Wednesday, July 3, 2013

Religion and Mental Illness

Being an atheist in the mental health field offers a unique view into those living with and recovering from mental illness.  For those of you who do not know, I work as a mental health paraprofessional (MHPP) now and plan to go on for a license in therapy and a doctorate in psychology.  To protect the confidentiality of the people I help treat, any and all names will be changed.

I am on a treatment team that serves those who are recovering from a mental illness.  Nearly all the people I help treat are working to recover from schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, and bipolar I disorder.  Anyone who has taken even just a general psychology class should be able to tell you what these three mental illnesses have in common.  They all share the common symptom of delusions.  What is a delusion, though?  A delusion is a strong belief that persists despite strong or overwhelming evidence to the contrary.  For example, one person I'm helping recover has strong delusions.  Let's call her Mary.  Mary believes she was in the Vietnam War as an infant.  She calls herself the Baby on the Battlefield.  Mary also believes she is married to Steven Seagal.  Another delusion Mary holds is her belief that she has a license to kill, but it is locked up at the Pentagon where the government is holding her VA benefits.  She believes that while in Vietnam, she was shot several times and has a bionic body.  Her legs are made of granite, her lungs made of glass, and she has steel plates in her head.  Mary was not born until after the Vietnam War ended, infants do not fight in wars, she has no license to kill, and because she was never in the service, Mary does not have VA benefits.  There is strong evidence to the contrary of all these delusions.

What does any of this have to do with religion, though?  Religion by its very nature is a delusion.  The DSM-IV-TR, however, has a specific clause excluding religious beliefs from the criteria for mental illness.  The idea behind it is that for something to qualify as a disorder, it has to cause marked distress, dysfunction, or be deviant.  If one person believes she can close her eyes, clasp her hands, and have a conversation with the creator of everything, we'd probably call that a delusion.  If a million people do this, it's perfectly fine.  Usually, religion doesn't cause distress or dysfunction in the same way delusions Mary has, but their nature is the same:  Grandiose and unsupported by evidence.

The reason I bring this up is that delusions are hard to overcome.  They're hard to overcome due to the fact that religion is not considered a delusion.  How is it we ask for evidence for Mary's claims, but if she turns around and says, "So, I was talking to God....," that's perfectly fine?  Mary's belief that she has a license to kill may be a problem for her.  Suppose she attempts to kill someone.  Given that people with mental illness are more likely to be a victim than the aggressor, it is unlikely Mary will try to use the license to kill, but suppose for a moment.  That would cause marked distress and dysfunction, because she would be in jail.  It still poses and interesting issue in the treatment of mental illness.  "You need to show evidence that you are a veteran, Mary.  You don't have to show evidence that you were talking with the creator of everything."

Religious beliefs don't always cause any distress.  Granted the innate prejudice that most religions promote does cause distress in followers.  The religious people who accept homosexuality and don't treat women like inferior beings will not be distressed by those things.  They understand that homosexuality is not an abomination and women are equal to men.  They have overcome a delusion.

Of course, that raises a new question.  If you understand that your religion is wrong about homosexuality, slavery, rape, murder, genocide, and women, how do we know it's not wrong about the rest?  Why not toss the religion aside and create a secular moral code that is based on an understanding of reality instead an assertion of authority?