My father is bipolar with psychotic manic episodes. He's always had delusions of grandeur, apocalyptic visions and a fixation with the rapture/end of days. His episodes generally included religious/ extraterrestrial focused hallucinations. I've witnessed religious psychosis and it's horrifying. My father refuses treatment for his mental illness and retreated into religion and conspiracy.
I think religious psychosis is more common than our society will ever acknowledge. I believe that religion not only contributes to mental illness, it exacerbates it.
I had a brother who was schizophrenic. You could have a normal conversation with him, but he was absolutely convinced that he was God's chosen prophet, that he had performed miracles, and that he was regularly caught up to heaven to conference with God and Jesus.
His beliefs were very unorthodox, so he didn't exactly fit in with the church crowd. But I do wonder how many schizophrenics with milder symptoms are hiding out in religion.
I think that individuals with similar conditions are primed for religious mania. If you hear voices, and God and Angels are supposed to talk to chosen people, then why wouldn't this be the same. Now, I don't want to over-generalize, but it's all very hand-in-glove here. They just fit so well together that nobody Questions it. If it's mild enough, they may not even notice it and just chalk it up to "religious mania."
Kind of sad, really.
This is an old (old) lecture by Dr Robert Sapolsky at Stanford. It is titled the biological underpinnings of religion. It should be mandatory forā¦ well not just this sub but literally everyone imo, atheist or not
https://youtu.be/4WwAQqWUkpI?si=yGEufKCh-6pzl2Nz
The whole course is available online and is priceless, as he starts from the very basics and builds up to this towards the end of the course
I know that itās long but the parts about evolutionarily speaking having the right amount of psychopathic personality traits having fulfilled the religious role in human societies since forever was mindblowing, including the part where they are often genetically linked to evolutionarily necessary traits like specific disease immunity
This one is much newer and called āReligion is natureās antidepressantā and is based on the same premises
https://youtu.be/oldj11NEsc0?si=YWpzG-aZRTtrbV8v
edit: u/SoTiredOfRatRace your post reminded me of something and I finally remembered what it was. Please check out the links above!
I have a cousin like this. Sold everything he owned to live as a homeless prophet on the beach. He ended up getting stabbed by other homeless people but went right back to his mission. He ended up in prison for sometime and now heās out. We all had high hopes while he was incarcerated that he would be put on meds to stable him out but instead preached more to him. Now heās out and we donāt think his story is going to have a happy endingā¦
My brother was living in a tent in the woods; but he realized that being institutionalized was a far better life. So he went to a bank and passed the teller a note that he was robbing the bank. He didn't have any weapons, and was arrested on the spot.
When he went before the judge, he started talking about being God's prophet and being caught up to heaven to meet Jesus, yadda yadda yadda. The judge immediately institutionalized him as mentally ill.
Absolutely, when I was 10 my dad talked about the end of the world so much, I developed an ulcer due to the anxiety it caused. I had to beg my mom to make him stop. He went on medication for a few years and had some stability but it didn't last. I definitely have trauma and anxiety due to his manic episodes.
I have a fairly new friend who I knew is bipolar and is officially disabled due to his mental health issues. Heās currently in the throes of a pretty intense manic episode and even spent four days in voluntary inpatient care last week. I have other friends with BPD, but their disorder was far milder than this, so while Iām aware that these serious psychotic manic episodes exist, this is my first time seeing the more extreme end of his BPD. Itās notable how much he has driven into religion. His social media videos, which were mostly about smoking weed tbh, are now things like him wandering in cemeteries talking about Jesus and Christianity. Heād definitely tell you he is religious during times of stability, but doesnāt attend church or talk about religion unprompted otherwise. Itās quite the difference.Ā
A friend from university had the same issues with her mother, with the added issue of her mother being abused/taken advantage of by charismatic 'religious' leaders. When we were in university, she'd sometimes disappear for 5 to 10 days because her mother had been jailed and/or hospitalized for strange behaviour, and she needed to get her back on meds and settled back at home before coming back to school.
Santa claus is real! How dare you insinuate otherwise! I'll include you in my next letter to him. Perhaps he will forgive you and take you off his naughty list. Then you will receive the most bountiful gifts, but if you don't believe, you will be roasted with the chestnuts! As stated in Nicholas 12:25
Prove to me that Santa doesn't exist!
I know in my heart he is there. When i was 8, I was having a rough time, but then I tried to be good instead of naughty and then when Christmas came, I got that game system I always wanted. There is no way my parents got it for me because I never told them about it (except they saw me excited when the commercials were on, and I told my friends, and they heard me talk about wanting it)...so you see, Santa is totally real because I have a personal witness of him.
/s
Some religious people are vehemently against allowing children to believe in Santa - because when kids get old enough to realize Santa is fictional they might come to realize the same about God.
My invisible friend is Jesus.
His daddy created the Universe but he and his son are the most humble supernatural beings. They're so shy that they just can't come forward to reveal themselves.
I get the inclination to see it that way. Many of the beliefs PRESENT AS certain mental disorders (I.e. if you looked up the disorder in the DSM, you could convince yourself a religious person was suffering from the disorder). However, if you actually interact with someone with an actual, untreated disorder, the difference is quite apparent.
That said, I believe there are data suggesting that religious people have a greater incidence of mental illness relative to the general population, likely suggesting that people with mental illness disorders are drawn to religion.
It was only a question of whether it is a mental disorder and not how severe it is. If you replace God in Christianity with aliens, no one would think of not considering it a mental disorder.
The difference between a religion and a mental disorder is only the number of people affected by it.
The human brain is like a computer; you put garbage in and you will get garbage out. It doesn't mean the computer is broken; it just means you're working with a bad data set.
That said, I do think religion is a natural hiding place for mentally ill people.
The question then is which drove the other? Was it the mental disease that drove their belief in a Sky Daddy?
Or did their belief drive some type of mental disorder as they began to realize that the world in their book of myths doesn't align with the reality they live in and thus develop a psychosis to continue existing in their fantasy land?
Itās definitely the former. Mental illness can affect children and people raised without religion, and result in them seeking out religion and the supernatural. If everyone who experienced cognitive dissonance in regards to religion developed psychosis or other mental health disorders, church would be a deeply different experience than most dominationsā quiet hour of listening to a dude talk between musical performances.Ā
Believing 1 or more of 2500+ invented gods is/are real and watch and judge everyone all time is a mental illness. And we should treat it as just that, it is not normal nor sane to live your life according to XXXX yrs old rules AND bother other people with that nonsense, all because a "god" will be offended if you don't do what he expects. It's mental and we should start it as what it is: a mental illness.
Great point.
My one comment is that I do not much care how they live their lives according to thousand of years old rules.
What I care about is that they want the rest of us who don't believe to believe, and to follow their rules and their rules only.
That's the biggest issue for me.
I suspect that many "believers" don't really believe in that stupid concepts that their religions command them to believe, because to believe them you should be very very stupid or totally insane, in any case you couldn't be a "functional" person in our society. Instead they are quite intelligent for anything else which is not religion, and usually cultured and educated people. I think they are pathological liars: they pretend to believe to feel better and superior to those "who have no faith", "don't believe in anything" and of course "have no morality".
Then there are also those who truly believe and yes, they have mental disorders which are clearly visible even at first glance.
Anyway i hope one day pathological liars will be considerate as they actually are: sociopaths. That day being a believer will be finally considered a symptom of mental disorders, not a crime by itself (unless you kill people in the name of your faith) but an alarming signal. Imagine you see someone talking loudly to themselves in the middle of the street: you should call the nurses because he needs help; i have the same feelings when i hear people praying or quoting the bible.
They dont appear capable of of analysing their own thinking. āSecond thoughtsā, is quite hard for people who cannot access higher cortical functions. Hereās some science about that https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/your-brain-food/202205/the-brains-believers-and-non-believers-work-differently
This is true. My mom has serious issues one of them being religion. Its made her into an abusive paranoid racist homophobe who thinks everyones against her. She needs treatment as she is a danger to those around her. Shes also built a shrine like place to her alcoholic dead dad.
