Mental Health and Trust: Dealing with Persecutory Delusion

Volume 7 Issue 1 February - April 2017

Article

Mental Health and Trust: Dealing with Persecutory Delusion

Armish Aziz Ahmed*

*Registered Nurse, Intensive Care Unit, Aga Khan University Hospital, Karachi, Pakistan.

Ahmed, A.A. (2017). Mental Health and Trust: Dealing with Persecutory Delusion. i-manager’s Journal on Nursing, 7(1), 5-8. https://doi.org/10.26634/jnur.7.1.13486

Abstract

About 10-15% of the general populace frequently experience persecutory delusions as an immediate symptom of mental illness. Persecutory delusion is a condition where mistrust of others is the fundamental characteristic. This makes troublesome for health care providers to construct trustful and empathetic relationship, eventually causing a remarkable hindrance in the patient's treatment. Persecutory delusion reflects false convictions about the intentions and conducts of others that could emerge from the theory of mind deficits. Patient's constant worrying, thinking style, negative beliefs about the self, Interpersonal sensitivity, sleep disturbance, anomalous internal experience, and reasoning biases contribute greatly towards the suspicious thoughts. Helping people with delusions is an important clinical issue. The Cognitive behavior therapy, Emotional Processing and Metacognitive Awareness, and Progressive Muscle Relaxant are interventions that should be vigilantly applied to treat and build trust in the patient. Patients should be assisted in a non-judgmental environment to make their paranoid experiences less threatening, less interfering, and more controllable.