HelenM

I probably won't, actually, if you are respectful.

Well, I can say a few things. First - I had been a Christian for 12 years before my first episode of mental illness so my conversion was unlikely to have been because of it. Secondly, not all people with my diagnosis are Christians. So it seems neither necessary or sufficient.

Do you really think that every Christian is mentally ill?

Could you say more about on the mental problem you envisage to be the cause of people converting to Christ? Are you thinking 'mental health disorder' or something more along the lines of 'unable to assess the evidence' or 'problem being logical and analytical'.

If you can be more specific then it would be easier to think about whether your theory that Christians have 'something wrong with them' has any validity or not.

I mean, I could just assert that atheists have something wrong with them but I wouldn't, because I know it's simply that they choose to go a different direction in interpreting the world around them. To them it does not point to the existence of God. To Christians it does. I don't see that as meaning one group necessarily has 'something wrong with them'. To prove that, you need to establish that one conclusion is 'normative' and one is 'defective'.

I think it will be hard to do that.

Helen

keyser_soze

HelenM

It's rather obvious that he meant it seriously in his latest post

It's what he said so, with all due respect, I'll wait for him to clarify. I'm interested in your opinions too but they're yours, not his.

There are several non-Christians on IIDB diagnosed with depressive disorders.

I can see that people who have a disorder leading them into extremes, would be attracted to an extreme belief system.

Still, that's different from the title of this thread and what Oxymoron's comments which imply that all or most people with religious beliefs have a mental disorder.

Bipolar - the more extreme form. I think I was too manic (twice to date) to be classified as having that milder form.

Some are, but...I don't like to generalize. Beachbum, who used to post here but died last year (?) of a sudden heart attack had a wonderfully positive outlook on life.

Thanks for your comments. I'd still like Oxymoron to clarify what he meant because I thnk he is saying something other than what you said.

Helen

Oxymoron

Let us first be clear about what 'mentally ill' constitutes. Almost every human I know of suffers from depression at some point in their life. It is only considered an illness when it is chronic and/or debilitating. Most mental illnesses are considered problematic when they endanger the wellbeing of the sufferer or others around them.

From this, I conclude that 'mental illness' is ubiquitous and mostly manageable and benign. I would like to eradicate the stigma of mental illness, because I fail to see why it's so much more socially acceptable to have diabetes or a cold or be overweight.

Gladly. Let me start with a 'parable', as you guys seem fond of them I worked as a youth counsellor for a few years (part-time, admittedly, as I was a scientist by day). I spent a lot of time talking to pretty disturbed young men and women who were superficially really confident, tough, streetwise individuals. Once you peeled all the top layers off, though, these were the most vulnerable, scared individuals that I had met. Peeling away these layers was not easy: there was a lot of them, they were connected logically in places, and in those places where there was weakness there was rage to back it up.
One characteristic of these teenagers was their belief that society was, if not out to 'get them', then at least stacked heavily against their interest. They despised the ostentatious trappings of consumerism, supported anarchistic and even racist causes because they were anti-establishment. These people could not progress in life. One skinhead had "fuck off" tatooed on his forehead. No job in the bank for him, then.
And what was at the root of all this? Fear. These people were terrified of trying and failing, and that fear led to rejection behaviour that led to antisocial behaviour, and they wrapped themselves up in anti-social defiance until they forgot how they got there in the first place. These people suffered severe depression if they let go of their rage and belief that the world was against them. As long as they were angry and antisocial, they would never have to feel and deal with the fear - and the beliefs that were caused by and causing the fear.

These young people were mentally ill. Their beliefs existed to prevent them feeling and tackling their fear, and they were stuck in a rut which I could not get them out of. Their fears were, when examined, groundless lies they had never questioned. Their inability to examine the root causes of their behaviour was a problem to themselves and a problem to others.