Iām so sorry. Youāre not alone, not that it makes you feel better. I grew up in a very violent household and had a father who is to this day a ā religious nut ā
Yeah. I hesitate to say that, because I'm not trying to insult anyone, but I've noticed it too. I've wondered if a desire to be religious comes from a person's anxieties in other areas of their life. Like they're drawn to it since it offers a solution to all life's problems. Whether the solution is real or not, doesn't matter to them.
Sadly I think a lot of organized religion, particularly evangelical megachurch types, tend to be really effective at drawing on mentally vulnerable people. Because symptoms of disorders like schizophrenia (I.e. delusions, paranoia) can often be masked under the guise of religious beliefs and strong faith, and because they are more susceptible to the predatory, profit making grifts a lot of these "pastors" and cult leaders apply.
Yep. Not saying they are all mentally ill but it has been studied that there are traits in the brain that are shared by many deeply religious people
I personally think this goes a long way in explaining why some percentage of humans without fail have supernatural beliefs pretty much since forever
Anecdotally, one of my therapists (who was a psychiatrist besides a psychologist and university professor) literally asked me one day after years of therapy if I happened to have a brain scan of my dad, who has abjectly failed to develop a lasting healthy relationship with anyone in his life outside of religion (born again Christian ftw), as he said it sounded like he could have a prefrontal cortex injury lol
So this is an odd one. Iām atheist, with depression, ADHD, General Anxiety, and tested likely Level 1 ASDā¦mental health is mental health. Like all science, itās separate from religion.
Edit - I would say the oddity is coincidental, but religion could be a way to cope with itā¦pray the sick away, and all that malarkey.
I think the best movie portrayal of this syndrome is Piper Laurie in the 1976 version of Carrie.
She was absolutely bonkers, and made it all believable.
I actually had a neighbor in Manhattan who was a bit like this. We became friends somewhat because she was Haitin and we spoke Hatian Creole. Long story short, she came over to out apartment and showed my mother her "writings", you know the sort, very small letters written left to right, up and down like notes, you couldn't really read what was written. Several books worth of stuff.
Totally off the deep end.
Yes. I had a brutally abusive childhood but am ok now. I forgave her when I realized that she was a victim of cult indoctrination.
I mostly blame the preachers and the televangelists for spreading this type of misery.
Would you think it strange if someone started telling you about Ra and how he lights up the day and if we don't pay attention to him the sun won't work? If that is weird then so is saying 'god' did anything or can do something. At least the other mythologies have actual good stories unlike the Bible.
I would hazard the the underlying rates of mental health issues are common across religious outlooks, but religions may be major drivers in making some problems worse.
For example, Christian Science adherents can't take vaccines or any modern medicine, so even though their rates of exposure to disease is the same their outcomes are much worse.
JWs cannot take blood transfusions, so even though they might have the same overall rate of exposure to road traffic accidents, their outcomes will be worse.
So assuming a similar underlying rate of certain mental illnesses, any religious worldview that treats them differently may see changes in outcome. Treating them differently may involve denial of evidence based medicine. It may also involve ideological usage of theological "solutions", such as treating the issue as a demon or whatnot. It may even involve denial of access to care because the high control group tries to keep their family away from mandated reporters. Really high control groups are just child abuse encoded by theology, so they generate theological reasons to avoid these situations.
So your overall question might simply be explainable by these kinds of statistical effects.
On the flip side, there may be certain brain states that make one more susceptible to both fervent religion and certain observable mental illness.
When I was in med school and studying the DSM for my psych rotations a lot of the diagnostic criteria were something like "blah blah blah, unless it is part of a popular religion." There were exceptions written into the criteria to make sure that mainstream religions didn't get lumped in with the *other* crazy people, which I always thought was funny. Schizophrenics often get pretty religious as their disorder kicks in.
I'm not one to say that religion is a mental disorder. But the nature of religious belief makes religion the perfect hiding place for those who are detached from reality due to mental illness.
Iāve been spending time on the aliens sub and thereās some evangelical believers on there, Iāve found out several times recently Iām a government disinformation agent, which sucks because that should be a paid job! Honestly go on there and think how did Scientology get started, it wonāt take long to find the answer.
Totally. Itās just a coping mechanism to deal with being a human. Still very much a mental health problem but ultimately itās sooooo much copium.
Think about it, if you continue to believe you think those that are horrible in this life get their just response in the afterlife AND you get to see your loved ones again after death. Those two things alone are very persuasive. Itās completely nuts but persuasive nonetheless.
As stated in previous responses. Some people seem to need to believe in a higher power. It allows them to blame/ credit that deity with things they have trouble comprehending. It requires less thought processes to simply put it on their God.
I think what really hit me recently is that āShow it to me Rachel!!ā video. Older folks - a lot of them baby boomers - who operate pretty normal lives harbor the most sincerely held delusional religious beliefs. The way that woman in the video is so quick to accept that āJesus was literally scene in Ohioā and starts to break down is terrifying. Complete lack of critical thinking or questioning and an immediate gullibility for a joke. And yet these people walk around, vote, shop, teach your children at public schools, work normal jobs. Itās crazy to me.
For the majority of people, religion is cultural and an identity marker. For the hardcore believers, it functions like an addiction or mental illness, or a coping mechanism for either, sometimes both.
I've been on quite the journey since leaving my religion of 30 years. It's taken 10 years of therapy since to try and deconstruct everything I needed to unlearn. That process really showed me how much of my internal experience was infiltrated by religious ideology. I did not inherently believe that I deserved love, and that allowed a lot of really bad people to use me in ways that were not good for me.
I now so firmly believe that we are nothing but animals, and that what we consume and put into our minds greatly influences our perceptions. Most religious people believe that they're impervious to deceit because their god is watching over them. All while they have the wool pulled straight over their eyes.
If we don't do something about this, eventually I worry it will destroy us.
I have noticed that religion and some type of mental illness seem to be common bedfellows. I've also observed that along with mental illness, MAJOR TRAUMA of any kind is also a shared experience of the religious. A horrendous divorce, abandonment, abuse, etc all seem to be the catalyst for some people to fall into religion as a coping mechanism or some way of giving meaning to what happened. Rather than face the truth that things happen randomly and there's no reward for all your suffering...
It has been suggested that witches were accused of being witches because many women baked the bread and lysergic acid occurs naturally in a fungus that grows on wheat and rye. They weren't witches, but instead could have been just trippin'.
Evanagelical christianity is a branch that is generally rooted in the USA, The National Institute of Health estimates that over 170 million Americans alive today were exposed to high-lead levels in the childhood.
Lead poisoning is one reason for this.
This is misinformation.
DSM -IV included information on āreligious or spiritual problemsā which were for distressing experiences related to a loss or a questioning of faith.
https://img3.reoveme.com/m/2ab8dabd068b16a5.pdf
To be clear this is not the most updated DSM. I would not waste your time reading it unless you particularly want to.
The latest DSM V would provide more relevant information for you. That being said itās probably not worth a read either. Better just as a reference material if you have a particular question.
I think we should not conflate religion with mental illnesses, as tempting as it is...
Mental illnesses are pathological, religion is a collection of learned behaviours.
That being said, I think it is fair to state that high levels of religiousity can masquerade as mental illness as well as cause or exacerbate mental illnesses.
For example, a member of the lbgtq community growing up in evangelical christianity, living every day with the knowledge that their own religion that they're devoted to condemns them as an abomination.
I met one on the bus last week. I made it abundantly clear I wasn't in her gang when she tried it on . From our conversation she struck me as emotionally vulnerable and , lacking critical skills - perfect for the cults.
I donāt think being a part of a religion means someone has a mental disorder but the stress and cognitive dissonance some groups place on their members would definitely cause some stuff to emerge. Especially in high control BITE model cults that create high levels of stress often in people who were already emotionally vulnerable in some way. As a personal aside I do think when I was younger and Catholic it did contribute a lot to anxiety and many religions worsen anxiety or depression by demonizing mental illness of any sort. Saying things like āif you had faith you wouldnāt be anxious, youāre anxious because you donāt love god enough, which makes this your fault and youāre a bad person.ā That kind of stuff doesnāt help anyone and isolates people who are suffering.
