Faculty of Medicine and Health, Sydney Medical School, Nepean Clinical School, Discipline of Psychiatry, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia.
Department of Psychiatry, Nepean Hospital, Penrith, NSW, Australia.
Australas Psychiatry. 2021 Oct;29(5):535-539. doi: 10.1177/10398562211008182. Epub 2021 Apr 14.
Conspiracy beliefs (also known as conspiracy theories) become more prominent at times of heightened uncertainty and inconsistent or conflicting explanations provided by the authorities for events like terrorist attacks or pandemics, such as COVID-19. This article aims to examine the relevance of conspiracy beliefs for psychiatry in the context of the dynamics of trust and mistrust.
Conspiracy beliefs may be situated on a spectrum of mistrust-related phenomena, which extends from healthy scepticism to persecutory delusions. They can be conceptualised as unfounded and fixed beliefs held with strong conviction about harm inflicted by powerful groups on the community or another group of people, usually with preserved insight that these beliefs differ from those that most people have and with reasons for having such beliefs not necessarily being implausible. It is important for conspiracy beliefs to be distinguished from persecutory delusions.
在高度不确定的时期，以及当局对恐怖袭击或大流行病（如 COVID-19）等事件提供的不一致或相互矛盾的解释时，阴谋论（也称为阴谋论）变得更加突出。本文旨在审查阴谋论在信任和不信任的动态背景下对精神病学的相关性。
阴谋信念可能存在于与不信任相关的现象谱上，从健康的怀疑论到迫害妄想。它们可以被概念化为毫无根据的和固定的信念，强烈地认为强大的团体对社区或另一群人造成了伤害，通常保持洞察力，即这些信念与大多数人所持有的信念不同，并且持有这些信念的原因不一定不可信。将阴谋信念与迫害妄想区分开来很重要。
