Associations among paranoid ideation of friendship in adolescence, negative rumination, and stress responses

This questionnaire survey study among 164 university students aimed to examine the types of paranoid ideation about friendship in adolescence. Subjects were divided into four groups on the basis of their scores on persecution, belittlement, other-harming, and alienation (Delusional Ideation Check-List; Tanno et al., 2000) : high paranoid ideation scores;, high alienation scores;, medium paranoid ideation scores;, and low belittlement, other-harming, and alienation scores. The paranoid ideation scores of the four groups suggested differences between subjective experience and scores. Trends in the three paranoid ideation scores suggested qualitative differences between persecution, belittlement, other-harming, and alienation. The study also examined the associations among the four groups in terms of negative rumination and stress responses. In people with lower levels of rumination, stress responses were related to paranoid ideation; in people with higher levels of rumination, to the type and frequency of paranoid ideation, particularly the frequency of persecution