Also itās common in people with delusions to fixate on religion or religious delusions but it feels a bit like āchicken or egg?ā Kind of scenario with some of them. Iām sure if a few the folks Iāve met with full blown delusions *didnāt* think they saw angels or demons or hear god speaking to them they would simply claim their delusions to be caused by aliens or government spies instead.
My anxiety began in childhood with a fear of hell. Maybe I would've found something else to be anxious about had it not been for that, but I'm having a hard time coming up with what that could've been. I was super devout and I think the anxiety was at least 50% of the reason for my devotion. I'd venture a guess that a majority of the most dedicated Christians, even the ones that otherwise seem sane, are in a similar boat.
Just garden variety bipolar with psychotic features, itās really super common but lots of people are stigmatized about treating mental health issues.
Can one develop a mental disorder from being raised w religion? Ig you can develop it through trauma so in some cases it does make sense ie maybe you could develop anxiety from fear of hell/the fact that ājudgement dayā could come at any time and any moment or maybe OCD from all the rules about every single detail of your life in Islam ie which foot to step in and out of the bathroom w or only using your right hand to eat or write even if youāre left handed or ambidextrous or trying to finish your drink in 3 gulps and the entire wudhu and salah/zikr rituals now that I think about it
I donāt know if Iād say itās the case for all religious people or even majority as mental illness exists outside of religion but I wouldnāt be surprised if it were a factor either way ie developing something *because* of the religion or following a religion *because* youāre depressed or sth
Ig it also depends on how you look at it though bc when youāre told something enough times, you start to believe it even if you know logically itās not true or doesnāt make sense or rather, you stop thinking itās not true/doesnāt make sense at a certain point bc youāre hearing it so often which ig you could argue is similar to gaslighting but at the same time, as others in the comments have said, itās kind of like believing in Santa Claus as a grown adult and basing your whole life on it which most people (religious or otherwise) would argue is clearly mentally ill in some way so it does make me wonder about why cognitive dissonance is a thingĀ
This mental disorder you speak of is called being a CANCERvative. It affects people who are easily manipulated by someone with a microphone. Whether itās a priest, politician or pundit they hang on to every word as if itās spoken to them directly from their deity.
Think of it the other way - believing in something with zero evidence is a mental illness, that someone who has this mental illness might have others is inevitable.
If psychology was more objective, specifically if the commonality of a characteristic didn't prevent it from being considered a disorder, then all religious belief (along with all other significant failure to transcend primitive cognition) would be considered a disorder.
Abrahamic religions are identical to narcissistic abuse; humans are in an abusive relationship with sky daddy, and sky daddy is in an abusive relationship with humans; they have CPTSD.
I went to church when I was younger and noticed people would fall into two categories, their faith was a result of having parents who were religious or they were previously a drug addict/alcoholic who found Jesus during recovery.Ā
This explains A LOT.
This literally proves right the "every accusation is a confession" quote that runs around my internet circles.
These people love to say we LGBTQs are mentally ill and disregard everything we say based on that, but it seems to be the complete opposite. Doesn't it?
Kind of related, but I was watching a documentary the other day that said anxiety and antidepressants were prescribed a lot for JWs. So, the super rigid cult-like life is really hard on people which isnāt surprising.
In my experience, no. The few religious folks I spend time around are pretty stable.but this is just anecdotal. Things could be worse depending on how important religion is in your state/region/country.
I knew a whole family of fundies, all of whom had deep mental issues. In their case, I think it may have been partially attributable to lead. They had a knack for picking the worst houses to live in, in the worst and oldest parts of town. They allowed their young to eat paint off the walls, saying "They're perfectly healthy in jesus name."
2 or 3rd generation children of religious families can experience trauma & other mental health problems-
Itās so abusive as they have a religious belief system & culture forced upon them as āfactā from birth.
If the children/ young people have doubts or questions they can be punished and given scripture regarding blind faithā¦. Being indoctrinated to never challenge the religion of their family-
Many of these children can grow up as people pleasers- leading to further abuse throughout their lives, be unable to critically think or if they do challenge the religion of their family they may get shunned, shamed or have no support systems.
Of course all of this religious abuse can lead to stress, depression, trauma ALL as a result of high control religion when these people didnāt even choose this.
The ones that canāt say more than 4 or 5 sentences without mentioning Jesus seem to have OCD or some other mental disorder. I think that some people use religion to cope with or avoid some trauma. Itās kind of like a drug at that point.
Yes many religions harbor mentally ill among others, it's feature not a bug.
After spending the first 18 years of life in the indoctrination of Christianity I will say that religion and church "helps" a lot of people who tend to fall outside the norm of society, the edge cases, the not interesting enough to be unique just trying to get by, the "I need to believe in something because I just can't believe the life I've been given" type. People with mental health issues are brought into the fold and religion gives them a path to follow that does truly provide structure and social acceptance that can be hard to find outside of a religious setting. This will have a positive impact on that persons life and it will reinforce their feelings of a correctness in their beliefs.
This spans beyond mental disorder , but it definitely provides them with safe harbor. A means to say this life isn't my fault, it's "demons and Satan" and "if I just go to church and do this good thing..." then it helps them cope. It's the "opiate of the masses". And as those same people get further into the religion and "find their people" they become emboldened with a feeling of tribalism. So yes, you end up with People who would otherwise fall somewhere outside of the normal social spectrum absorbed deeply and often loudly into their beliefs.
I think it might be more accurate to classify it as a quirk of their religion. Like guys that wear camo and drive big trucks often come across as proudly dumb and ignorant, or cheerleaders like to have overly emotive reactions, or new college students love talking about basic topics that are common knowledge as if they were just discovered.
Religious folk hang out at religious functions and internalize weird religious behavior that gets ingrained onto parts of their personality and that just comes across as speshul to the non religious.
I don't know because while I feel many are older and a bit naive, it feels like the majority of people I know are atheist and have mental abnormalities. I think mental health trouble is just really widespread and maybe where you are so is religion.
i had severe anxiety and experienced panic attacks when i was a semi practising muslim, i always used to panic at the thought of eternal life in heaven or hell idk why it just used to scare me. now that i have accepted i do not need the answers for everything i am so much happier with life and i have learnt to live it no matter what. i still suffer with anxiety and panic attacks but its so much less frequent after moving away from religion, so yeah i get what you are saying
I don't think religion itself is a mental disorder/illness. It's what people decide to do with it.
If you're working at a food pantry because your brain chemicals say that God told you to do it, whatever.
It's when your religion starts negatively impacting you and the people around you it becomes a concern.
Examples:
Screaming that you're being persecuted every time you're told the law applies to you
Ripping out literally everything that brings you joy in life for fear of it being "worldly"
Saying that life is bad and you'll be raptured away any day now (suicidal ideation)
Oh, absolutely. And I mean, I really respect the mental health conditions and I';m empathetic to them, including at my work and day-to-day life.
But still I see the "most believing" people are ALWAYS on the further end of the "crazy" scale.
Very bipolar. Untreated ADHD. Paranoid (very common). Schizophrenics too (also documented by the way on that one). I can't remember the name of the mental disorder but when you are trusting against all odds? I think delusional is the normal term but there is a clinical term.
Anyway, the "hard believers" I met where on that scale. The normal ones, who keep to themselves, not so much.
I guess Iām genetically atheist all the way down, because when I saw God (on a ton of psychedelics), they turned out to be merely āevery extant consciousness, superimposed.ā Was pretty intense, but they didnāt give me any commandments or anything.
No. Not at all. What the hell kind of question is that? Have you noticed people who believe differently than us seem to have a mental disorder?
Also, mental disorders are a real thing, and they donāt discriminate.
I can see where your coming from but I go to a Christian school as a agnostic and lots of Christians there aren't disturbed just spoiled rich kids believing anything that is told to them
Religion relies on the acceptance and promotion of fantasies that are interpreted for pragmatic goals. Anyone who is prone to delusions, hallucinations or any other extreme distortions of reality will find themselves drawn to religion as a safe space for their mental disorders because faith and delusion are similar in their use of fantasies, so it's easy to hide in. Throw in a liberal tolerance for religious interpretation and how would anyone tell the difference for mild cases of mental illness?
