To find out if the patient is suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, it usually takes a long time for the psychiatrist to diagnose someone. Most of the time, the psychiatrist needs at least half of year to analyze the symptoms noticed. It can take this long because psychiatrists don’t want to rush in taking a decision and freaking out the patient that only attended a few meetings. Most of the time people go there because they are depressed and need to get things out of their head.
Stress is most likely the cause that patients think they suffer from any paranoid illness. It is true that the more time the patient stays untreated the worse the situation gets and the period of treatment for the untreated psychosis takes longer. Even though you are not suffering from any kind of illness it is better to take any early symptom into account so that you can easily see if there is a problem. If you notice problems, go to the doctor immediately.