Truman Show delusion facts for kids

The Truman Show delusion, also called Truman syndrome, is when someone strongly believes their life is a staged reality show. They might think cameras are watching them all the time. This idea came from the 1998 movie The Truman Show.

Two brothers, Joel Gold (a psychiatrist) and Ian Gold (a neurophilosopher), first used this term in 2008. It's not an official medical condition listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association.

What is the Truman Show Delusion?

This idea gets its name from the movie The Truman Show. It's a 1998 comedy-drama film directed by Peter Weir. In the movie, Jim Carrey plays Truman Burbank. He's a man who finds out his whole life is a TV show, broadcast around the world 24/7.

Since he was born, everyone in his life has been a paid actor. When Truman learns the truth, he tries to escape from those who control him.

The idea of living in a fake world isn't new. Before the movie, there was a 1989 episode of The Twilight Zone called "Special Service". In it, a man finds a camera in his bathroom mirror. He soon learns his life is being broadcast to TV viewers.

In 1941, writer Robert A. Heinlein wrote a story called "They". It was about a man who thought everyone around him was trying to make him believe he was crazy. In 1959, Philip K. Dick wrote Time Out of Joint. Its main character lives in a fake world where his "family" and "friends" are paid actors. These stories show the idea of a world built by others, even if they don't have the "reality show" part.

Understanding Delusions

A delusion is a strong belief that isn't true. These beliefs can be a sign of a mental health condition if there's no physical illness causing them. Delusions can be about many things, but some common themes exist. For example, some people have persecutory delusions, where they believe others are trying to harm them.

How Culture Shapes Delusions

What people have delusions about often connects to their life and the world around them. A study from 2008 looked at how delusions have changed over time. It found that in the past, delusions were often about religion or magic. Later, they became about politics, and now they are often about technology.

Experts believe that changes in society and new technology influence what people with delusions think about. For example, a psychiatrist named Joseph Weiner noted that in the 1940s, people might think radio waves controlled their brains. Now, they might think computer chips are implanted in them.

The Truman Show delusion could be a new way that persecutory delusions show up. This is because reality shows are so popular. Someone with this delusion might believe they are always being filmed, watched, and talked about by a large TV audience.

The official poster for the 2022 Cannes Film Festival honored The Truman Show. It said the movie makes people think about the line between reality and what's fake.

Real-Life Cases of Truman Show Delusion

We don't know exactly how many people have the Truman Show delusion. However, hundreds of cases have been reported worldwide. Joel Gold and Ian Gold are leading researchers on this topic. Joel is a psychiatrist at Bellevue Hospital Center in New York City. Ian is a professor of philosophy and psychiatry at McGill University in Montreal.

Since 2002, they have talked with over a hundred people who have this delusion. For example, one patient traveled to New York City after 9/11 to check if the terrorist attacks were a plot twist in his personal "Truman Show." Another patient went to a federal building in Lower Manhattan to ask for protection from his "show."

One patient had worked on a reality TV show. He believed cameras were secretly tracking him, even when he voted on election day in 2004. He shouted something that led him to Bellevue Hospital, where Joel Gold met him.

One of Gold's patients was an army veteran. He wanted to climb the Statue of Liberty because he thought it would free him from the "show." He described his experience: "I realized that I was and am the center, the focus of attention by millions and millions of people ... My family and everyone I knew was and are actors in a script, a charade whose entire purpose is to make me the focus of the world's attention."

The Gold brothers chose the name "Truman Show delusion" because three of the first five patients Joel Gold treated linked their experiences directly to the movie.

In 2008, a study by Paolo Fusar-Poli in the British Journal of Psychiatry looked at people with signs of this delusion. Psychologist Mark D. Griffiths reviewed this study. He found that most people with this delusion also had other health issues that might have contributed to it.

Truman Syndrome in the UK

In the United Kingdom, psychiatrists Paolo Fusar-Poli, Oliver Howes, Lucia Valmaggia, and Philip McGuire wrote about "Truman Syndrome." They described it in the British Journal of Psychiatry.

They talked about a patient who strongly believed the world had changed in a way others knew about. He thought he was the subject of a film and living on a film set. This group of symptoms is common in people who might be showing early signs of schizophrenia, a serious mental health condition.

The authors suggest that the "Truman explanation" helps patients make sense of their feeling that the normal world has changed in a strange way.

Is it a Real Medical Condition?

The Truman Show delusion is not officially recognized as a medical condition. It's not listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association. The Gold brothers say it's not a new diagnosis. Instead, they see it as a different way that known persecutory delusions and grandiose delusions can appear.

Filmmaker's Thoughts

When Andrew Niccol, the writer of The Truman Show, heard about the condition, he joked, "You know you've made it when you have a disease named after you."

See also

In Spanish: Delirio de The Truman Show para niños