Cases of 'Truman Show' delusions on the rise as more people believe they're the stars of their own reality TV programs



Reality TV shows are making increasing numbers of people convinced that they're the stars of their own, unwanted television programs.

Psychiatrists are treating more people for so-called 'Truman Show' delusions -- named after the 1998 movie starring Jim Carrey as a man who spends his entire life unwittingly at the center of a fictional world that's being broadcast to millions of homes.

The startling cases often afflict successful people who develop paranoid fantasies that they're being filmed at all times and that the world that's in front of them isn't real.

They're being watched: People suffering from 'Truman Show' delusions believe they are the star of a TV program like Jim Carrey's character in the 1998 movie

Their friends and loves ones are actors. The news they see on TV is made up to control the way they think. The things that happen to them are merely events staged for the amusement of others.



The result can turn disturbing and even violent.



In 2009, Anthony Waterlow killed his father and his sister in Australia because he believed they were broadcasting his life to the world as part of a game show to either murder him or convince him to kill himself.



During a psychological exam, he specially mentioned 'The Truman Show,' according to the Sydney Morning Herald.



Affliction: The paranoid suspicion of being spied on has driven some people to violence -- even murder -- in event years

In 2007, psychiatrist William Johns III allegedly assaulted a 2-year-old and his mother in New York City after he left his home in Florida because he 'had to get out of the Truman Show' that he believed was filming him in his home town, according to ABC News.



Drs Joel and Ian Gold, researchers at New York University and McGill University in Montreal, respectively, recently published a series of case studies about suffers of 'Truman Show' delusions.



Their article in the journal Cognitive Neuropsychiatry, followed five patients who believed their lives were the center of a secret TV show.



One patient traveled to New York City and walked in a federal building and demanded to see 'the director.' He said he had to come to Manhattan because he believed the World Trade Center attacks had been faked for the TV show being filmed around him, according to BuzzFeed .