Yes. To believe in a magic man in the sky controlling everything who sends you to a fire dimension when you die, youād have to be delusional and or mentally ill. OR this person has their wits about them enough to realize that they can use religion to abuse and control others in their life.
People are still saying this? Are we still saying āreligion is a mental illnessā? I hate religion, especially Christianity, because I was a victim of the shit that one can do to a person. So, when I reconverted and became atheist, I was instantly cured? Is that it?
Itās a lot like smoking cigarettes. You may get lung cancer or some other kind of illness, but because you smoke, that doesnāt by default (or definition) mean you absolutely will get something. It can be a means or path to mental illness, but itās not itself a mental illness. I donāt like most of what religion is, but I push back on the idea that anyone and everyone who is religious is by default a nut job, and believing so makes us just as bad as the hateful theists.
Well, Iām glad at least one other person agrees. Iām just disappointed that itās not a more prevalent view. We love to tout ourselves as rational because weāre atheists, so youād think weād be more likely to think that way, but weāre still susceptible to tribalistic tendencies all the same.
As someone who used to work with people with severe mental health problems I can confirm that religious groups regularly recruit these people. Getting any convert through the door, regardless of how insane they are, is seen as a victory by evangelicals.
Obviously there's not a lot of competition as these people tend to be rejected anywhere else they go to be around others. They're very vulnerable and very easily manipulated.
Also take into account that the women in most religions have been taught to be child like and the men are just told to be the hear of the house and make money. Most of them lack education, so this really adds to the fact that most of them go untreated. When I was in the church (questioned God the moment I could talk and was told about him) it was very odd seeing people clearly suffering from something using the church as a way to try and "heal' their minds and bodies.
I was in churches regularly for decades and most people seemed fairly normal. Not sure where you're getting this idea?
Usually I was the only weirdo there lol.
not to be too controversial, but I've noticed a lot more mentally ill people in contrarian communities than something as normal as religion. I'm not hating on people for being like that, but mentally ill people tend to be thrown out by churches and find salvation in more secular communities.
And most true believers are prone to violent behavior. But it's the ones who don't accept everything their religion teaches as true that are the ones that will end up killing someoneāusually one of their children or spouse.
Yeah, but I wonder how much of that is to butter up the parole board... Then again, in the US sadly prison takes the role that mental institutions have in other countries, so it could be.
Our prison system actively encourages missionary programs like the Navigators to come into the prisons and indoctrinate inmates - especially those not serving long terms. My father did this for a while, and on one hand, the work he did did provide social support for folks that were likely to reenter society and be recidivists (having a mentor outside of the social circles that led you to get in trouble with the law in the first place is a HUGE help to folks who sincerely want to change), while on the other hand it was social support with religious strings attached, which can be a *huge* problem, especially if the government favors prisoners that are in such programs and there's no secular alternative.
Huh. I guess you live somewhere where religion isn't considered as "ordinary" or something... Where i live, at least 90% of people are christian, probably not because they really wanna believe but because they were raised that way. It's just tradition at this point....
So religion doesn't really have much impact on most people's behaviour.
Although the people that go around "preaching" or are just very vocal about Jesus n stuff in general do usually seem weirder. Especially Jehovah's witnesses and other such groups. Although even that is not always the case..
They are still better than the conspiracy/flat earth/quack medicine crowd in my opinion. Christianity in itself doesn't really teach anything inherently bad, meanwhile these schizos spread often harmful misinformation and brainwash people into joining their "cult"
But lately there seems to be mixing between the two and it honestly worries me...
Christianity in itself teaches many things that are inherently bad. Some "cafeteria Christians" might de-emphasize or ignore those parts, but most of most problematic stuff is not only part of Christianity, but is actively believed by most people who call themselves Christian.
Sure, only "fundamentalists" believe in literal Adam & Eve, though without them, where did Original Sin come from and thus what did Jesus supposedly "save" people from (vigorous hand-waving commences, from those who don't just give you a blank, uncomprehending stare)? Only fundamentalists believe in an actual Noah's Ark, but those fundamentalists represent [the majority of Christians in America](https://ncse.ngo/just-how-many-young-earth-creationists-are-there-us), and around the globe.
And the most problematic doctrines, like eternal torture for those who do not toe the line of the god who is love, are even more popular among Christians. The "Universalists" (believing in universal salvation) were a fringe heretical group even before they merged with the Unitarians and became a church packed with atheists and pagans.
>Christianity in itself teaches many things that are inherently bad. Some "cafeteria Christians" might de-emphasize or ignore those parts, but most of most problematic stuff is not only part of Christianity, but is actively believed by most people who call themselves Christian.
Definitely. However there are many amongst the so called christians who haven't read the old testament entirely, not even the new testament, yet they show an urgent need to be identified as believers, at this point i don't know what believing means for them: i have the feeling it's a trivial behaviour, they need to be part of a limited group of people who consider themselves better than others, so they can legitimately exclude others from their "enclosure", which is exactly what religion means etymologically.
And lets not forget that there are many differences between the old and the new testament, especially in morality, the roots of evil lies mostly in the Pentateuch while the gospels appear sometimes as an attempt to reform the most controversial part of judaism. I'm not saying that christians are better than jewish, historically speaking they are far worse, but when we talk of the abrahamic religions as source of evil we shouldn't forget that there are not only christians
My father is bipolar with psychotic manic episodes. He's always had delusions of grandeur, apocalyptic visions and a fixation with the rapture/end of days. His episodes generally included religious/ extraterrestrial focused hallucinations. I've witnessed religious psychosis and it's horrifying. My father refuses treatment for his mental illness and retreated into religion and conspiracy. I think religious psychosis is more common than our society will ever acknowledge. I believe that religion not only contributes to mental illness, it exacerbates it.
Great response awardš
I had a brother who was schizophrenic. You could have a normal conversation with him, but he was absolutely convinced that he was God's chosen prophet, that he had performed miracles, and that he was regularly caught up to heaven to conference with God and Jesus. His beliefs were very unorthodox, so he didn't exactly fit in with the church crowd. But I do wonder how many schizophrenics with milder symptoms are hiding out in religion.
I think that individuals with similar conditions are primed for religious mania. If you hear voices, and God and Angels are supposed to talk to chosen people, then why wouldn't this be the same. Now, I don't want to over-generalize, but it's all very hand-in-glove here. They just fit so well together that nobody Questions it. If it's mild enough, they may not even notice it and just chalk it up to "religious mania." Kind of sad, really.
This is an old (old) lecture by Dr Robert Sapolsky at Stanford. It is titled the biological underpinnings of religion. It should be mandatory forā¦ well not just this sub but literally everyone imo, atheist or not https://youtu.be/4WwAQqWUkpI?si=yGEufKCh-6pzl2Nz The whole course is available online and is priceless, as he starts from the very basics and builds up to this towards the end of the course I know that itās long but the parts about evolutionarily speaking having the right amount of psychopathic personality traits having fulfilled the religious role in human societies since forever was mindblowing, including the part where they are often genetically linked to evolutionarily necessary traits like specific disease immunity This one is much newer and called āReligion is natureās antidepressantā and is based on the same premises https://youtu.be/oldj11NEsc0?si=YWpzG-aZRTtrbV8v edit: u/SoTiredOfRatRace your post reminded me of something and I finally remembered what it was. Please check out the links above!
Thank you! Will watch
(thank you for posting the link to Dr. Sapolsky's lecture. Fascinating!!!!!)
I have a cousin like this. Sold everything he owned to live as a homeless prophet on the beach. He ended up getting stabbed by other homeless people but went right back to his mission. He ended up in prison for sometime and now heās out. We all had high hopes while he was incarcerated that he would be put on meds to stable him out but instead preached more to him. Now heās out and we donāt think his story is going to have a happy endingā¦
My brother was living in a tent in the woods; but he realized that being institutionalized was a far better life. So he went to a bank and passed the teller a note that he was robbing the bank. He didn't have any weapons, and was arrested on the spot. When he went before the judge, he started talking about being God's prophet and being caught up to heaven to meet Jesus, yadda yadda yadda. The judge immediately institutionalized him as mentally ill.
