Mentally ill? Get off your meds and the Bible will cure you. (Revelation, pray)
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You seem to misunderstand what respect June is referring to, mordant. When you talk about calling them on their BS, It is clear you are abreacting to your own fundamentalist religious beliefs, but they should never become part of the discussion. The mental health of the individual and its probable genesis in neurotransmitter dysfunction should be. If you try to denigrate or berate the religious beliefs, you are seeking a different agenda than the health of the patient. Respecting those beliefs and the continuation of the prayers, etc. while recommending the addition of medicine to make the efforts even more effective is what I suspect June was referring to by the word respect.
The BS in this context is advising people to reject, resist and be non-compliant with mental health standard-of-care. The reason or excuse really isn't relevant. Rejection of proper care is not a luxury they can be afforded just because of their religion. In this case it is a direct cause of human suffering.
On the flip side, I know someone who was over-prescribed Xanax for anxiety by a doctor who probably was trying to hit prescription targets for a free vacation from the manufacturer or something. They went cold turkey, alone, endured the sweats and hallucinations and all the other symptoms, and vowed never to be beholden to some idiot doctor like that ever again. Their GP later reviewed the situation and was amazed at the dosage levels prescribed. So there is malpractice and incompetence in the mix.
It's been my experience that there are orders of magnitude of difference in quality of care from one practitioner to another, not even counting the issue of whether or not a particular patient and caregiver "gel" with each other. So I'm far from suggesting that mental health care is a slam-dunk that always works on the one hand, or that religion never has anything of its own to offer on the other hand. I am just saying that religion is no better a reason than any other to suggest that people quit taking their meds or substitute various rituals and practices, religious or otherwise, for proper medication and therapy.
If religion is to be respected for what it has to offer to the mentally ill, then it has to respect medicine for what it has to offer. They can be supportive of each other but can't be second-guessing of interfering with each other. It is no more proper for a religious counseling service to require people to go off-meds as a condition of receiving counseling, than it would be for a therapist to require people to foreswear all religious participation and practice as a condition of receiving therapy.
Why should a dangerous, potentially deadly belief be "respected?" Those who promulgate lies about mental health, such as those in the original post, are no more deserving of respect than anyone else who harms and abuses others.
And one's religious beliefs may have nothing at all to do with one's inter-generational family culture. I was not raised in a brainwashing fundamentalist cult, but I somehow ended up in one in my adulthood.
I don't know how much "free will" is involved when someone has been brainwashed by their religion, as I was. I am sickened and angered at how many years of my life I basically lost, because I refused treatment for an easily treatable condition. Prayer and Bible study did not, and never could or would, take care of my health issue.
I am shocked that anyone would defend the abuse and negligence that is being discussed in the OP. I don't know about the alleged "incessant bashing of religion" to which you refer (which, if OP is guilty of that, would understandably color your reaction to this post), but if a Christian can't call something out as wrong just because it is done in the name of faith, that is a huge problem. When harm is done because people have been sucked into these lies, is it "grasping at straws" if I cry out against those horrendous teachings?
There are separate issues here. There is the "do nothing BUT pray and believe" aspect and the "God helps those who help themselves" aspect. it is not necessary to attack and refute the one to encourage the other. The important thing is to get treatment for the individual. If it needs to be combined with prayer, etc., respect that. Fighting it and attacking it is futile. Getting treatment for the patient should be the focus, NOT refuting whatever asinine beliefs are involved.
Early in my teens, there was a wonderful woman married to an abusive drunk. She was Catholic and asked the priest for dispensation to divorce and leave him. The priest told her to offer it up to God because it was just her physical body but the other would endanger her immortal soul. At that point, I lost all respect for religious belief. So I know where you are coming from. But it is far more important to find ways around these idiotic beliefs and focus on getting the patient effective treatment. If that requires that you swallow your disgust and anger to achieve it, so be it.
There are separate issues here. There is the "do nothing BUT pray and believe" aspect and the "God helps those who help themselves" aspect. it is not necessary to attack and refute the one to encourage the other. The important thing is to get treatment for the individual. If it needs to be combined with prayer, etc., respect that. Fighting it and attacking it is futile. Getting treatment for the patient should be the focus, NOT refuting whatever asinine beliefs are involved.
Early in my teens, there was a wonderful woman married to an abusive drunk. She was Catholic and asked the priest for dispensation to divorce and leave him. The priest told her to offer it up to God because it was just her physical body but the other would endanger her immortal soul. At that point, I lost all respect for religious belief. So I know where you are coming from. But it is far more important to find ways around these idiotic beliefs and focus on getting the patient effective treatment. If that requires that you swallow your disgust and anger to achieve it, so be it.
I have no issue with what you're saying here at all. I don't recall anyone suggesting that piety should be denigrated UNLESS it's used as an excuse to interfere with medical intervention. Certainly I didn't. Difficult issues like mental illness and addiction are what I regard as "any port in a storm" kinds of things. They are inherently difficult sources of suffering, and ANYTHING that truly is helpful to the struggle, religion included, is fair game. But if religion is to be included then so must the core modalities like CBT, psychotropic medication, hospitalization, etc. And there must be no pretense on the part of religion to interfere with medicine, or vice versa for that matter.
