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Abstract
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Introduction:
Conspiracy theories have not only come to circulate increasingly since the Covid pandemic. In addition to the topic of alternative facts, they are repeatedly used in media and political discourse to question certain topics (vaccination discourse, Ukraine war, climate change, etc.) or to challenge scientifical facts. The question which arises is to what extent this topic is also relevant in clinical psychiatry and psychotherapy and how to distinguish it from known phenomena such as anxiety and paranoia.
Methods: In addition to a literature review, this lecture presents the developmental psychological principles, the social framework and the differential diagnostic approaches to conspiracy theories and explains possible intervention approaches.
Results: The distinction between clinically relevant disorders, basic mental attitudes and externally induced delusion is difficult. Particularly in the concept of "alternative facts", the interfaces to "false memory syndrome", trauma-triggered narratives and psychotic and paranoid disorders are blurred.
Discussion: Surprisingly, empirical and clinical findings and psychopathological concepts on the subject of conspiracy theories and alternative facts from German-speaking countries exist rarely. These phenomena are extensively covered by social psychology and due to clinical relevance should be further investigated in the context of social psychiatry, as suggestible, anxious and impulsive patients may be at risk here.
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