I'm so sorry, it's so hard to deal with this kind of illness in family. You are not alone
Religion IS mental illness.
Totally agree!
Iāve had a religious psychosis, myself. Can confirm, itās terrifying.
I have a feeling that most of the depression and anxiety my wife had when she was younger has its roots in her religious upbringing.
Absolutely, when I was 10 my dad talked about the end of the world so much, I developed an ulcer due to the anxiety it caused. I had to beg my mom to make him stop. He went on medication for a few years and had some stability but it didn't last. I definitely have trauma and anxiety due to his manic episodes.
I have a fairly new friend who I knew is bipolar and is officially disabled due to his mental health issues. Heās currently in the throes of a pretty intense manic episode and even spent four days in voluntary inpatient care last week. I have other friends with BPD, but their disorder was far milder than this, so while Iām aware that these serious psychotic manic episodes exist, this is my first time seeing the more extreme end of his BPD. Itās notable how much he has driven into religion. His social media videos, which were mostly about smoking weed tbh, are now things like him wandering in cemeteries talking about Jesus and Christianity. Heād definitely tell you he is religious during times of stability, but doesnāt attend church or talk about religion unprompted otherwise. Itās quite the difference.Ā
There really is a difference when psychosis is involved, it's really shocking the contrast.
I bet that old saints, fanatics, enlightened, etc. Were bipolar.
I couldn't agree more with your last paragraph.
Exactly.
A friend from university had the same issues with her mother, with the added issue of her mother being abused/taken advantage of by charismatic 'religious' leaders. When we were in university, she'd sometimes disappear for 5 to 10 days because her mother had been jailed and/or hospitalized for strange behaviour, and she needed to get her back on meds and settled back at home before coming back to school.
All that cognitive dissonance is going to leave a mark.
I would argue believing in some personal deity in itself is a mental disorder.
Exactly this. It's like believing in Santa Claus at 25 and revolving your life around that belief.
Santa claus is real! How dare you insinuate otherwise! I'll include you in my next letter to him. Perhaps he will forgive you and take you off his naughty list. Then you will receive the most bountiful gifts, but if you don't believe, you will be roasted with the chestnuts! As stated in Nicholas 12:25
Santa Claus IS real. My checking account every Christmas until I decided I was sick of Santa getting credit proved it.
Prove to me that Santa doesn't exist! I know in my heart he is there. When i was 8, I was having a rough time, but then I tried to be good instead of naughty and then when Christmas came, I got that game system I always wanted. There is no way my parents got it for me because I never told them about it (except they saw me excited when the commercials were on, and I told my friends, and they heard me talk about wanting it)...so you see, Santa is totally real because I have a personal witness of him. /s
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Some religious people are vehemently against allowing children to believe in Santa - because when kids get old enough to realize Santa is fictional they might come to realize the same about God.
My invisible friend is Jesus. His daddy created the Universe but he and his son are the most humble supernatural beings. They're so shy that they just can't come forward to reveal themselves.
Just like unicorns.
I get the inclination to see it that way. Many of the beliefs PRESENT AS certain mental disorders (I.e. if you looked up the disorder in the DSM, you could convince yourself a religious person was suffering from the disorder). However, if you actually interact with someone with an actual, untreated disorder, the difference is quite apparent. That said, I believe there are data suggesting that religious people have a greater incidence of mental illness relative to the general population, likely suggesting that people with mental illness disorders are drawn to religion.
It was only a question of whether it is a mental disorder and not how severe it is. If you replace God in Christianity with aliens, no one would think of not considering it a mental disorder. The difference between a religion and a mental disorder is only the number of people affected by it.
It's literally care in the community.
The human brain is like a computer; you put garbage in and you will get garbage out. It doesn't mean the computer is broken; it just means you're working with a bad data set. That said, I do think religion is a natural hiding place for mentally ill people.
A series of gigantic shared delusions.
I'd say a solid 50 percent of what we call society is just shared delusions.
"Imagined Communities" by Benedict Anderson talks about this concept when tracing the birth of nationalism worldwide.
The question then is which drove the other? Was it the mental disease that drove their belief in a Sky Daddy? Or did their belief drive some type of mental disorder as they began to realize that the world in their book of myths doesn't align with the reality they live in and thus develop a psychosis to continue existing in their fantasy land?
Itās definitely the former. Mental illness can affect children and people raised without religion, and result in them seeking out religion and the supernatural. If everyone who experienced cognitive dissonance in regards to religion developed psychosis or other mental health disorders, church would be a deeply different experience than most dominationsā quiet hour of listening to a dude talk between musical performances.Ā
Take it one step further and belief without proof in anything is a mental disorder.
In the information age it takes a lot more work to believe this stuff than it used to. One wrong click and you can be assaulted by facts and science.
A M E N ( lol ) great answer
Believing 1 or more of 2500+ invented gods is/are real and watch and judge everyone all time is a mental illness. And we should treat it as just that, it is not normal nor sane to live your life according to XXXX yrs old rules AND bother other people with that nonsense, all because a "god" will be offended if you don't do what he expects. It's mental and we should start it as what it is: a mental illness.
Great point. My one comment is that I do not much care how they live their lives according to thousand of years old rules. What I care about is that they want the rest of us who don't believe to believe, and to follow their rules and their rules only. That's the biggest issue for me.
Yes, also, they indoctrinate their children into their cults.
Awesome response absolutely awesome š
I suspect that many "believers" don't really believe in that stupid concepts that their religions command them to believe, because to believe them you should be very very stupid or totally insane, in any case you couldn't be a "functional" person in our society. Instead they are quite intelligent for anything else which is not religion, and usually cultured and educated people. I think they are pathological liars: they pretend to believe to feel better and superior to those "who have no faith", "don't believe in anything" and of course "have no morality". Then there are also those who truly believe and yes, they have mental disorders which are clearly visible even at first glance. Anyway i hope one day pathological liars will be considerate as they actually are: sociopaths. That day being a believer will be finally considered a symptom of mental disorders, not a crime by itself (unless you kill people in the name of your faith) but an alarming signal. Imagine you see someone talking loudly to themselves in the middle of the street: you should call the nurses because he needs help; i have the same feelings when i hear people praying or quoting the bible.
Agreed. 100%
They dont appear capable of of analysing their own thinking. āSecond thoughtsā, is quite hard for people who cannot access higher cortical functions. Hereās some science about that https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/your-brain-food/202205/the-brains-believers-and-non-believers-work-differently
Thank you for the read !
thank you for sharing that.
I regard all believers as being united by their devastating cognitive disability.
This is true. My mom has serious issues one of them being religion. Its made her into an abusive paranoid racist homophobe who thinks everyones against her. She needs treatment as she is a danger to those around her. Shes also built a shrine like place to her alcoholic dead dad.
Iām so sorry. Youāre not alone, not that it makes you feel better. I grew up in a very violent household and had a father who is to this day a ā religious nut ā
Im sorry š¢ yea its no fun specially since im a metalhead.Ā
We are all metal heads deep inside lol most may not admit it.
Dude fuck yes so true
Yeah. I hesitate to say that, because I'm not trying to insult anyone, but I've noticed it too. I've wondered if a desire to be religious comes from a person's anxieties in other areas of their life. Like they're drawn to it since it offers a solution to all life's problems. Whether the solution is real or not, doesn't matter to them.
Greatest response award. Bingo and bullseye šÆ wow great answer ! Thank you.
Sadly I think a lot of organized religion, particularly evangelical megachurch types, tend to be really effective at drawing on mentally vulnerable people. Because symptoms of disorders like schizophrenia (I.e. delusions, paranoia) can often be masked under the guise of religious beliefs and strong faith, and because they are more susceptible to the predatory, profit making grifts a lot of these "pastors" and cult leaders apply.
Yet another amazing point. Thank you. š
Yep. Not saying they are all mentally ill but it has been studied that there are traits in the brain that are shared by many deeply religious people I personally think this goes a long way in explaining why some percentage of humans without fail have supernatural beliefs pretty much since forever Anecdotally, one of my therapists (who was a psychiatrist besides a psychologist and university professor) literally asked me one day after years of therapy if I happened to have a brain scan of my dad, who has abjectly failed to develop a lasting healthy relationship with anyone in his life outside of religion (born again Christian ftw), as he said it sounded like he could have a prefrontal cortex injury lol
I love this response. Thank you.
