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I'm trying to understand the question you're asking, though. Is it wrong to have the stigma about mental health? Yes--it is. My pastor has openly spoken that sometimes a person does need to see a counselor, and it IS ok to take medication to help with some issues.
I am grateful to hear this. My first wife had serious mental health issues and the guidance of all three churches we attended during our marriage was to seek spiritual counseling in preference to mental health care. Even the mental health care we belatedly sought was with a substandard "Christian psychiatrist". Also, I was told that divorce was unthinkable and with sufficient faith, god would make even a wrong marriage right. I am still paying in ways for listening to such foolish counsel. It's always great if things work out the way we want them to and hope they will ... but every relationship involves some other person with their own independent will, character problems and misbeliefs.
In fairness, and ironically, when I finally took the kids and left her, my biggest supporter was a missionary friend, so I'm not suggesting I would have gotten such advice from all quarters. But the dominant attitude toward mental health treatment in the churches I was part of, was one of suspicion and distrust.
It is more like anti-therapy designed to fill you full of fear, anger, paranoia and Sky Daddy issues.
But even if a church does that, people still freely attend. So they get positive psychological value from it. And even when a jihadist blows himself up to kill others, as messed up as it is, they're still on cloud 9 often yelling Allah.
Whether or not church as a whole has a net benefit on society, most sociologists I believe would say no.
But even if a church does that, people still freely attend. So they get positive psychological value from it.
It is possible that this is true at times. Negative attention is still attention.
However, I have had people tell me they stayed in such abusive, toxic churches because they were ignorant of and/or conditioned to be fearful of alternatives. If your church tells you it's the ONLY true church and all others are satanic counterfeits then your perceived poverty of choice is equivalent to attending against your rational self interest.
Personally, while my experience was not that extreme or abusive, the above paragraph pretty accurately describes my own reasons for "freely" attending. I was taught from a young age that mainline / liberal congregations were doctrinally squishy, dead, lifeless places "having a form of godliness but denying the power thereof". I did not give them serious consideration as an option.
If therapy can be defined as that which results in one feeling better - I'm sure church-going would qualify for very many.
There's certainly a bonding aspect when among like-minded folks and that can help the alienated feel part of a larger whole.
And it's a bonus for those who think a weekly visit to the pew helps pave one's way to the Happy Place after exiting the planet in this particular arrangement of atoms.
It is possible that this is true at times. Negative attention is still attention.
However, I have had people tell me they stayed in such abusive, toxic churches because they were ignorant of and/or conditioned to be fearful of alternatives. If your church tells you it's the ONLY true church and all others are satanic counterfeits then your perceived poverty of choice is equivalent to attending against your rational self interest.
Personally, while my experience was not that extreme or abusive, the above paragraph pretty accurately describes my own reasons for "freely" attending. I was taught from a young age that mainline / liberal congregations were doctrinally squishy, dead, lifeless places "having a form of godliness but denying the power thereof". I did not give them serious consideration as an option.
Wow, I never thought about it like that. You made me change my mind about my original post. Thanks for the feedback, as I find your posts quite insightful.
Wow, I never thought about it like that. You made me change my mind about my original post. Thanks for the feedback, as I find your posts quite insightful.
There are times I wish that I did not possess the insights I share.
I am grateful to hear this. My first wife had serious mental health issues and the guidance of all three churches we attended during our marriage was to seek spiritual counseling in preference to mental health care. Even the mental health care we belatedly sought was with a substandard "Christian psychiatrist". Also, I was told that divorce was unthinkable and with sufficient faith, god would make even a wrong marriage right. I am still paying in ways for listening to such foolish counsel. It's always great if things work out the way we want them to and hope they will ... but every relationship involves some other person with their own independent will, character problems and misbeliefs.
In fairness, and ironically, when I finally took the kids and left her, my biggest supporter was a missionary friend, so I'm not suggesting I would have gotten such advice from all quarters. But the dominant attitude toward mental health treatment in the churches I was part of, was one of suspicion and distrust.
It was in mine, as well. When I was 6, my cousin and friend, my same age, died. I did not cry, and I began to exhibit some irrational fear and behavior and for which I was scolded and commanded to stop.
Years later, I asked my mother why she didn't take me for help when it was clear that I needed it. She said, "I didn't know what to do, but I did pray for you, and you seemed to be better afterward." I was not better. I'd learned to hide it, and it developed into the obsessive thinking, mental compulsions, and intrusive thinking I still carry.
I am not angry with her. She honestly thought that was the right thing to do at the time. It was also 1964, and taking a kid for therapy was not always socially acceptable. In her older age, she expressed regret about that and other times when the priority was church over her children.
When I was Catholic, I always found confession to be therapeutic. I also did a year or so of weekly Eucharistic Adoration, wherein one was encouraged to pray/meditate in the presence of the Eucharist. That too was therapeutic. Mass itself was as well, but lower on the scale perhaps than these other forms of religious 'therapy'
But isn't a churchgoer who has a mental health stigma similar to an atheist in counseling who has a stigma about religion?
I like this point. It's all too easy to stigmatize the Perceived Other, and that is true for both sides of this coin (and all other unrelated instances of labeling). I am ambivalent about criticizing religion in real life (this is related to the atheist/antitheist thread I was just reading...), because I see the psychologically protective effect that religion has on people close to me. I see it every day. It's the most successful form of therapy ever invented--when done right. It can also damage people irreparably. Depends on the specific sect, or even the specific church. I found Catholicism, and the two specific churches I attended for my 18 religious years, to be rewarding in a way that secular therapy could likely never match (and I have tried a few variations of that over the years since my deconversion). I also didn't happen to say serve as an altar boy at a church with a pedophile for a pastor. Specific circumstances matter.
But yeah, I agree that both groups would do well to acknowledge the therapy method of choice of both oneself and the other. Religious people might be loathe to frame religion in such a way, or to admit that's the purpose it serves for them, but they could at the very least concede that they feel better after attending a service or whatever and that an atheist framing religious service attendance in that way would at least not be way offbase for doing so
I've gone along to churche for weddings, funerals and the like. The Therapy (if one can call it that) is like going to visit relatives and sit listening to one or two people gosipping about their shopping or what they feed their cats, or watching "Strictly come dancing" on TV. One comes back home feeling better because one is out of it.
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