Religion and mental health

[robvalue]

I don't know any stats. I'll just speculate and talk from experience.

I think poor mental health, especially anything that involves blurring of reality, probably makes people more vulnerable to religious ideas. Hopelessness and instability are things religious preaching often preys on. Add in hallucinations and such, and you've got someone who regularly experiences the things religious people either pretend they experience, have fooled themselves into thinking they experience, or experienced a couple of times due to mental glitches. I've seen this combination together, and it's not surprising how hard it is to fight out of religion's grip. It's hard enough for people who aren't experiencing weird things.

Very religious people often sound very similar to heavily mentally ill people to me. This is most concerning. Basically, either they are deluded, or I am. We're not living in the same reality. Seeing as each religion person's rantings tends to be slightly different from the next's, it seems more likely they are the deluded ones than the entirety of sceptics who experience none of any of it.