Belief in God can improve mental health outcomes.

[Mystic]

A new study suggests belief in God may significantly improve the outcome of those receiving short-term treatment for psychiatric illness.

Researchers followed patients receiving care from a hospital-based behavioral health program to investigate the relationship between patients’ level of belief in God, expectations for treatment and actual treatment outcomes.

In the study, published in the current issue of Journal of Affective Disorders, researchers comment that people with a moderate to high level of belief in a higher power do significantly better in short-term psychiatric treatment than those without.


More here: http://psychcentral.com/news/2013/04/26/...54121.html

[paulpablo]

A new study suggests belief in God may significantly improve the outcome of those receiving short-term treatment for psychiatric illness.

Researchers followed patients receiving care from a hospital-based behavioral health program to investigate the relationship between patients’ level of belief in God, expectations for treatment and actual treatment outcomes.

In the study, published in the current issue of Journal of Affective Disorders, researchers comment that people with a moderate to high level of belief in a higher power do significantly better in short-term psychiatric treatment than those without.


More here: http://psychcentral.com/news/2013/04/26/...54121.html

But it can also be the symptom of a psychiatric illness.

[Ucaslog1]

This is just GREAT! But believing in it doesn't make it any more true........No matter how hard and how sincerely I believe I have $1,000,000 in my bank, it might make me feel better and improve my mental health thinking Im financially secure...but believing in it wont make it true.....

[Mystic]

True. Evolution also would not favour belief in things true as opposed to what makes us prosper.

The concept of self, praise, perpetual identity, free-will, etc, all can be delusions as well. The difference with the former beliefs is that no one can do without them in reality, no matter what the intellectual position they take.

But what seemingly is true, is that man to an extent needs God and religion. Religion as a structural way to relate to the Divine. These needs don't make God or religion true.

[Simsim]

Faith, as anything else, has benefits and disadvantages. But its disadvantages are much more than its benefits.

Atheism and pure scientific thinking have benefits and disadvantages, but their benefits are much more than their disadvantages.

To pick out a narrow angle from the whole scene is not fair. It is like saying that heroin makes a man very happy and not to mention the harmful effects of it and its addiction. OK.. we may make use of heroin for special cases in definite times for small period, this is how we should treat religion !

[Anomalocaris]

But what seemingly is true, is that man to an extent needs God and religion. Religion as a structural way to relate to the Divine. These needs don't make God or religion true.

Religion is a structure way to pretend there is the divine.


As to man needing god, man assuredly feel the need to win the lottery to a much greater extend. But the laws of economics requiring money to be backed up by actual productivity, so too many people winning lottery would be disastrous to the society by putting fruit of diminished productivity in the hands of its least productive. In the long run this destroys the society's productivity and with it the value of the lottery itself.

The same applies to his need for god. God meets the desires of the emotionally greedy and dependent. But meet that need, and human progress suffers, and humans extinction becomes more likely.

[Minimalist]

Evolution also would not favour belief in things true as opposed to what makes us prosper.

Evolution merely allows certain organisms to pass their genes along to the next generation more successfully than others. It does not "favor." It does not "like." It does not pick first in the office pool.

[A_Nony_Mouse]

A new study suggests belief in God may significantly improve the outcome of those receiving short-term treatment for psychiatric illness.

Researchers followed patients receiving care from a hospital-based behavioral health program to investigate the relationship between patients’ level of belief in God, expectations for treatment and actual treatment outcomes.

In the study, published in the current issue of Journal of Affective Disorders, researchers comment that people with a moderate to high level of belief in a higher power do significantly better in short-term psychiatric treatment than those without.


More here: http://psychcentral.com/news/2013/04/26/...54121.html

Yes but it says short term not long term. Long term is all that matters. But don't worry, Alcoholics Anonymous has no long term data and refuses to collect any.

It does not say what kind of treatment they are talking about. By my speculation I do not find it reasonable to have issued this kind of result if it were about patients being given anti-psychotic drugs. That leaves the con game of talking your way to mental health practiced by so many criminal psychologists and scientologists. Yes Freud and everyone who practiced Freudian psychotherapy was a con artists and should have been jailed for their con game. Hubbard was very clear in the beginning that he was copying much of their con game.

However as merely short term results are at hand it does not differ from suggestibility. As to the long term, not Freud not any of his fellow con artists ever cured anyone. I do not see why this should be viewed any differently.

Edit: Self reported improvement is without objective measure. Are you feeling better now that God has healed your rheumatism? Will you be back next month to be cured again? Of course you will.

[Mystic]

Heh, I reminded of a line in Du'a Kumail "O who's remembrance is a healing and his name a medicine".

[cneron]

This is like lying to win an argument; this article leaves my already uncharitable view of psychiatry unchanged.

Exchanging a socially unacceptable delusion for an acceptable one. If a falsehood can bolster the desired result of whatever endeavor one is engaged in, then the endeavor itself is inherently dishonest.