These kids were not religious. They lacked the 'faith' that believers are so fond of, at least explicitly. However, implicitly, they refused to confront the roots of their problems, much in the same way that faith requires that you 'just believe' certain things about the world. Well, faith is just another fear suppressor. This time, the fear is of life, uncertainty, evil, pain, disease and death, the hugeness and impersonality of the universe. The real world - "science", if you like, has yet to deliver categorical answers to much of that, yet people demand answers now because they are - rightly! - damn scared of existence. I am DAMN scared of existence and the mortality of me,my family and my wife and my child who will be born any day now. As an atheist, I take what comfort there is in dealing with the world as I find it, not constructing fictitious and bizarre stories to make me feel better about myself.

In a word, faith = denial. A priori, there's very little wrong with that, but of course that is only from a personal perspective. Any system that allows someone to believe what they like simply because it makes them feel good is asking for trouble, because where in that scheme is the truth, and the pursuit of the truth? Where is justice? Where are the very moral roots of our being if we simply serve our own fears?

Summary so far:
* Humans are able to comprehend their own mortality and get scared
* Religion is based on faith
* Faith is a fear suppressor
* Faith undermines the pursuit of truth by blocking the evaluation and validation of beliefs against the external world

The evaluation and validation of beliefs against the external world is the central cognitive mechanism that humans possess. Absolutely everything that we do goes through it. It's how we learn from the very moment we develop the hardware capable of supporting it. Couple external sensory apparatus (eyes, ears, skin, nose) to a huge associative memory (brain) via some cabling (nervous system), add some feedback and boom! A baby can learn that touching glowing things is bad and draw inferences from it. (The evaluation and validation of beliefs against the external world is, in a refined form, how we do science, which demonstrates that the scientific method is optimally aligned for human hardware - the best truth-determining system we have).

Ergo:
* Religious faith is a member of a set of mental illnesses that manifests itself in denial and suppression of fear. It is - in all non-superficial respects - indistinguishable from other forms of denial; it fulfils exactly the same role. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck...
* Religious faith undermines the pursuit of truth at both subjective and less subjective levels and is thus acting against the interest of the sufferer and others around them.
* Religious faith deliberately breaks the fundamental mechanism of human intelligence.

Well, I tried.

HelenM

I'm impressed

Ok, I have no further questions for you at this time. I hope everything goes well with the birth of your baby. I suggest you prepare yourself to expect some major moodswings from your wife as she recuperates physically, at the same time as she is adjusting to the reality of a very needy addition to your family.

(Not to presume that she'll be solely responsible for taking care of the baby but if she's breastfeeding the share of responsibilities will be necessarily unequal).

(But if this is not your first child, you'll know what to expect)

Helen

keyser_soze

HelenM

No offense, but I'd rather not discuss details such as medication in public. I can tell you that I see a professional counselor and psychiatrist regularly and I'm on the regimen they think best for me at this time. I'm in compliance with their recommendations. My husband also seems satisfied with the regimen they have me on.

Helen

Hubble head

Trying to pin one type of affliction on millions of superstitious believers is tough. Those who are so far gone they blame every little thing that happens in the world on god(s) should be committed to the loony bin. Something really is wrong with them.

I’ll agree that many are mentally defunct in some ways but I think others are simply brainwashed (which can happen to almost anybody under right circumstances) by those they grew up around or socialize with.

Some are in dire need of feeling forgiveness and others are just lonely. Others fear dying. It’s all kinds of stuff, mostly under pressure of uncertainty or unhappiness or wanting to be accepted.

As for increased sweat at the temples, I think we can get more scientific than that. I would guess that most people who have addictions could give similar responses to images of whatever they are addicted to. For some it could just be a fear or anxiety response, I’d guess.

Hubble head

:notworthy :notworthy :notworthy

keyser_soze

None taken, I know that the treatments for bipolar disorder are a lot better than they used to be, and can manage the mania better than they once could(the treatment used to work wonders for the depression, but did crap for the mania...although usually the mania is not as frequent or long duration as the depression part of the disorder). I am glad that it's working well for you! Treatments have come so far over the years. My wife suffers from dysthymia only, but it is hard to keep her on her regimen. She does well for a while, then falls off the wagon so to speak.