To worry there is a serious mental health crisis amongst conspiracy theorists?

[BlooperReel]

Maybe it's because I've been online more now due to lockdown, but conspiracy theories seem to have really ramped up, people I know are now peddling some of this nonsense. Adrenochrome, pizzagate, 5G etc all seem to have sucked in people I'd assumed were rational people, and they are almost rabid about it and wil not hear any other viewpoint.

A bbc documentary called Viral - the 5g conspiracy theory interviewed some individuals who quite clearly need help.

I've seen the likes of Bill Gates, Chrissy teigen, Ellen DeGeneres and others get so much appalling abuse on social media over these theories and I can only think that the people who wholeheartedly believe this stuff must have psychological issues, the levels of paranoia are truly astounding. Is this an emerging mental health crisis?

I think there are probably numerous different causes. For my family it is religion, no trauma or drugs or mental health complications.

As a pp said who defines the "crazies", is JKR one? I think not so does that make me one?

There is a lot of fake news out there & bias. You can read the same story in the daily mail & the guardian & different "facts" will be left out so I think it's quite hard to know what to believe tbh if people only read a particular medium.

I also think conspiracy theories are often fuelled by gaps if that makes sense & some obviously have elements of truth. Look at Weinstein & Epstein, there were rumours for years & lots of it was in plain sight.

There is a huge difference between holding a non-mainstream opinion and a paranoid conspiracy theory that is demonstrably false or illogical and fuelled by cognitive biases. The people who hold these sorts of views have been studied and generally there aren't that many common factors, the one correlating factor tends to be a general fear of authority. Lack of education is not one, which is why they can be so convincing.

Whoever said human beings aren't designed to think the same - we are. We very, very much are. Our brain is constantly rewriting and editing our memories and views so that we behave according to other humans expectations of us. It's why conspiracy theories are now growing with the internet - people always want a group of people who think the same and confirm how they behave as correct, and now they've got it.

But generally, no, conspiracy theorists aren't mentally ill. They are just using the same cognitive biases our own brains use all the time, and misfiring to wildly misinformed conclusions that then can't be changed because of those same cognitive biases. It is how all of our brains work.

OP just because some people choose to believe or create theories does NOT mean they are mentally ill. As I said in my previous post, humans are not designed to think and believe the same way; we are allowed to be different you know. The world would be a very boring place otherwise.

If anything I think conspiracy theories are rather entertaining. I don't believe them myself but they are interesting to read. I most certainly wouldn't be slapping people who create them with the "mentally ill" label that you seem to have done.

Conspiracy theorists are not “people who happen to have a different opinion”, they are obsessive who fixate on the idea that they are special and know the Truth and will cling to that (often in an abusive and destructive way) and show an inability to think critically.

It’s dangerous to dismiss it as “a different opinion” and there are well-studied links between believing in conspiracy theories and severe mental illness.

But MN is weirdly full of flat earth-types, so I expect the usual bowls of outrage.

@JeSuisPoulet

I would love for someone in academia to do a study on people with psychosomatic pain and whether they voted Brexit though. I have a friend who's logic disappeared completely in 2015/16 with the Leave vote and he has concurrently suffered debilitating back pain which I suspected was psyhosomatic (you really do feel the pain btw) and caused by previous trauma he refused to acknowledge and get help for. After countless scans this was found to be the case. I would love to do some research on correlation. My hypothesis would be that failure to discuss/get therapy for previous trauma can lead to psychosomatic health problems and an increased tendency to conspiracy thinking. Self reflection is key!

I had to read that twice just to understand what on Earth you were talking about!?

You’re linking people who voted Leave in the UK EU referendum with those who are suffering psychosomatic pain? So you think pretend pain somehow changes the way you vote?

The thing is i used to think that if someone said...

'They are sending me messages through my tv'

At one point in my life..eg most of it I would have scoffed at them and said they were totally 'mental'.

Now I would tend to agree that tv is used to control minds ands it's people who want to deny that that are 'mental'....

So Yeh. I am reasonably intelligent btw and have no truck with 'they're all reptiles' etc.

However if you think we are not being mind manipulated and blatantly lied to then ypu are startlingly naive.

As for the Epstein thing....nothing would surprise me any more.

Scoff less listen more.

@Just it is about locus of control; this is why Leave used the catchphrase "take back control". It's behavioural science.

That sounds like some conspiracy theory to me

The problem is that some conspiracy theories have turned out to be true.

• Our phones ARE listening to us.
• There WAS an island where the rich and famous could go to abuse children.
• The Chinese DID develop a virus and unleash it upon the world.

I am sure there are others.