Hey, donāt mention it Mi *childhood trauma* es su *random reddit answer* lol
So this is an odd one. Iām atheist, with depression, ADHD, General Anxiety, and tested likely Level 1 ASDā¦mental health is mental health. Like all science, itās separate from religion. Edit - I would say the oddity is coincidental, but religion could be a way to cope with itā¦pray the sick away, and all that malarkey.
Thatās very interesting and makes you think. Great answer
Yup, because religion rots the brain.
And how ! ( damn I showed my age š) lol
I think the best movie portrayal of this syndrome is Piper Laurie in the 1976 version of Carrie. She was absolutely bonkers, and made it all believable.
These people really do exist and many can be found in the Appalachian mountains
I actually had a neighbor in Manhattan who was a bit like this. We became friends somewhat because she was Haitin and we spoke Hatian Creole. Long story short, she came over to out apartment and showed my mother her "writings", you know the sort, very small letters written left to right, up and down like notes, you couldn't really read what was written. Several books worth of stuff. Totally off the deep end.
That movie gave me flashbacks. Piper did such a great job. She reminded me of my own overbearing mother who was obsessed with religion.
Good grief. I hope you are OK now!
Yes. I had a brutally abusive childhood but am ok now. I forgave her when I realized that she was a victim of cult indoctrination. I mostly blame the preachers and the televangelists for spreading this type of misery.
Would you think it strange if someone started telling you about Ra and how he lights up the day and if we don't pay attention to him the sun won't work? If that is weird then so is saying 'god' did anything or can do something. At least the other mythologies have actual good stories unlike the Bible.
Damn good point lol
I would hazard the the underlying rates of mental health issues are common across religious outlooks, but religions may be major drivers in making some problems worse. For example, Christian Science adherents can't take vaccines or any modern medicine, so even though their rates of exposure to disease is the same their outcomes are much worse. JWs cannot take blood transfusions, so even though they might have the same overall rate of exposure to road traffic accidents, their outcomes will be worse. So assuming a similar underlying rate of certain mental illnesses, any religious worldview that treats them differently may see changes in outcome. Treating them differently may involve denial of evidence based medicine. It may also involve ideological usage of theological "solutions", such as treating the issue as a demon or whatnot. It may even involve denial of access to care because the high control group tries to keep their family away from mandated reporters. Really high control groups are just child abuse encoded by theology, so they generate theological reasons to avoid these situations. So your overall question might simply be explainable by these kinds of statistical effects. On the flip side, there may be certain brain states that make one more susceptible to both fervent religion and certain observable mental illness.
When I was in med school and studying the DSM for my psych rotations a lot of the diagnostic criteria were something like "blah blah blah, unless it is part of a popular religion." There were exceptions written into the criteria to make sure that mainstream religions didn't get lumped in with the *other* crazy people, which I always thought was funny. Schizophrenics often get pretty religious as their disorder kicks in.
I think we had some of the same classes lol
My opinion is that religiosity in and of it's self is a mental disorder albeit a reasonably common one.
Besides the belief in the supernatural, no. I havenāt noticed that. At least not so far off from the general craziness that exists out there.
There was a study a while back that showed strict rigid thinking like super religious people do causes actual brain damage over time
There is proof for this. Itās also somewhat simple to understand in my opinion.
Delusion is a key component of faith, after all.
Very true.
I'm not one to say that religion is a mental disorder. But the nature of religious belief makes religion the perfect hiding place for those who are detached from reality due to mental illness.
Agree 100%
Don't you have to have a lose screw somewhere if you are party of a religious cult?
Of course they do: all religious people have at least one imaginary friend.
Yes.
Iāve been spending time on the aliens sub and thereās some evangelical believers on there, Iāve found out several times recently Iām a government disinformation agent, which sucks because that should be a paid job! Honestly go on there and think how did Scientology get started, it wonāt take long to find the answer.
Totally. Itās just a coping mechanism to deal with being a human. Still very much a mental health problem but ultimately itās sooooo much copium. Think about it, if you continue to believe you think those that are horrible in this life get their just response in the afterlife AND you get to see your loved ones again after death. Those two things alone are very persuasive. Itās completely nuts but persuasive nonetheless.
Extreme thought provocation Iām loving this response like seriously
As stated in previous responses. Some people seem to need to believe in a higher power. It allows them to blame/ credit that deity with things they have trouble comprehending. It requires less thought processes to simply put it on their God.
I absolutely love this group. Sooooo many intelligent people making absolutely amazing points like this one.
I think what really hit me recently is that āShow it to me Rachel!!ā video. Older folks - a lot of them baby boomers - who operate pretty normal lives harbor the most sincerely held delusional religious beliefs. The way that woman in the video is so quick to accept that āJesus was literally scene in Ohioā and starts to break down is terrifying. Complete lack of critical thinking or questioning and an immediate gullibility for a joke. And yet these people walk around, vote, shop, teach your children at public schools, work normal jobs. Itās crazy to me.
Something called religious OCD is starting to get discussed more. So if itās not BPD, Bipolar etc etc the catch all is going to be religious OCD.
For the majority of people, religion is cultural and an identity marker. For the hardcore believers, it functions like an addiction or mental illness, or a coping mechanism for either, sometimes both.
I've been on quite the journey since leaving my religion of 30 years. It's taken 10 years of therapy since to try and deconstruct everything I needed to unlearn. That process really showed me how much of my internal experience was infiltrated by religious ideology. I did not inherently believe that I deserved love, and that allowed a lot of really bad people to use me in ways that were not good for me. I now so firmly believe that we are nothing but animals, and that what we consume and put into our minds greatly influences our perceptions. Most religious people believe that they're impervious to deceit because their god is watching over them. All while they have the wool pulled straight over their eyes. If we don't do something about this, eventually I worry it will destroy us.
Careful of both confirmation bias and selection bias.
This should be waaay higher in the thread
I have noticed that religion and some type of mental illness seem to be common bedfellows. I've also observed that along with mental illness, MAJOR TRAUMA of any kind is also a shared experience of the religious. A horrendous divorce, abandonment, abuse, etc all seem to be the catalyst for some people to fall into religion as a coping mechanism or some way of giving meaning to what happened. Rather than face the truth that things happen randomly and there's no reward for all your suffering...
My sister and two brothers fell into that trap from childhood abuse.
It has been suggested that witches were accused of being witches because many women baked the bread and lysergic acid occurs naturally in a fungus that grows on wheat and rye. They weren't witches, but instead could have been just trippin'. Evanagelical christianity is a branch that is generally rooted in the USA, The National Institute of Health estimates that over 170 million Americans alive today were exposed to high-lead levels in the childhood. Lead poisoning is one reason for this.
Youāre not wrong; low IQ and mental issues make you more likely to fall for indoctrination.
My mother is bipolar And a cult hopper.Ā
Yes, adults with imaginary friends do tend to have mental disorders.
Cults and religions are two sides of the same coin.
The DSM said so until political pressure quashed it.
Are you serious ? I didnāt know that wow !
This is misinformation. DSM -IV included information on āreligious or spiritual problemsā which were for distressing experiences related to a loss or a questioning of faith. https://img3.reoveme.com/m/2ab8dabd068b16a5.pdf
More great reading ! Thank you.
To be clear this is not the most updated DSM. I would not waste your time reading it unless you particularly want to. The latest DSM V would provide more relevant information for you. That being said itās probably not worth a read either. Better just as a reference material if you have a particular question.
Yes. It is true
I think we should not conflate religion with mental illnesses, as tempting as it is... Mental illnesses are pathological, religion is a collection of learned behaviours. That being said, I think it is fair to state that high levels of religiousity can masquerade as mental illness as well as cause or exacerbate mental illnesses. For example, a member of the lbgtq community growing up in evangelical christianity, living every day with the knowledge that their own religion that they're devoted to condemns them as an abomination.