Practically speaking, I think that "Christian Psychiatrists" who do not adhere to standard-of-care should lose their licenses, and it would be a really responsible gesture if Christian counseling organizations and those who teach counselors would clearly state that it's completely unacceptable to ever advise, much less require, someone coming under your care to drop all their medications and/or mental health treatments. That is always a matter between doctor and patient. Indeed, it should be complete malpractice to interfere with doctor / patient rapport at all, just as it should be malpractice for a doctor to interfere with Christian counselor / counselee rapport. As soon as you have one or the other wanting exclusivity with the patient, all kinds of red flags should go up.
We know that only the Lord Jesus can really make all these changes in their lives. That is why in our day center in Tel-Aviv we actively preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ, who came to this earth to save sinners – including those who seemed totally hopeless.
We know that the bold is lies, since other religions "change people's lives" for the better as well. Just ask our resident Muslim who converted from Christianity after being a Christian missionary and then alcoholic, Woodrow.
There are tons of personal testimonials that mere placeboes really did cure some people, atheist or theist alike.
Unless your religion is strapping you down and pumping you with chemicals to the point you can't think for yourself then I don't buy the "brainwashed" argument.
I don't understand why this is abuse and negligence. If some people feel that this type of treatment helps them, then who are we to label it so negatively. Are we supposed to demonize this program because the treatment didn't seem to work for the guy in the story? My point is that no one put a gun to this guys head and said he must go to this program, he did it because he wanted to.
Now if I were mentally ill would I ever go to this program? No, because I am also part of the camp that thinks prayer and bible study won't work. However I am not going to demonize programs that use the methodology just because I believe it doesn't work.
Also, look at the lobby of this forum and count how many threads the OP has started and you will notice the incessant bashing of religion.
Then you have no idea what brainwashing is. And "bashing religion" can't happen if cupper keeps saying he is fine with liberal religious people who are more down to reality and produce less bad produce. He highlights the negative aspects of fundamentalism and Bibliolatry. The fundamentalists have their seasons when they basically spam the board with their incessant lies (actual LIES in their case) and no one like you bats an eye against them.
Snake-oil salesmen are illegal, I believe, and many people feel that type of treatment helped them (some today might also "feel" that way). Why are we to "demonize" pagan, Baptist, Mormon, or Satanic rituals to cure bipolar disorder, why would we "demonize" a snake-oil salesman who says he himself believes in the snake oil and that is why he happily sells it? Because then you see these people either dying or being hypocrites and going to secular medicine, perhaps changing their mind and thinking "well, secular medicine was inspired by God... if all goodness is." What are bad things inspired by? Why shouldn't bad things be exposed and controlled?
And one's religious beliefs may have nothing at all to do with one's inter-generational family culture. I was not raised in a brainwashing fundamentalist cult, but I somehow ended up in one in my adulthood.
When I spent some time visiting with friends who live in the "Bible belt" it was never more apparent to me that where one is raised, where one's family has lived for much of their lives DOES indeed possess a cultural derivative. There existed a vast difference between what I experienced while visiting my friends and attending church with them on Sundays, and what I was accustomed to up here in the northeast. "Culture" plays a big role in our outlooks, beliefs, and attitudes. There is simply no denying that.
To be raised within a culture that feels that psychotropic medications are purely useless in the efficacy they have on mental illness is a shame. I have personally witnessed patient's lives change dramatically with the help of proper medications. --But if the culture they live in regards such meds as either evil or useless, there is a real shame in that, given the fact that the patient could be helped otherwise.....
There are separate issues here. There is the "do nothing BUT pray and believe" aspect and the "God helps those who help themselves" aspect. it is not necessary to attack and refute the one to encourage the other. The important thing is to get treatment for the individual. If it needs to be combined with prayer, etc., respect that. Fighting it and attacking it is futile. Getting treatment for the patient should be the focus, NOT refuting whatever asinine beliefs are involved.
Early in my teens, there was a wonderful woman married to an abusive drunk. She was Catholic and asked the priest for dispensation to divorce and leave him. The priest told her to offer it up to God because it was just her physical body but the other would endanger her immortal soul. At that point, I lost all respect for religious belief. So I know where you are coming from. But it is far more important to find ways around these idiotic beliefs and focus on getting the patient effective treatment. If that requires that you swallow your disgust and anger to achieve it, so be it.
In that example, a lie based off of ignorance would still be a lie. It wouldn't be a barefaced lie, or purposeful lie, but it would still be a lie. It's all about semantics, what we label lie versus misstatement, etc.
But that doesn't make atheism or not believing that it's raining a lie. It's just not believing it. The person saying it's raining may or may not be mistaken (or lying). My assertion is that atheism is not a lie. In fact, atheism is more truthful than theism since there is no evidence for the existence of divine beings. Unless one considers thunder as evidence of Thor.
The statement "believing the lie of atheism" is outright false. No one is believing anything.
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