Constructions of Paranoia: A Q-Methodology Study.

This study investigated the concept of paranoia using Q methodology. It was proposed that paranoia is a highly contested and debated topic within the disciplines of psychiatry, and more recently psychology. There are a plethora of viewpoints expressed within these professions as to how the concept of paranoia might be understood and what might cause paranoia. As Q methodology is concerned with exploring multiple accounts on a topic, it was decided that this was an appropriate method to explore this debate. Two Q sorts were completed: one to investigate the conceptual understanding of paranoia and the second to look at the causes of paranoia. Three groups of participants took part in this study: mental health professionals; mental health service users; and lay people. This study extracted five factors for the understandings study: a normalised account; a mental illness account; an unuseful choice account; a reasoning bias account and a lack of trust account. There were six factors extracted for the causes study: an experiential account; a physical causes account; an illegal drugs and schizophrenia account; a social causes account; a cognitive style account and a bio-psycho-social account. The areas of commonality and contestation for these accounts were discussed with reference to the relevant literature, before a critical review and discussion of the limitations of this study