The link between Mental Illness and Religion

Correlating the link between religious teachings and mental disorders is truly astonishing and frightenlngly real.

Mankind must accept this concept as feasible and make adjustments to correct it.

Are mental defects "learned" behaviors or birth defects?

The 'learned' "fear of God" necessitates an honest look at damages caused by organized religions to society today, or more specifically as providing a real possibility of being the causation of "external conditions" that promote mental disorders in our global society."

Some causes of mental defects are evident:

• trauma to the fetus during the birth process
• misuse/abuse of drugs by the pregnant mother
• alcohol & cigarette use during pregnancy
• external trauma to the fetus in vivo
• unhealthy diets, poor hygiene, STDs during pregnancy
• familial blood relations between mother & father

Little is still known about the intrinsic workings of the brain.

Other ''illnesses" once thought to be inherited or "genetic" may be nothing more than 'learned' behaviors that cause "chemical" disorders of the brain triggered by irrational or illogical guilt and fears, is a valid possibility.

A closer look at the broader mental disorders, shows a disturbing connection to the basic religious indoctrination processes in the very young, and their naturally impressionable mind developmental processes.

Those religious 'impressions" that are widely accepted as "normal" and "encouraged" practices by most adults today, need to be given a re-examination of the actual effects they have on the developing child's mind.

Old staid ideas are still taught as true and relevant in lower schools and colleges. Extreme "conservative" ideas, may be more harmful in children, and society as a whole, than previously thought.

Just because some old ideas and beliefs were (are) taught as truths do not magically make them so, or even valid, or pertinent, to reality.

We are taught that the teachings of religion are based on facts - we now know with certainty that this is not true. The same holds true for the archaic teachings of "experts" in the field of psychiatry.

If we are taught things that are invalid, they cannot be made valid by virtue of their historical age and outdated reasoning to reach these conclusions.

The modern day mental 'disorders' we are being "treated" for need need a closer look at what really caused them; plus the intentions of pharmaceutical manufacturers in promoting drugs that are at best questionable in their "cures" by repression of emotions instead of reversing the damages of "learned" disorders.

1. Obsessive Compulsive Disorders:

A condition where an individual feels compelled to do a repetitive act for no apparent reason. This also include "germophobia" - the morbid fear of germs - causing excessive hand washing.

Relative to religion - children are constantly bombarded with erroneous ideas that sex is "bad" and "dirty" and they must not "touch themselves down their" without the differentiation being made between self pleasuring and the need for good hygiene.

No expansion of this idea needs to be made in order to understand the damages of such silly ''teaching'' to young minds.

Couple the OCDC behaviors with those that are actually part of some religious ceremonies. (kneeling and kissing the ground several times a day; visiting the wailing wall; repetitive prayers for absolution of imagined sins, alternate standing, kneeling, and sitting during religious ceremonies, just to name a few).

2. Manic Depressive Disorder:

A condition where a person swings from periods of mania (mental or physical hyperactivity) to depression (withdrawn and sad for no apparent reason).

Although there is some link between this disorder and an imbalance of chemicals in the brain, there is no known physical reason why this occurs in some people and not in others.

A child's developing mind filled with confusion regarding ambiguous religious teaching about what is 'right and what is wrong', 'good or bad', or ''evil'' may be the catalyst that causes these chemical imbalances in the first place.

3. Panic attacks, anxiety and morbid fears:

These are "nervous" conditions in which a person experiences unfounded fear and/or guilt without any apparent reason.

They are due to conflicts in the mind trying to reconcile reality with supernatural, or mystically symbolic, beliefs that are contradictory to rationality, logic or common sense.

4. Paranoia:

A psychological delusion of persecution, or grandeur, with or without, hallucinations.

It is the tendency on the part of an individual, or group, toward excessive, or irrational suspiciousness and distrustfulness of others.

Religions teach and promote their particular dogmas as the only true path to eternal bliss in another realm, and it puts undue pressure on young developing minds in their attempt to reconcile their roles in life in contrast with those individuals of "other" faiths.

The opposite being delusions of grandeur. An exaggerated condition in which we perceive ourselves, or our groups, as superior to others who do not share our personal belief system.

5. Hysteria:

A psychoneurosis marked by an emotional excitability and disturbances of the psychic sensory, vasomotor, and visceral functions.

It is the unmanageable, and emotional excesses, within the basic teaching of religion, that are contradictory in a meaningful conceptual reconciliation of normal physical and emotional growth in a child's mind, that lead to chemical changes in the brain that should not be present in the normally developing child's mind.

Children to grown adults, attempt to assuage these unresolved conflicts by equating their validity with the concept that .."...if this many people believe something to be true - then it must be true..."

This is known as mass hypnosis, or mass hysteria, and its reconciliatory consequences are evident in the fighting between religious denominations to prove they are valid and rational when in fact they are neither.

6. Suicidal Ideations:

These are nothing more than the results of conflicts in the mind when we see ourselves as "bad" or "evil" by the religious definitions forced on the minds of children.

Those forced (brainwashed) ideas cannot be reconciled in the real world where such guilt from the "natural" emotional explorations, or fear that the God of wrath presented by religion, will somehow torture the individual for what is natural curiosity and natural development of that individual.

These unresolved internal conflicts coupled with society in general judging the thoughts of others, their particular birthrights, and innate feelings, lead to suicidal thoughts, that lead to actions of self punishment, and viewing death, as the only resolution to this internal conflict.

The phobias people are forced to live with are generally fears resulting from what was put into a child's mind, before their age of reasoning can adequately function to rationalize and categorize those fears in order to negate them.

Those phobias include: fear, hatred, dislike, aversion, craze, obsession, neurosis, psychosis, neurotic symptom, neurotic manifestations, mania, paranoia, distaste, loathing, repugnance, abomination, disgust, terror, horror, abhorrence, detestation, antipathy, odium, execration and aversions, to name a few.

These phobias lead to social problems such as agoraphobia, claustrophobia, hypo-phobia, bacteriophobia and many more, that people inflict upon themselves as a self punishment resulting from negative input into their psyches during their prepubescence, and before the age of reasoning and self awareness matures.

These phobias often go unresolved throughout the person's life time.

Organized religion is a deeply rooted social problem that is global in nature and scale; and severely debilitating to the majority of humanity.

The religious deceivers are cheating individuals out of embracing their 'spirituality' as a real part of the human make up.

The deceivers are replacing what should be a reverent, deep respect and awe, for the glory of that which constitutes the overall make up of the "whole" human experience; with debilitating fear, unfounded guilt and misinformation in order to continue to control the individuals en masse.

My favorite quote is: "Humanity is lost within the material world. Self serving captivates the connection between all things and we lose our sense of oneness with the universe" (anon)

by: d.william 06/26/2013