Folks, if you pray to God and God speaks back to you, that's NOT Revelation, its MENTAL ILLNESS!

http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2011/oct/21/moses-lake-man-accused-kidnapping/

This guy needs mental health treatment, not prison time, IMHO. Its only natural for religious people who suffer from schizophrenia to think that the internal voices they hear are "God" speaking to them, or "demons" in the case of negative voices. Being paranoid and thinking that people are plotting or controlling or "poisoning" others are all classic signs.

One of the side effects of closing all the insane asylums in this country is that it forced all the mentally ill into the prison system by default. We really ought to open up mental health treatment diversion centers -- nothing as oppressive or inhumane as conditions in many asylums were -- but more like expanded state hospitals for the mentally ill so that they can be treated with anti-psychotic medication and come to recognize their ailments, instead of being branded as criminals just because they are victims of a brain condition. Untreated folks with mental illness who don't realize they are sick really are ticking time bombs just waiting to go off.

Police should be allowed to detain folks who demonstrate clear signs of mental illness, at least long enough so that an expert can interview them. If they clearly indicate that they are hearing or seeing things that aren't there, they should be booked into a hospital for their own safety and the safety of the community. (Obviously there would need to be safe-guards in place so that police can't abuse such powers, but a simple review panel would probably suffice.)

I can't help but wonder how many religious "prophets" throughout history have suffered from some form of schizophrenia as well, back before it was recognized as mental illness, let alone treated...

see, it's happening to you, too.

is wrong. So is rushing to put into prison everyone who demonstrates clear signs of mental illness.

One in five Americans (20%) shows clear symptoms of mental illness every year. Imprisoning 20% of Americans is simply impractical. Who should be locked up then? Well, society generally says, those who are dangerous to themselves and or others.

The vast majority of people with symptoms of mental illness are not dangerous to themselves or others. Attention deficit hyperactive disorder is a mental illness. Although children with ADHD are frustrating for teachers and parents, these children aren't typically dangerous to themselves or others. The people in America who have been shown to be dangerous are the people using/abusing alcohol and drugs. Studies on violence show drug and alcohol abusers to be twice as dangerous as the rest of society, who by the way, present about the same risk of violence as persons with mental illness.

What's mental health detention like? Well, the person is held against their will (locked up), denied access to a drinking fountain (no kidding, withholding water from a caged animal is considered animal cruely but mental health wards use this to force submissiverelationships to staff authority). If on suicide watch--the person may be awakened every half-hour to be sure they aren't dead (I'm not kidding), and may be forced to ask permission to use a toilet which can be observed. After it all the liberated detainees are billed ($4000 a night for such a "hospital" stay is typical). This a serious and traumatic intervention in a person's life and it can all be done for several days duration without the legal protections of a court. All you need is a cop that is willing to put it in motion...after that the 'excess of caution' argument takes over.

Recent studies have shown that the trauma resulting from detentions frequently induces major depressive episodes and can result in PTSD. In other words, abusing a person this way can CAUSE serious and disabling mental illnesses and financial hardship (a detention can easily cost as much as a year at a public university). Mental health detention is a very serious thing.

Unless a person can reasonably be considered a danger to themselves or others there is no reason for a person to be swept off the street or out of their homes.


Generally speaking the sorts of things that are considered for urgent hospitalization for mental health reasons include
--suicide and or preparing/organizing for a suicide
--extreme violence
--self-mutilating acts
--extreme manic excitement and agitation
--inability to maintain hygiene (such as being covered in feces)
--in danger from an acute medical emergency

if someone claims god is speaking to them, how do we determine whether it's a sign of mental illness? Only if god is telling them to harm themselves or someone else?

That said, mental illnesses are frequently manifest as one or more emotional, cognitive or behavioral -dysfunctions-. This is pretty standard thinking in pathology'; disease is identified as a departure from normal function.

It is usually a discernible signal from a pattern of dysfunction, or distress caused by a dysfunction, that gets noticed by someone (the person, friends, family, associates) that alerts to the possible presence of a possible mental health problem.

Like the story says, "boys, ages 3 and 4".

:rofl:

speaks to me one day and tells me to quit my job, sell my property, and take up the mission field among the poor then that's mental illness? What about if I think he's telling me to reach out to a family who is being rocked by some tragedy? What if he just tells me to shut up and listen for a while? Are you proposing locking me up for my religious beliefs? It sure sounds like that.

How very Progressive of you.

Many schizophrenics are harmless, the voices don't tell them to do anything bad, so there is no concern.

But when they start thinking "demons" are telling them to do bad things or hurting them or other people, that should be a red flag to at least be checked out by a mental health professional and treated.

I would think, in most cases, they shouldn't be held for more than a few days at most, just long enough for the medications to kick in, and at least some level of outpatient support should be provided.

Of course, for those who refuse medications, there really isn't much you can do. In those cases, you just have to let them go and hope they don't go on to commit crimes.

I get a call to come in to work at our county jail one night. It seemed they had a disturbance and needed a cell extraction team ASAP. It was a woman who had killed her infant son on a homemade altar a few hours earlier. She was none too happy with being locked in a cell and needed a little bit of thorazine from the jail's doctor if she didn't agree to take her medication, which I believe was Halidol.

