hello this is dr grande today's question asks if i can analyze the construct of gang stalking so sometimes with this construct the people who believe they are subjected to it call themselves targeted individuals just a reminder i'm not diagnosing anybody in this video only speculating about what could be happening in a situation like this if you enjoyed this video please like it subscribe to my channel and consider supporting me on patreon i'll put the link to patreon in the description for this video so before i talk about the construct of gang stalking i think it's
important to distinguish this construct from what's referred to as individual stalking i guess one could use the terms regular or traditional stalking as well although that seems a little unusual to put that way so the idea is that when we think of the word stalking we think of one person who is going after another right so i'm going to use the person a person b situation so person a is the stalker and person b is the victim so the way we think of it is that person a is connected to person b in some way
or they used to be connected with person b person a engages in a pattern behavior where they watch person be they follow person b they attempt to contact them in multiple ways like calling texting emailing sending letters and sometimes person a even threatens person b this construct of individual stalking is sometimes referred to as unwanted pursuit behavior although stalking doesn't have to be associated with some type of romantic relationship it almost always is but again it doesn't have to be so individual stalking is fairly common at some point in their lives eight percent of women
and two percent of men will be victims of this type of behavior gang stalking or group stalking is quite a bit different it involves the use of multiple individuals to stalk harass or threaten a victim the group must have at least three people in it and must be organized with a clear purpose so we're not talking about stalking by proxy so we're not talking about a situation where person a would hire a number of other people to threaten or spy on person b also online bullying does not count as part of this definition the phenomenon
of gang stalking or group stalking is also reported much less than individuals talking about .66 percent of adult women and .17 percent of adult men will have the subjective experience of being gang-stalked at some point in their lives now when approaching this subject from a neutral stance like scientists would if they were conducting a study the assumption would be that gang stalking could be real like there could be a lot of people out there who are actually experiencing this or it could be in many cases part of a delusion this behavior is distressing to people
if it's real and if it's a delusion so either way it's important to get a better understanding of this construct in 2015 an exploratory study on gang stalking was published in the study the researchers compared gang stalking to individual stalking and noted a number of characteristics of the victims of gang stalking that distinguished them from victims of individual stalking in the study gang stalking victims tended to be mostly female the stalking behavior lasted longer than what we tend to see with individual stalking almost all the participants had no idea who the stalker was very few
thought it was a former partner that's quite different from individual stalking where people would almost always know who the perpetrator was we see that there was little or no unwanted communication in the form of letters emails and texts they are more likely to report being spied on secretly photographed and having lies spread about them they were more likely to be scared depressed have post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms increased aggressiveness and increased distrust they were less likely to believe stalking had changed their personality we see they are also more likely to report disruptions in their lives across
many areas just a few examples they tend to be more fearful about going out their work performance was affected they give up on social activities more lose friends they're more likely to carry a weapon and probably most importantly they tend to be more delusional when putting all these clues together it seems pretty clear that most victims of gang stalking are experiencing delusions and this theory about delusions really explains a lot it explains why they can't identify who's doing the stalking why they're not getting written or digital communication and why they experienced the stalking for such
a long duration even though individual stalkers can stay around for a while eventually they usually give up but with the gang stalking we see that goes on for many years there are many different ways to divide the subjective experience of gang stalking into categories there are certain categories or beliefs that occur more frequently than others here's a list of some of the more popular categories of beliefs from a qualitative study after each category i'll provide some of the exemplar quotes for that category from the study i will paraphrase some of the quotes so looking at
the categories we see that being followed occurs about ninety percent of the time so ninety percent of the people who have the subjective experience of gang stalking endorsed this category they believed they were being watched or followed for example i am followed by people wearing elaborate disguises and cars are tailgating me and the drivers are using walkie-talkies next category multiple agencies are involved in the conspiracy eighty percent believe this so the government is behind it all with the help of local police and the people are recruited by homeland security from craigslist and the fbi so
