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Bullying breeds paranoia
- Jose L. Gonzalez de Rivera, Rodriguez-Abuin, Manuel J. (29 September 2005)
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Jose L. Gonzalez de Rivera, Professor of Psychiatry Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Spain, Rodriguez-Abuin, Manuel J.
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psy{at}terra.es Jose L. Gonzalez de Rivera, et al.
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This is an excellent article, and much to the point. But it misses very important question: whence does the unusual behaviour of the “persistent complainant” come from? It is easy to conclude, as indeed the authors seem to imply, that it is idiosyncratic, a process, in Jasperian terms. However, we suspect that, in many cases, it may be a reaction to abnormal external circumstances. We have some data to back this contention. We have applied the Spanish version of Derogatis´ SCL90R questionnaire to 194 consecutive complainants registered by the Spanish Association against Psychological Harassment at the Workplace. Our subjects had been previously tested with the LIPT-60 (Leymann Inventory of Psychological Terrorization – 60 items) and interviewed by psychological trained officers of the Association, who excluded those who had no objective basis for their complaints. Our results show that the general scores and all the dimensions of psychopathology were far higher in the complainants than in the general population. In addition, the scores for the dimensions of Paranoid Ideation, Hostility and Obsession-compulsion were significantly higher than in 331 ambulatory psychiatric patients of mixed diagnosis, mainly in the neurotic range. Further testing of a subsample of subjects (n=30) with psychiatric interview and the Rorschach Psychodiagnostic Test showed evidence of a “secondary paranoia”, which differs in several aspects of the characteristics of patients with paranoid personality and paranoid disorders. unlike paranoid patients, most of the complainants have responses with “texture”, psychological damage and situational stress determinants). We concluded that permanence in a hostile or persecutory environment in the workplace produces severe reactive psychopathology, and facilitates the development of a retaliatory attitude that fits with the construct of paranoid ideation. We will be very grateful to the authors if they were to further study their sample, in an attempt to confirm our findings. JL Gonzalez de Rivera and MJ Rodriguez-Abuin, Institute of Psychotherapy, Madrid, Spain |
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