One man showed up at a federal building, asking for release from the reality show he was sure was being made of his life. Another was convinced his every move was secretly being filmed for a television contest. A third believed everything — the news, his psychiatrists, the drugs they prescribed — was part of a phony, stage-set world with him as the involuntary star, like the 1998 movie The Truman Show.Researchers have begun documenting the "Truman syndrome", a delusion under which people are convinced their lives are secretly playing out on reality TV. Scientists say the disorder underscores the influence pop culture can have on mental conditions.


"The question is really: is this just a new twist on an old paranoid or grandiose delusion … or is there sort of a perfect storm of the culture we're in, in which fame holds such high value?" said Joel Gold, a psychiatrist affiliated with New York's Bellevue Hospital.

Over two years, Dr Gold said he encountered five patients with delusions related to reality TV. Several of them specifically mentioned The Truman Show. Dr Gold and his brother Ian, a psychologist in Montreal, started presenting their observations at medical schools in 2006. They have since learned of about 50 more people with similar symptoms.

Meanwhile, researchers in London described a "Truman syndrome" patient in the British Journal of Psychiatry in August. The 26-year-old postman "had a sense the world was slightly unreal, as if he was the eponymous hero in the film", the researchers wrote.

The Oscar-nominated movie stars Jim Carrey as Truman Burbank, who leads a merrily uneventful life until he realises his friends and family are actors, his seaside town is a television sound stage and every moment of his life has been broadcast.

This a real mental illness and for some it seems to be not only a way out but a lifetime of blaming the "producers" for a crappy existence.

And I keep wondering why the drug/insurance business is booming!