Doc, I Think I'm on Reality TV

In The Truman Show, Jim Carrey's life was nothing more than a reality TV program, with actors playing his friends and family and millions of viewers watching his every move. Those themes of surveillance and artificiality pervade the lives of a growing number of psychiatric patients—people who think they are always on camera, surrounded by performers, the New York Times reports.

Some practitioners think so-called Truman Syndrome represents a bona fide psychiatric phenomenon—that TV and the Internet are literally driving people crazy. Others disagree; for them, psychosis is psychosis, and the fear of surveillance is a natural successor to paranoia about the Nazis or the KGB. As for those who suffer from Truman Syndrome, one doctor said, "Most likely these people would be delusional anyway." (More psychosis stories.)