UK Study: Recent spike in paranoia is a legacy of Bush-Blair years.

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The subway test also confirmed for Freeman that “galloping urbanization,” as he calls it, is transforming our minds. Social isolation has hobbled our decision-making skills, turning urban environments into an endless array of misperceived dangers. To be sure, this is not a new insight. We’ve known for years that cities have higher levels of paranoia as compared to rural areas (one study, for example, found mental disorder is more frequent in UK neighbourhoods with rooming-houses where strangers share bathrooms and kitchens). But Freeman also argues that the recent spike in paranoia is a legacy of the Bush-Blair years. There is a direct link, in other words, between the politicians’ insistence that Saddam Hussein possessed and was preparing to use weapons of mass destruction, and current British panic about “hoodies” and “feral youth” who reportedly swarm, stab and rob pensioners. Two out of three people in the UK believe crime is rising, even though it has been declining throughout the industrialized world since 1997.

Paranoia, in fact, includes a striking table which illustrates a drastic rise in media mentions since 1995 for words like asylum-seeker, terrorist, pedophile (“a big one” Freeman says), criminals and mugger. Because the press constantly reminds us of these dangers, we overestimate the odds of being hurt by them.

“Over-reporting means we don’t focus on the real risks,” says Freeman—risks like heart disease or road accidents. We depend on the media to keep us informed, but by pushing stories about terrorism the media also makes it easier to believe that strangers plot in dark corners to destroy our way of life. Of course, fear of terrorists and pedophiles is an altogether different kind of paranoia than the “sincere” kind created by true stories of, for example, tainted blood, or fast-tracked pesticides. A legitimate cause of worry, Freeman explains, should be tied to its actual rate of occurrence, not how frequently it gets mentioned in the media. If internalized, mass fears can skew our capacity to correctly interpret and assess risk, and can make us behave in strange ways.

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http://maisonneuve.org/pressroom/article/2010/feb/17/be-afraid/