All i can say is wow!!
Article on Mental Health and witnesses
by chikikie 18 Replies latest watchtower scandals
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chikikie
thanks, thought i did the link right, lol
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dwtnphotog
I didn't get a chance to read the entire article. I'm supposed to be working....
But I can see that being completely the case! I know the abuse I suffered at the hand of my father vs. the idea of a heavenly father were just too much for my brain to get as a kid. I know I have had struggles all my life because of the worthless feelings and "mental anguish"
I can see how the indoctrination can totally mess with your mind!
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Sirona
Interesting article, thanks for the link. I can see some bias there but overall its very interesting to note some of the studies which have been done.
Sirona
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hubert
I didn't get to read all of this yet, but what I did read I found very interesting, so I thought I'd bttt it. Some really good parts in this. This is a keeper.
Hubert
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steve2
This is not a recent article, nor is it based on "scientific" rersearch. You won't find it in any professional peer-reviewed journal. Jerry Bergman's account is largely anecdotal and excludes any view other than the convenient one; namely, The watchtower causes increased mental illness. As has been discussed in detail on this forum, his work is anything but scientific in design. He is fully entitled to his interesting views and, yes, in his work, he saw many witnesses who were clearly struggling with significant personal and mental health issues. Whether you can extrapolate from that a justification for the view that witnesses experience mental illness rates higher than the general population is largely based on how much you want to believe what Dr Bergman states.
Complicating factors include the following:
The JW message attracts people who already feel out of place in the world. They bring their full range of problems, including already existing mental-health problems with them into the organization.
Also, even if it could be established that the witnesses did have a larger representation of mentally unwell members (compared to the general population), the direction of causation is not inevitable (i.e, caused by the watchtower). Alternative explanations could be: The persecution the witnesses suffer from the world causes their mental health problems or they were mentally unwell even before they came into the religion. That Dr Bergman totally ignores plausibly alternative explanations is academically lazy for a man claiming to follow the scieintific method.
It's interesting to note a parallel here from the past: Back in the 1960s, many so-called scientific studies claimed that homosexuals research and the "studies" that did exist were largely speculative and theory-driven (e.g., homosexuality is bad, therefore it causes the problems experienced by homosexuals). Few people bothered to question this faulty reasoning, and fewer still thought to wonder whether society's exclusion of rights for homosexuals may have contributed to at least some problems experienced by homosexuals. It's the same with the so-called "scientific" studies on the witnesses. Interestingly, the message seems to be getting through: There have been no recent studies daring to echo the simplistic conclusions of Dr Bergman - and a marked absence of any respected scientific journals printing such appalling reasoning.
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steve2
It's interesting to note a parallel here from the past: Back in the 1960s, many so-called scientific studies claimed that homosexuals research and the "studies" that did exist were largely speculative and theory-driven (e.g., homosexuality is bad, therefore it causes the problems experienced by homosexuals). Few people bothered to question this faulty reasoning, and fewer still thought to wonder whether society's exclusion of rights for homosexuals may have contributed to at least some problems experienced by homosexuals. It's the same with the so-called "scientific" studies on the witnesses. Interestingly, the message seems to be getting through: There have been no recent studies daring to echo the simplistic conclusions of Dr Bergman - and a marked absence of any respected scientific journals printing such appalling reasoning.
Error in above paragraph: Should read
" It's interesting to note a parallel here from the past: Back in the 1960s, many so-called scientific studies claimed that homosexuals had rates of mental illness significantly higher than herterosexuals and the "studies" that did exist were largely speculative and theory-driven (e.g., homosexuality is bad, therefore it causes the problems experienced by homosexuals).
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monophonic
is this for a school paper or thesis?
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hubert
Thanks for clarifying the article, Steve2.
I agree, it did sound biased.
Still, there are some good parts in this article to read, so I don't think it's a total waste.
Hubert