't really buy into the medical model of mental illness. I think it's more rooted in trauma. But that's because I believe my son's problems stem from trauma and not brain chemistry. Maybe it's different for other people. I do think my son's more sensitive than many other people. (He hates it when I say that.
) He's also an imaginative and creative person. Under stress and pressure, he just tends to move in the direction of delusions. He's also paranoid, because he was bullied a lot in school. Even at his best, he's paranoid. So his delusions tend to be paranoid - or very occasionally grandiose, which is just paranoia flipped on its head IMO.
I don't know if that helps any, but I see a similarity between your son and mine, and mine didn't have his first psychotic episode until he was 20.