Belief in imaginary friends past age of 5 is always a sign of mental illness
I met one on the bus last week. I made it abundantly clear I wasn't in her gang when she tried it on . From our conversation she struck me as emotionally vulnerable and , lacking critical skills - perfect for the cults.
Cognitive dissonance
Idk where you live but in the Southeast thereās a lot of believers of course. Most Ik look and act normal. I could just be used to it.
I live on the road. I travel America šŗšø with my doggo.
No.
Not sure it's fair to call stupidity a disorder
I donāt think being a part of a religion means someone has a mental disorder but the stress and cognitive dissonance some groups place on their members would definitely cause some stuff to emerge. Especially in high control BITE model cults that create high levels of stress often in people who were already emotionally vulnerable in some way. As a personal aside I do think when I was younger and Catholic it did contribute a lot to anxiety and many religions worsen anxiety or depression by demonizing mental illness of any sort. Saying things like āif you had faith you wouldnāt be anxious, youāre anxious because you donāt love god enough, which makes this your fault and youāre a bad person.ā That kind of stuff doesnāt help anyone and isolates people who are suffering. Also itās common in people with delusions to fixate on religion or religious delusions but it feels a bit like āchicken or egg?ā Kind of scenario with some of them. Iām sure if a few the folks Iāve met with full blown delusions *didnāt* think they saw angels or demons or hear god speaking to them they would simply claim their delusions to be caused by aliens or government spies instead.
Great points seriously
My anxiety began in childhood with a fear of hell. Maybe I would've found something else to be anxious about had it not been for that, but I'm having a hard time coming up with what that could've been. I was super devout and I think the anxiety was at least 50% of the reason for my devotion. I'd venture a guess that a majority of the most dedicated Christians, even the ones that otherwise seem sane, are in a similar boat.
Just garden variety bipolar with psychotic features, itās really super common but lots of people are stigmatized about treating mental health issues.
Can one develop a mental disorder from being raised w religion? Ig you can develop it through trauma so in some cases it does make sense ie maybe you could develop anxiety from fear of hell/the fact that ājudgement dayā could come at any time and any moment or maybe OCD from all the rules about every single detail of your life in Islam ie which foot to step in and out of the bathroom w or only using your right hand to eat or write even if youāre left handed or ambidextrous or trying to finish your drink in 3 gulps and the entire wudhu and salah/zikr rituals now that I think about it I donāt know if Iād say itās the case for all religious people or even majority as mental illness exists outside of religion but I wouldnāt be surprised if it were a factor either way ie developing something *because* of the religion or following a religion *because* youāre depressed or sth Ig it also depends on how you look at it though bc when youāre told something enough times, you start to believe it even if you know logically itās not true or doesnāt make sense or rather, you stop thinking itās not true/doesnāt make sense at a certain point bc youāre hearing it so often which ig you could argue is similar to gaslighting but at the same time, as others in the comments have said, itās kind of like believing in Santa Claus as a grown adult and basing your whole life on it which most people (religious or otherwise) would argue is clearly mentally ill in some way so it does make me wonder about why cognitive dissonance is a thingĀ
Extremely well written
Thank you!
Sounds like an unscientific statement.
I theorize that Religious OCD is far more common than itās diagnosed
This mental disorder you speak of is called being a CANCERvative. It affects people who are easily manipulated by someone with a microphone. Whether itās a priest, politician or pundit they hang on to every word as if itās spoken to them directly from their deity.
Think of it the other way - believing in something with zero evidence is a mental illness, that someone who has this mental illness might have others is inevitable.
If psychology was more objective, specifically if the commonality of a characteristic didn't prevent it from being considered a disorder, then all religious belief (along with all other significant failure to transcend primitive cognition) would be considered a disorder.
Mentally ill people are easy to manipulate
Abrahamic religions are identical to narcissistic abuse; humans are in an abusive relationship with sky daddy, and sky daddy is in an abusive relationship with humans; they have CPTSD.
Belief in literal magic and a willingness to depend upon it should read as delusional behavior, period.
I went to church when I was younger and noticed people would fall into two categories, their faith was a result of having parents who were religious or they were previously a drug addict/alcoholic who found Jesus during recovery.Ā
Agree with that completely
This explains A LOT. This literally proves right the "every accusation is a confession" quote that runs around my internet circles. These people love to say we LGBTQs are mentally ill and disregard everything we say based on that, but it seems to be the complete opposite. Doesn't it?
It does
Religion IS a mental illness.
Kind of related, but I was watching a documentary the other day that said anxiety and antidepressants were prescribed a lot for JWs. So, the super rigid cult-like life is really hard on people which isnāt surprising.
In my experience, no. The few religious folks I spend time around are pretty stable.but this is just anecdotal. Things could be worse depending on how important religion is in your state/region/country.
I knew a whole family of fundies, all of whom had deep mental issues. In their case, I think it may have been partially attributable to lead. They had a knack for picking the worst houses to live in, in the worst and oldest parts of town. They allowed their young to eat paint off the walls, saying "They're perfectly healthy in jesus name."
2 or 3rd generation children of religious families can experience trauma & other mental health problems- Itās so abusive as they have a religious belief system & culture forced upon them as āfactā from birth. If the children/ young people have doubts or questions they can be punished and given scripture regarding blind faithā¦. Being indoctrinated to never challenge the religion of their family- Many of these children can grow up as people pleasers- leading to further abuse throughout their lives, be unable to critically think or if they do challenge the religion of their family they may get shunned, shamed or have no support systems. Of course all of this religious abuse can lead to stress, depression, trauma ALL as a result of high control religion when these people didnāt even choose this.
No, Iāve not really seen a higher proportion in the congregation I used to attend as a child, not the one I stepped away from as an adult.
I was only a child at the time, but when my mother became obsessed with a religious cult I knew she had lost her mind.
My mom too. Iām sorry.
Yeah, and some atheists also...
Seem?
As someone dealing with mental illness, this is not cool. At all.
The ones that canāt say more than 4 or 5 sentences without mentioning Jesus seem to have OCD or some other mental disorder. I think that some people use religion to cope with or avoid some trauma. Itās kind of like a drug at that point.
I have PTSD, ADD, and more. I have mental disorders, and I am not religious.
I have CPTSD and ADHD with hyper focus and high IQ. Iām a nerd. Youāre not alone.
Yes many religions harbor mentally ill among others, it's feature not a bug. After spending the first 18 years of life in the indoctrination of Christianity I will say that religion and church "helps" a lot of people who tend to fall outside the norm of society, the edge cases, the not interesting enough to be unique just trying to get by, the "I need to believe in something because I just can't believe the life I've been given" type. People with mental health issues are brought into the fold and religion gives them a path to follow that does truly provide structure and social acceptance that can be hard to find outside of a religious setting. This will have a positive impact on that persons life and it will reinforce their feelings of a correctness in their beliefs. This spans beyond mental disorder , but it definitely provides them with safe harbor. A means to say this life isn't my fault, it's "demons and Satan" and "if I just go to church and do this good thing..." then it helps them cope. It's the "opiate of the masses". And as those same people get further into the religion and "find their people" they become emboldened with a feeling of tribalism. So yes, you end up with People who would otherwise fall somewhere outside of the normal social spectrum absorbed deeply and often loudly into their beliefs.
Damn you need to write a book. Iām serious.
And take drugs for it.
I think it might be more accurate to classify it as a quirk of their religion. Like guys that wear camo and drive big trucks often come across as proudly dumb and ignorant, or cheerleaders like to have overly emotive reactions, or new college students love talking about basic topics that are common knowledge as if they were just discovered. Religious folk hang out at religious functions and internalize weird religious behavior that gets ingrained onto parts of their personality and that just comes across as speshul to the non religious.
i think a lot of em are schizophrenic and they see or hear "God".
I thought they all did
I don't know because while I feel many are older and a bit naive, it feels like the majority of people I know are atheist and have mental abnormalities. I think mental health trouble is just really widespread and maybe where you are so is religion.
Good point.
i had severe anxiety and experienced panic attacks when i was a semi practising muslim, i always used to panic at the thought of eternal life in heaven or hell idk why it just used to scare me. now that i have accepted i do not need the answers for everything i am so much happier with life and i have learnt to live it no matter what. i still suffer with anxiety and panic attacks but its so much less frequent after moving away from religion, so yeah i get what you are saying
It's kind of a defining characteristic.
