By Craig Offman / Source: National Post
Joel and Ian Gold, brothers and psychiatrists from Montreal, believe they have discovered a signature mental illness of the YouTube era: patients who claim they are subjects of their own reality TV shows.
They have named the malady the "Truman Show Delusion," and though they are in the process of putting together a medical paper on the topic, their discovery is already causing a stir.
While traditionalists insist that this delusion offers nothing new -- it is no different from, say, a deranged man who believes that the CIA has planted a microchip in his tooth -- the Gold brothers argue otherwise.
"It's really a question of the extent of the delusion," said Joel Gold, 39, who has been on staff at New York's Bellevue Hospital Center for eight years. "The delusions we typically treat are narrow: There is Capgras Delusion, where someone will think his family has been replaced by doubles. Or the Fregoli Delusion, where someone believes that one person is persecuting him: a doctor, mailman, butcher. The Truman Show Delusion, though, involves the entire world."
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