When 'Truman Show' Seems Real
Mental Illness / So
many convinced they're on secret TV that now it's a syndrome
By Jennifer Peltz
New York - One man showed up at a federal building, asking for release from the reality show he was sure was being made of his life. Another was convinced his every move was secretly being filmed for a television contest. A third believed everything -- the news, his psychiatrists, the drugs they prescribed -- was part of a phony, stage-set world with him as the involuntary star, like the 1998 movie The Truman Show.
Researchers have begun documenting the "Truman syndrome", a delusion under which people are convinced their lives are secretly playing out on reality TV.
"The question is really: is this just a new twist on an old paranoid or grandiose delusion ... or is there sort of a perfect storm of the culture we're in, in which fame holds such high value?" said Joel Gold, a psychiatrist affiliated with New York's Bellevue Hospital.
Over two years, Dr Gold said he encountered five patients with delusions related to reality TV. Several of them specifically mentioned The Truman Show. Dr Gold and his brother Ian, a psychologist in Montreal, started presenting their observations at medical schools in 2006. They have since learned of about 50 more people with similar symptoms. The brothers are now working on a scholarly paper.
Meanwhile, researchers in London described a "Truman syndrome" patient in the British Journal of Psychiatry in August. The 26-year-old postman "had a sense the world was slightly unreal, as if he was the eponymous hero in the film", the researchers wrote.
Other researchers aren't convinced, but still find the "Truman
syndrome" an interesting example of the connection between culture and
mental health.
Vaughan Bell, a psychologist who has researched Internet-related delusions, said one of his own former patients believed he was in the virtual-reality universe portrayed in the 1999 blockbuster "The Matrix."
"I don't think that popular culture causes delusions," said Bell, who is affiliated with King's College London and the Universidad de Antioquia in Medellin, Colombia. "But I do think that it is only possible to fully understand delusions and psychosis in light of our wider culture."
Liz's Take:
(Insert Trumpet
sound here)