I get there and decided that night that monsters are real. She was up on the top bunk in her cell naked as the day she was born and raving all sorts of hell fire and brimstone. Her command of the Book of Revelation was actually quite impressive considering she never graduated from High School. I also noticed that she had shouted so long that her voice was hoarse and it made her sound like a man. The whole scene was really interesting. Especially the part where she was passing her final judgment on the jail staff. It was a horror movie come to life alright. I can see where people who had never dealt with the mentally ill would chalk it up to demonic possession.

Anyways, we're all lined up there ready to do an extraction on her, and I might add these affairs are not pleasant for the prisoner at all, when one of our jailers asks us to wait a minute. Somebody was going to get hurt on this one. He comes back with a cup of coffee and offers it to her if she'll take her medicine. I was thinking she'd take the hot coffee and throw it on us. Instead she swallows her pills and then downs the coffee like it was a shot of bourbon. Within a few hours she was dressed and having polite conversation with the staff.

She would tell us that when she's on her medicine she can tune out the voice of that other person living in her body with her but insisted he was still there. She'd even call it a demon some times. That's why she killed the baby, to save it's soul from the demon. She's smile so sweetly when she spoke about that baby and how she "saved" him from Satan. All I can say is I'm very thankful for better living through modern chemistry. Not guilty by reason of insanity was the verdict and she'll be institutionalized for the rest of her days. No way do you want to turn that one loose and let her off her medication.

Her crime had nothing to do with religion at all. It was pure mental illness in it's most hideous form.

Except for the part about belief in demons and Satan as real figures who wanted to harm her baby, of course. Giving her delusions an anchor in "reality."

She was clearly sick. I'm no mental health professional but I know stark raving crazy when I see it and she was a poster child for the annual convention.

But we can't really know. What we do know is that she believed Satan to be a real entity who posed a danger to her child.

I know quite a few people who believe that. No, most of them don't want to kill their children to protect them, but they believe that exact same "fact." A little mental illness might be all one needs to get pushed over the top when you already hold some irrational beliefs.

Unless you work in a mental institution I seriously doubt you know more than one person who can say with a straight face they are sharing their body with a demon who wants to possess the body of their infant son. That is not "a little mental illness". And it's a far cry from someone who takes their theology to extremes to benefit themselves and their world-view.

I pointed out that a lot of people believe in a literal Satan who is threatening all of us, just like that woman did. And that in some cases, just a little mental illness might be enough to take that belief - which many liberal believers tell us we are wrong to criticize - into the realm of having to act on it in horrible ways.

Far more a reach to say that this had "nothing to do with religion at all."

Audio hallucinations can be part of schizophrenia, but I don't really think hearing a call is always schizophrenia.

False perceptions of audio can be induced in a variety of ways, including chemically. Moreover, our brains will try to make sense out of repetitive sounds that have harmonic frequencies in the range of human voices. Hearing voices (that often can't quite be made out) in the sounds of things like running water, clothes dryers, dishwashers or a cross-trainer is something most of us experience. These events can be disturbing but they are NOT a sign of schizophrenia.

Even if mental illness is present, delusions and hallucinations occur as symptoms in more than one disorder. So going to schizophrenia by default is going to be a mistake sometimes.

Finally, apart from hearing audio perceptions of anything, the terminology of "hearing a calling" seems to be a somewhat slippery phrase. People who 'have heard a calling' may be describing their urge/desire to do something rather than reporting perceived sounds. Some religious denominations create a culture that encourages describing such experience as "hearing the call." People responding in a culturally appropriate manner would probably not be seen as manifesting a symptom of mental illness from inside that culture.

It may not be a dangerous form of mental illness, but if you actually think you hear a disembodied voice telling you to quit your job, sell your house, and go serve the poor -- meaning this is more than just a feeling you get, more than something you interpret as a "message" encoded into some series of fairly ordinary events -- then yes, you're probably mentally ill. I rate the probability of insanity a whole lot higher than the probability that deities are actually speaking to people, regardless of whether their messages are kindly or cruel.

Apart from the possibility of auditory hallucinations, I think it raises serious questions about the judgement and sanity of a person if they simply accept the authority of "the voices" in their heads rather than questioning their own sanity and seeking help. Hearing voices is bad enough. Automatically going along with those voices is much worse.

subjective reports that shows a variety of "break-through" symptoms
not the experience of a single person.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qb8wQjwVu2g

I encountered enough of them when I worked with people who had mental illnesses. I wouldn't go so far as to say, however, that anybody who claims they hear the voice of god has a mental illness. It's such a prevalent claim in our society, and certainly many of the people who make it are lying for a purpose.



That being said, it does seem strange that if a person says they hear voices it's considered suspect. If they say they hear god we're supposed to nod politely. Why the distinction? Is the person who hears aliens somehow less sane than the one who hears a god? Why?

from criticism. It's worked for Christianity for centuries.

It seems that his baptism in the Jordan was his first psychotic episode, which makes sense, Schizophrenia usually starts in ones late teens or early 20s