I don't think religion itself is a mental disorder/illness. It's what people decide to do with it. If you're working at a food pantry because your brain chemicals say that God told you to do it, whatever. It's when your religion starts negatively impacting you and the people around you it becomes a concern. Examples: Screaming that you're being persecuted every time you're told the law applies to you Ripping out literally everything that brings you joy in life for fear of it being "worldly" Saying that life is bad and you'll be raptured away any day now (suicidal ideation)
Oh, absolutely. And I mean, I really respect the mental health conditions and I';m empathetic to them, including at my work and day-to-day life. But still I see the "most believing" people are ALWAYS on the further end of the "crazy" scale. Very bipolar. Untreated ADHD. Paranoid (very common). Schizophrenics too (also documented by the way on that one). I can't remember the name of the mental disorder but when you are trusting against all odds? I think delusional is the normal term but there is a clinical term. Anyway, the "hard believers" I met where on that scale. The normal ones, who keep to themselves, not so much.
I guess Iām genetically atheist all the way down, because when I saw God (on a ton of psychedelics), they turned out to be merely āevery extant consciousness, superimposed.ā Was pretty intense, but they didnāt give me any commandments or anything.
If they're talking to God, they're believers. If they're talking to Big Bird, they're schizophrenic.
All religious people are mentally ill. Religious ideation should be in the DSM-VI but due to political pressure Iām sure it wonāt be.
My father in law is sick.he says Jesus came to him and said I forgive you
They are the ones voting for people too. Great case for limiting the right to vote.
in my opinion the abilty to believe in something so obsurd should be classified as a mental disorder in and of itself.
No. Not at all. What the hell kind of question is that? Have you noticed people who believe differently than us seem to have a mental disorder? Also, mental disorders are a real thing, and they donāt discriminate.
Yeaah my family grew up catholic and a lot of them are depressed and bi-polar I stopped believing in that junk when i was an early teen lol
I can see where your coming from but I go to a Christian school as a agnostic and lots of Christians there aren't disturbed just spoiled rich kids believing anything that is told to them
Religion relies on the acceptance and promotion of fantasies that are interpreted for pragmatic goals. Anyone who is prone to delusions, hallucinations or any other extreme distortions of reality will find themselves drawn to religion as a safe space for their mental disorders because faith and delusion are similar in their use of fantasies, so it's easy to hide in. Throw in a liberal tolerance for religious interpretation and how would anyone tell the difference for mild cases of mental illness?
Yes. To believe in a magic man in the sky controlling everything who sends you to a fire dimension when you die, youād have to be delusional and or mentally ill. OR this person has their wits about them enough to realize that they can use religion to abuse and control others in their life.
People are still saying this? Are we still saying āreligion is a mental illnessā? I hate religion, especially Christianity, because I was a victim of the shit that one can do to a person. So, when I reconverted and became atheist, I was instantly cured? Is that it? Itās a lot like smoking cigarettes. You may get lung cancer or some other kind of illness, but because you smoke, that doesnāt by default (or definition) mean you absolutely will get something. It can be a means or path to mental illness, but itās not itself a mental illness. I donāt like most of what religion is, but I push back on the idea that anyone and everyone who is religious is by default a nut job, and believing so makes us just as bad as the hateful theists.
Could not say it better myself
Well, Iām glad at least one other person agrees. Iām just disappointed that itās not a more prevalent view. We love to tout ourselves as rational because weāre atheists, so youād think weād be more likely to think that way, but weāre still susceptible to tribalistic tendencies all the same.
Yeah I am disappointed myself but I am certain that reddit-atheist don't represent the norm...so thats at least some comfort.
As someone who used to work with people with severe mental health problems I can confirm that religious groups regularly recruit these people. Getting any convert through the door, regardless of how insane they are, is seen as a victory by evangelicals. Obviously there's not a lot of competition as these people tend to be rejected anywhere else they go to be around others. They're very vulnerable and very easily manipulated.
Also take into account that the women in most religions have been taught to be child like and the men are just told to be the hear of the house and make money. Most of them lack education, so this really adds to the fact that most of them go untreated. When I was in the church (questioned God the moment I could talk and was told about him) it was very odd seeing people clearly suffering from something using the church as a way to try and "heal' their minds and bodies.
I was in churches regularly for decades and most people seemed fairly normal. Not sure where you're getting this idea? Usually I was the only weirdo there lol.
Religion is like a mass delusion.
Bruh...
not to be too controversial, but I've noticed a lot more mentally ill people in contrarian communities than something as normal as religion. I'm not hating on people for being like that, but mentally ill people tend to be thrown out by churches and find salvation in more secular communities.
Yes.
And most true believers are prone to violent behavior. But it's the ones who don't accept everything their religion teaches as true that are the ones that will end up killing someoneāusually one of their children or spouse.
Interesting since most prisoners are believers or at minimum say they believe in a god. Great response.
Yeah, but I wonder how much of that is to butter up the parole board... Then again, in the US sadly prison takes the role that mental institutions have in other countries, so it could be.
Our prison system actively encourages missionary programs like the Navigators to come into the prisons and indoctrinate inmates - especially those not serving long terms. My father did this for a while, and on one hand, the work he did did provide social support for folks that were likely to reenter society and be recidivists (having a mentor outside of the social circles that led you to get in trouble with the law in the first place is a HUGE help to folks who sincerely want to change), while on the other hand it was social support with religious strings attached, which can be a *huge* problem, especially if the government favors prisoners that are in such programs and there's no secular alternative.
Huh. I guess you live somewhere where religion isn't considered as "ordinary" or something... Where i live, at least 90% of people are christian, probably not because they really wanna believe but because they were raised that way. It's just tradition at this point.... So religion doesn't really have much impact on most people's behaviour. Although the people that go around "preaching" or are just very vocal about Jesus n stuff in general do usually seem weirder. Especially Jehovah's witnesses and other such groups. Although even that is not always the case.. They are still better than the conspiracy/flat earth/quack medicine crowd in my opinion. Christianity in itself doesn't really teach anything inherently bad, meanwhile these schizos spread often harmful misinformation and brainwash people into joining their "cult" But lately there seems to be mixing between the two and it honestly worries me...
Christianity in itself teaches many things that are inherently bad. Some "cafeteria Christians" might de-emphasize or ignore those parts, but most of most problematic stuff is not only part of Christianity, but is actively believed by most people who call themselves Christian. Sure, only "fundamentalists" believe in literal Adam & Eve, though without them, where did Original Sin come from and thus what did Jesus supposedly "save" people from (vigorous hand-waving commences, from those who don't just give you a blank, uncomprehending stare)? Only fundamentalists believe in an actual Noah's Ark, but those fundamentalists represent [the majority of Christians in America](https://ncse.ngo/just-how-many-young-earth-creationists-are-there-us), and around the globe. And the most problematic doctrines, like eternal torture for those who do not toe the line of the god who is love, are even more popular among Christians. The "Universalists" (believing in universal salvation) were a fringe heretical group even before they merged with the Unitarians and became a church packed with atheists and pagans.
>Christianity in itself teaches many things that are inherently bad. Some "cafeteria Christians" might de-emphasize or ignore those parts, but most of most problematic stuff is not only part of Christianity, but is actively believed by most people who call themselves Christian. Definitely. However there are many amongst the so called christians who haven't read the old testament entirely, not even the new testament, yet they show an urgent need to be identified as believers, at this point i don't know what believing means for them: i have the feeling it's a trivial behaviour, they need to be part of a limited group of people who consider themselves better than others, so they can legitimately exclude others from their "enclosure", which is exactly what religion means etymologically. And lets not forget that there are many differences between the old and the new testament, especially in morality, the roots of evil lies mostly in the Pentateuch while the gospels appear sometimes as an attempt to reform the most controversial part of judaism. I'm not saying that christians are better than jewish, historically speaking they are far worse, but when we talk of the abrahamic religions as source of evil we shouldn't forget that there are not only christians
Excellent answer !!