i've heard about homeland security in the fbi as part of gang stalking i haven't heard of craigslist coming up too much next category is electronic surveillance 60 here my home is bugged and i'm a victim of 24 7 covert electronic surveillance we see physical interference 60 so people are blocking me with grocery carts people are invading my personal space people on the street are running into me and i've been forced off the road numerous times by cars when driving mind control is at 40 percent the government is fully able to take control of everyone's thoughts
and they insert thoughts and ideas into my mind and it took me a while to figure out that the thoughts were not mine electronic hacking is common forty percent all my passwords are compromised and information from my cell phone was stolen so that they can arrange street theater in which well rehearsed live dramas take place it's like half complaint and half compliment right it's like they enjoyed the street theater but they were mad that it was part of a conspiracy next category people sneaking into their house when they're not there 35 percent endorse this people
break into my house when i'm not home and move stuff around and i can't leave my house because they will move around my undergarments now the last two categories are about people who are part of the conspiracy we see police are part of the conspiracy that's 30 percent and neighbors are apart that's 25 percent so we see things like state police helicopters are following me around and many of my neighbors but not all are involved now it's curious why somebody would think certain neighbors are involved and not others i think a lot of this is
based on to what degree those neighbors believe the individual who believes they're being gang-stalked so if somebody tends to be a good listener and they tend to believe the person usually that person will not think that other person is part of the conspiracy so neighbors that are supportive might not get included in that conspiracy group we see that these beliefs come with a lot of negative effects like feeling isolated and it can cause a desire to counter-attack so why hasn't gang stalking been studied too much well in a way it really has been gang stalking
is really a version of paranoid and persecutory delusions what has changed why is this now something that's being discussed well it's really about communication specifically the ability to connect with an online informal community of people who believe the same thing there's something very powerful about feeling a sense of belonging even if that connection is made because of a negative experience years ago somebody had delusions they would interact mostly with family friends and mental health professionals now they can reach out to a much wider community in one way of course that's good they're finding support in
another way it's unhelpful because it reinforces beliefs that are not positive that could lead to negative outcomes these communities often promote behavior like following law enforcement around following politicians around mental health professionals and neighbors ironically many of the people who say they're victims of gang stalking are actually engaging in stalking behavior there have been a few notable cases where gang stalking has been connected to violence for example aaron alexis sometimes called the navy yard shooter who killed 12 people at the washington dc navy yard in 2013 myron may who in 2014 shot three people in
the florida state university library and gavin long who shot and killed three baton rouge louisiana police officers and wounded three others in 2016. looking online we find material designed to support targeted individuals but much of that material is not from mental health professionals much of it is from people who consider themselves targeted individuals it's easy to confuse quality information from misinformation the way that people with these beliefs give advice to others with these beliefs is actually quite telling some of this information is written in a way that has good grammar but the content of course
is incorrect a lot of it is really about how the paranoid feelings are justified how there's a conspiracy and how you can't let the fact that there is no evidence to support the claim get in the way they say that mental health professionals law enforcement politicians judges lawyers everyone is in on the conspiracy except of course for the targeted individuals they describe the typical targeted individual as having a very high iq a history of political activism and being influential it's like they see themselves as threatening to the mainstream culture government and society in general one
of the main challenges with these types of delusions is it's almost like they were perfectly engineered to prevent someone from getting mental health treatment the delusions work against attempts to get help it's ironic how the advice of mental health professionals in this situation could be something like well don't engage in those online discussions stay isolated from them it's easy to understand how somebody with paranoia could look at that advice and say that's exactly what the government wants me to do they don't want me to team up with like-minded individuals because we're revolutionaries with great ideas
and they're trying to stop us so again everything about the delusion resists treatment the problem is that it's only going to get worse as these online communities increase in size it's important not to dismiss the concerns about this type of delusion if one were to imagine what it's like to believe that everyone is out to get you it's really quite frightening and it can facilitate somebody acting in a violent manner because they believe they are acting in their own self-defense please put any opinions and thoughts in the comments section they always generate an interesting dialogue
as always i hope you found my analysis of this topic to be interesting thanks for watching
