Paranoia is a disease. In every sense a dis-ease. It is contagious and virulent.
These remarks follow the theft from a property on the retirement park where I live, while the occupants were away.
I am not sure how they knew they had had property stolen but it came as a shock to the rest of the residents on the park. People began talking about installing cameras and needing to lock the doors at night.
The Paranoia was felt widely on the Park. It led me to consider the nature of the shock and its result.
The thief would be in a state of anxiety – probably experienced as a thrill by the individual concerned – itself a state of paranoia. This illness is then communicated to all affected. In the case of a private park all the residents were affected, because no such theft had been observed previously.
I realised that the illness had been contracted by us all from the initial sickness affecting the individual thief in their actions.
That it is not recognised as an illness by the thief or the authorities is immaterial. It is a sickness. Like kleptomania.
The thief themselves are probably completely unaware of the depth of sadness and sickness they left behind them and with which they had infected the entire community.