I just thought of another one, didn't tobacco companies know cigarettes were dangerous but covered it up? Or the British government collusion in NI? Or the covering up of Hillsborough?

So Yeh. I am reasonably intelligent btw and have no truck with 'they're all reptiles' etc.

Agree

However if you think we are not being mind manipulated and blatantly lied to then ypu are startlingly naive.

I don't trust Google or Alexa, does that make me crazy?

As for the Epstein thing....nothing would surprise me any more.

Exactly just like with Jimmy Saville, people knew & it's unlikely they are the only ones out there.

Exactly Hermione.
People love to scoff and feel superior .
Just because someone might appear to have a mental health problem doesn't mean you should dismiss everything they sat. Does it?

Yeah I'm so baffled at some of the theories and that I actually know people who think them. Something seriously wrong with them

Yes, because some people hate to think they can be manipulated (although they are usually the ones who are lacking control and so become easily led) and are more likely to dig their heels in and say they could NEVER be manipulated. It again goes back to needing to feeling control. Others would weigh up evidence and be able to look objectively at their reactions to certain influences.
FWIW phys.org/news/2019-07-brexit-leaver-psychological.html

It's quite offensive to say that people who believe in conspiracy theory are mentally ill. Just because someone believes in something different to you doesn't automatically make them wrong, let alone unwell.

A conspiracy theory is just a thought process that doesn't have many followers yet. What makes BLM or climate protests OK, but 5G and anti-vaccine people nutters? The fact that more people believe in the former, and because the media tells them it's the right thought process.

We live in a post-truth world; something doesn't have to be true to be a fact. If enough people believe something, it is true, whether or not it's purely fiction. Unicorns are real, because they can be imagined. Whether or not they actually physically exist is irrelevant.

Depends how you define conspiracy theorist. I’ve been told I’m bonkers when confiding in close friends about the traumatic experience my family and I had with doctors being medically abusive to my grandmother when she was in hospital (we had grounds to sue so definitely not in our heads). Funnily enough, I’ve also posted about it on here before and several people told me my experience was ‘offensive’ to them and reported me for daring to say any ill word against the NHS. It seems that many people cannot comprehend the idea of a doctor not being a good person and genuinely believe that a job title = morals. So in a sense I do agree with PP that accusing someone of being a conspiracy theorist is often done simply when someone has a different opinion/experience to you.

Believing that celebrities eat babies is a stretch of course and not something I believe at all, but I don’t like dismissing people as stupid because they have extreme views. Lots of things that have happened in the world are extreme. For example, if the Nazis had succeeded in completely covering up what they did to people in concentration camps and then survivors told us all the horrific things that official police and soldiers had done to them, do you think they would be labelled mad/conspiracy theorists? Again, I personally in no way believe in flat earth, 5G or any of the above mentioned conspiracies, but I don’t think we need to concern ourselves with what other people choose to believe unless their views are discriminatory/effect others. We live in a world where people do mad things that you would think only a nutter would come up with.

*say.
Personally I think there is something 'seriously wrong' with a society where any questions are met with total dismissal and accusations of mental health problems. In fact I would say there was something 'seriously wrong' with the people that don't question.

My DP is one of them. He hasn't got a mental illness and he hasn't had a traumatic childhood. He has a high powered career and is the most regular person ever. He can be quite gullible though and has spent a fortune over the years on alternative medicines and supplements in a bid to 'hack' his health. I got bored of it a while back but now I'm starting to be concerned. He now believes there'll be a new world order and all bank debt will be cancelled, along with all the Epstein, royal family child trafficking wayfair guff. He finds people who agree with him on forums so he feels validated in what he thinks is 'woke' and doesn't realise he's as much of a 'sheep' because he is believing stuff without hard evidence.

The Titanic conspiracy theory is brilliant...just sayin'

I can see how this situation with covid might trigger such things I mean it does in general feel quite strange and the government have tried to make people feel at threat in their messaging.

They have psychologists advising them that to comply people needed to feel at personal threat. and now need to deal with the MH issues caused by doing that.

I'm also sure when I was younger that I read about a weird cult in Hollywood that big names were involved with which later became known as Scientology. When you read about how they target & watch "leavers" you couldn't make it up.

Wrong link blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2019/07/29/which-do-you-think-is-the-bigger-figure-350m-a-week-or-4300-per-household-per-year/

We live in a world where people do mad things that you would think only a nutter would come up with.

True dat!

@Orangeblossom78 that makes sense to me, the only way a UK government was going to get 66m to stay indoors was by fear. There isn't the capacity to police it so the population has to chose it. That's why I disagreed with a lot of posters who argued we should have locked down much earlier. Yes, on paper more lives would have been safe but I think people needed to be scared to comply.