Religion as a mental illness

[Longhorn]

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Moved from Life Sciences to Religion.

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Never mind; I put it back

See pool? THIS is teleporting

[brewer]

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.

 I disagree that all psych diagnoses are subjective. I left one category out, you can be mentally ill with delusions. The diagnosis in many of these cases is not that subjective, if subjective at all. Case example 1: An adolescent male (age 17) insists that he sees and rides dinosaurs and that they are in the room with you during the exam. No one on the staff can see them either. A hallucinatory delusion. Not very subjective when no one else can see the dinosaurs. Case example 2: An adult male (today's date) insists that he is Napoleon and can't understand why all people around him won't accept the truth. A delusion of grandeur. Given the time and place, not very subjective.

Your argument holds for the delusional but not necessarily mentally ill. Society is not setting the standard for reality, society is setting the standard for what belief/behavior is acceptable. Cross that acceptability line and the issue of mental health comes into play. That is subjective.

As far as psychiatry/psychology being a pointless pursuit, we can agree to disagree.

[brewer]

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.

I'm not sure what you consider not interchangeable. Not all mental illnesses in our society are necessarily the result of neurochemical imbalances. Please see my response to Cephus. Then we can continue the discussion if you like.

[Cephus]

But that makes no sense whatsoever.  "Normal" and "common" are not synonyms.  If you had a society where chopping off people's arms was commonplace, would you consider that to be normal?  Is it healthy behavior?  Or is that unhealthy?  If the point of psychology is to make everyone just like everyone else, without an objective baseline, then what use is it?

The point is what is the underlying brain function that is giving rise to the behavior.  While there may be societies where adolescents undergo horrific rites of passage, the commonality seems to imply that there is nothing wrong with the brain that is causing the behavior.

There's actually got to be more to it than "do you have a screwed up brain we can medicate".  There are psychological problems that require counseling, not medication.

[Silver]

My signature quote already states quite simply how any religious faith is mere delusion.

[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.  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.

 I disagree that all psych diagnoses are subjective. I left one category out, you can be mentally ill with delusions. The diagnosis in many of these cases is not that subjective, if subjective at all. Case example 1: An adolescent male (age 17) insists that he sees and rides dinosaurs and that they are in the room with you during the exam. No one on the staff can see them either. A hallucinatory delusion. Not very subjective when no one else can see the dinosaurs. Case example 2: An adult male (today's date) insists that he is Napoleon and can't understand why all people around him won't accept the truth. A delusion of grandeur. Given the time and place, not very subjective.

Your argument holds for the delusional but not necessarily mentally ill. Society is not setting the standard for reality, society is setting the standard for what belief/behavior is acceptable. Cross that acceptability line and the issue of mental health comes into play. That is subjective.

As far as psychiatry/psychology being a pointless pursuit, we can agree to disagree.

Which is really the same thing.  The only real worthwhile standard is accepting reality as it really is, not as you wish it was.  There either are gods or there are not gods. What society thinks on the matter is entirely irrelevant to what actually is true.  If people are not willing to accept what is true in the real world, or at least what is best supported, then what's the point?  We might as well be believing in magical unicorns and leprechauns.

[robvalue]

Interesting discussion

If I had to describe religion as accurately as possible, I'd call it superstition. I think it can easily cross the line into self delusion, where someone convinces themself they are experiencing "voices from God" or whatever, while part of their brain knows that they are not. Also, it's pretty clear from this forum alone that people think they are "experiencing God" just by assigning their own meaning to perfectly normal events.

The difficult part is whether or not this can develop into full blown delusions, where people actually see things that aren't there and really "hear" things. Can someone do this to themself, obviously with the help of those around affirming the semi-delusions they already have?

Someone who is already genuinely delusional is sadly going to be sometimes missed amongst all the people pretending to be so, or the ones that have convinced themselves they are. This makes mental illness harder to diagnose, and this is yet more harm that religion does. In extreme communities, I think these delusions would be encouraged rather than recognised as symptoms of a problem.

[RedRod]

Considering the debate this thread has generated ( & thank you for that:-) as to whether religion constitutes a mental illness or not, was it a misnomer for Richard Dawkins to title his bestseller as the God Delusion? Or are delusions no longer considered psychological aberrations as has hitherto been the case? Just to qualify this point; even if you are born into a society that worships pink unicorns, doesn't the same onus of proving the existence of pink unicorns still exist for pink unicorn believers? I accept we all have our particular delusions, the difference is that these other delusions don't carry with them the penalty of eternal damnation for failure of compliance. After all, I'm not threatened with fire & brimstone if I refuse to believe the earth is a sphere rather than a flat disc.
When I did psychology, dysfunctional behaviour & beliefs were identified as those which impair the individual's ability to function independently (or perhaps the definition has changed?). Surely imposing strict limits on what others (especially children) can & cannot be allowed to even think thus qualifies as dysfunctional? Having been brought up in a fundamentalist family myself I would add to the charge of mental illness that religion is also a form of child abuse (but that's for another thread). In short, being born into a society that holds nutty beliefs doesn't make those beliefs any less nutty.

[robvalue]

I would very roughly hazard a guess that mental illness would be classed as something with a physical cause/imbalance, most likely in the brain. So mental illness can cause delusions.

But people can clearly delude themselves without there being anything physically wrong with their brain. We have ex-theists who had convinced themselves god was speaking to them, or communicating in other ways. Looking back they can see the experiences for what they were, but at the time they seemed real. (I'm not trying to poke fun at them at all.)

So I think this is the line between partial self-delusion and full blown actual delusions. My question is, can someone who doesn't have something physically wrong with their brain develop full blown delusions? Or is it just an advanced level of self-delusion for the theists who really think they see/hear things?

[abaris]

Having been brought up in a fundamentalist family myself I would add to the charge of mental illness that religion is also a form of child abuse (but that's for another thread). In short, being born into a society that holds nutty beliefs doesn't make those beliefs any less nutty.

Having been brought up in a fundamentalist family is neither the norm in America nor is it the norm anywhere else in the world. It's the exception, but I agree that it can be child abuse to be exposed to that kind of environment. And as far as nutty believes and society are concerned. The US is about the only Western society where religion still lays that large a role.

Funny as that may sound, I think it is because of the non establishing clause in the Constitution. As opposed to European countries, America never had a controlled religious environment. It never had a state religion. The result was that every itinerant preacher or con man set up his own congregation with it's own interpretations of scripture. And since there never was any legislation, it could take on every shape or form. It also contributed to the continued support of the people, since they never associated it with the state and it's monopoly of power, but with their own personal freedom of choice.

I also think that the federal structure of the US plays a role. The USA aren't the only federal nation in the world. There are quite a few in Europe too, but the States are much more independent in their legislations than they are in federal European nations. That allows for some outright religious laws being pushed through at the state level.