Religion as a mental illness

[Pyrrho]

[brewer]

You can be mentally ill and not delusional and delusional but not mentally ill. Society sets the standard.

[Pyrrho]

You can be mentally ill and not delusional and delusional but not mentally ill. Society sets the standard.

Which means that it is a relativistic concept, where one could be mentally ill in one society, but not mentally ill in another.  Which means that it is not about what the person is, but rather about the standards of a particular society.

[brewer]

You can be mentally ill and not delusional and delusional but not mentally ill. Society sets the standard.

Which means that it is a relativistic concept, where one could be mentally ill in one society, but not mentally ill in another.  Which means that it is not about what the person is, but rather about the standards of a particular society.

I agree. Look at different societies and human killing, i.e. head hunting.

[rexbeccarox]

Moderator Notice
Moved from Life Sciences to Religion.

[Cephus]

You can be mentally ill and not delusional and delusional but not mentally ill. Society sets the standard.

But that really is the problem, isn't it?  The determination is entirely subjective, something that we don't do with other medical diagnoses.  Either you have cancer or you don't.  What people in that particular area think about cancer is irrelevant.  How many people have cancer in that area is meaningless.  You either have it or  you don't. But psychological diagnoses are subjective.  They depend on what others in the area consider normal.  They depend on a subjective determination of whether they're a danger to themselves of others.  If you live in an area where everyone believes in unicorns, you're not delusional because your delusions are commonplace.  That's utterly stupid. Society doesn't get to set the standards for reality.  Reality exists regardless of what society wants.  That really makes psychology a pretty pointless pursuit.

[IATIA]

Which means that it is a relativistic concept, where one could be mentally ill in one society, but not mentally ill in another.  Which means that it is not about what the person is, but rather about the standards of a particular society.

I agree. Look at different societies and human killing, i.e. head hunting.

I disagree that they are interchangeable.  Mental illness is from chemical imbalances that may be congenital, aging, disease or a variety of other causes affecting the physiology of the body.  Delusions, on the other hand, are simply mental interpretations and these can vary from culture to culture.  There can be a combination of both, but delusions are a 'belief system' whereas mentally ill is a malfunctioning body.

[AFTT47]

You can be mentally ill and not delusional and delusional but not mentally ill. Society sets the standard.

But that really is the problem, isn't it?  The determination is entirely subjective, something that we don't do with other medical diagnoses.  Either you have cancer or you don't.  What people in that particular area think about cancer is irrelevant.  How many people have cancer in that area is meaningless.  You either have it or  you don't. But psychological diagnoses are subjective.

Good point. You can diagnose a physical cause of a delusion and that will be objective. And in the vast majority of people, religion (or any other non-rational belief) has no physical cause as a result of a physiological malfunction but of the general limitations of our species.

[Angrboda]

You can be mentally ill and not delusional and delusional but not mentally ill. Society sets the standard.

But that really is the problem, isn't it?  The determination is entirely subjective, something that we don't do with other medical diagnoses.  Either you have cancer or you don't.  What people in that particular area think about cancer is irrelevant.  How many people have cancer in that area is meaningless.  You either have it or  you don't. But psychological diagnoses are subjective.  They depend on what others in the area consider normal.  They depend on a subjective determination of whether they're a danger to themselves of others.  If you live in an area where everyone believes in unicorns, you're not delusional because your delusions are commonplace.  That's utterly stupid. Society doesn't get to set the standards for reality.  Reality exists regardless of what society wants.  That really makes psychology a pretty pointless pursuit.

The point of clinical psychology is to relieve subjective distress or disability. What causes distress or disability may indeed be relative, not only between societies but within them as well. There are people who get along fine in society with 'strange beliefs' and people with similar beliefs for whom they are a great dysfunction. The point of diagnosis of mental disorders is to group people who may respond to a specific treatment together, and it is the response to treatment which forms the basis of diagnosis. While the vast majority of religious people may have delusional beliefs, the prevalence in society seems to indicate that it is a product of a normally functioning brain. Treating a normally functioning brain generally has no effect because there is no deficit in the functioning of the brain. Since treatment doesn't apply to the religious, and they don't suffer distress or disability, it would make no sense to group them as mentally ill.

[Cephus]

But that really is the problem, isn't it?  The determination is entirely subjective, something that we don't do with other medical diagnoses.  Either you have cancer or you don't.  What people in that particular area think about cancer is irrelevant.  How many people have cancer in that area is meaningless.  You either have it or  you don't. But psychological diagnoses are subjective.

Good point. You can diagnose a physical cause of a delusion and that will be objective. And in the vast majority of people, religion (or any other non-rational belief) has no physical cause as a result of a physiological malfunction but of the general limitations of our species.

But you ought to be able to say that a belief in anything that we cannot demonstrate to be real is, by definition, a delusion.  It doesn't matter whether you're talking to a giant invisible rabbit or a god, we have no reason to think that these things exist, thus they represent a mental aberration.  But the people who believe in Harvey get put away or drugged up, the people who talk to gods do not.  It's hypocritical.