by bubba flavel 49 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
MidwichCuckoo
I'd agree with you on that, when I came into the Borg I met more people with depression than I had ever before. It's all the mind control and coments made to make you feel guilty by the GB.
I remember one poor brother in the cong who was suffering big time and the elders went to him and all they told him to do was "Pull himself together because it wasn't a real illness". Lets hope they get what's comming to them!!!!
.. Neither of us had to take them an extended period of time ,thank goodness ,but I know I would take them again if I ever needed them to get back on track .
Yes, everyone is different. But to those that just need a coping mechanism to get through the paranoid mentality of the cult, it works very well too. Brain-dead zombies sleeping all the time... waste of skin.
I'm glad that you're doing better, and look forward to the day when we both die in the fire of ghenna.
Blessings,
Shamus
As someone with a chemical brain disorder I take meds (Paxil, for one), which really help. I quit taking Depakote without consulting my psychiatrist. I'm very glad I stopped taking it, because it turns out that it was responsible for serious tremors I was having. People noticed how shaky my hands were. I'm really glad I quit taking it! I was a JW for approximately ten years. Toward the end I started feeling depressed. I don't think I could ever set foot in a Kingdom Hall again for any reason. Too toxic. Elders don't know how to treat or deal with mental illness. They don't really understand it for one thing. They just aren't cut out to help people with mental health issues.
SSRIs (today's typical anti-depressants) are useful for situational depression when part of therapy. They can be a supportive tool in a larger plan towards health, with the goal to be free of them.
From a mental health standpoint, I've known SO many Witnesses - good friends, most of them - who are so profoundly fucked in the head that I'm convinced more and more this religion creates more problems than it solves. The sad thing about me is that I was just fine (at least as a little boy) before the WT came into my life. I did OK for a while after I got baptized (for the wrong reasons - which my guess would be the motivation for about 90% of baptisms - face it, the candidates are getting younger and younger), but once I lost my faith in the WT I became so profoundly fucked up that it's almost beyond human description. Of course, had I responded to Christ's call and gotten the hell out, I probably would have been OK - a little scarred, perhaps, but not the walking dead. The biggest problem with the WT is that it asks so much and gives so little. There are so many criteria to meet and so much hard-to-swallow doctrine, and they simply don't supply you with the tools you need for success. Case in point: The new "generation" nonsense. One scripture about Joseph and his brothers to prop up that piece of doctrinal Swiss cheese. That's it! How are you supposed to do spiritual battle with a garment of filthy rags instead of a suit of armor?
Not to diss Tom Cruise too much- but the guy is a total uninformed idiot when it comes to mental health. When he got into it a few years ago with Matt Lauer dissing anti-depressants he was just beating the drum of the ignorant Scientologists and really most ignorant mind control cults in how they de-value the need for psychiatry and professional counseling in helping people cope with depression.
I knew a man I was studying with in the early 1980's in his second book AFTER he was baptized as a JW. He was paranoid/schizophrenic and was given to delusional hallucinations and fantasizing as another personality UNLESS he stayed on his anti-depressant medication. He lived with his older JW mother ( he was late 20's ) and when he went off his medication he would beat her up and use her as a punching bag. Sick. So the elders would go over and try to assist him ( like they were qualified - not ) and read him scriptures, etc. No use. Finally he went off his meds, got hit by a truck when walking on the road. Got laid up in the hospital. So then he got back on his medication, only to go off it again. He finally pushed it too far when standing in line at a bank behind a policeman and fantasized what it would be like pulling the policeman's gun out of his holster . He found out . The cop cold-cocked him and he got thrown in jail.
After getting out - the elders found him a share rental place in a halfway house where he wouldn't have access to his mother. They also DFed him for the police incident as well as using illegal drugs. And I heard a few years later he died of an apparent suicide / drug overdose.
But the bottom line is elders in Jehovah's Witnesses don't know squat about chemical depression like they should. They think every case of depression can be handled by attending meetings, doing personal study reading the WT and Awake , and going out in service. It's their cure all for EVERY problem Jehovah's Witnesses have . No wonder lots of JW's are on anti-depressants. They have elders that ignore the REAL problems and instead of having to actually DEAL with the people they send them away to study more. Did I say elders are as dumb as Tom Cruise ? O.K. I'll say it- elders are as dumb as Tom Cruise
Yes, but at least Tommy has some charisma.
I've heard about several schizophrenics and their struggles in the org. Most of them end up disfellowshipped. What the FUCK are they thinking letting these people join? It's a recipe for disaster! Nothing against schizophrenics, but the WT is absolutely NOT a religion for severely mentally ill people and my life's story bears this out beyond a reasonable doubt! Anybody with even SLIGHTLY paranoid tendency is NOT going to flourish in an organization that constantly tells you to stay the hell away from apostates and obey us, obey us, obey us! It's like a colorblind person trying to make a living as an interior decorator... or something like that.
In fact, the watchtower is hypocrite about mental health issues. In some articles it will say that the psychologists and psychiatrists opinions are no good, and in other articles it will recognize mental illness and the need to seek help with a psychiatrist. But very often, witnesses who are mentally ill will be disfellowshipped because they don't follow the watchtower principles. However this is not the way the "outside world" treat mentally ill people. The "world" helps them instead of rejecting them. Moreover, even if a seriously mentally ill person (like one having schizophrenia) commits a crime according to the world(which is serious), he/she will considered not criminally responsible and will get psychiatric help and financial help instead of going to jail. The watchtower doesn't help the mentally ill people in any way, it just get rid of them.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cO-b65W-zQs
Jehovah's Witnesses and Mental Illness by Dr. Jerry Bergman
I recommend you to watch this video.
Beiing a jw does not cause mental illness, which are physical just like cancer and diabetes. Are some people with mental illness attracted to the WTS and the assurance of a cure in the "new system"--yes that can happen.
http://www.jwfacts.com/watchtower/mental-issues.php
I'd like to see more studies on this.
