any takers?
How much mental illness in your congregation?
by badboy 11 Replies latest jw friends
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iiz2cool
Just before I left the congregation about 99% of its members suffered some form of mental illness. Just after I left the number rose to 100%.
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badboy
Does it give a fine witnesses 2 every1?
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Nosferatu
All of them if you take into consideration they're all controlled by a cult. As for ones that truly had problems, I'm not sure. I know of a couple who always had problems. They're a very nice couple, but they'd be better off getting out. I can barely recall the people who were in my cong. I remember one kid a couple of years younger than me who seemed kinda simple. His nose was always in the air, his mouth hanging open; it was like his brain was heavier at the back of his head.
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pudd
I have been a member of 4 different congregations over the last 16 years. I know that a lot are suffering with verying forms of mental illness.
I n each cong I was in there was on avevage 4 or 5 with serious problems. bad enough for hospitalization at times.
I suppose the great amount of pressure put on witnesses from the socitiey takes it toll.
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Doubtfully Yours
A lot of visible mental illness in my actual cong, and more so in my old cong.
For starters, the PO is a nut with no people skills whatsoever. The elder in charge of the ministerial school is another kookie, and people recognize it openly and even make fun of him. The elder that conducts the watchtower study is crazy, obsessed with the end and someone that doesn't have any type of life outside of the WTBTS and wants everybody to behave just as he does or else he marks them as 'spiritually weak'; this last particular one calls people late at night or really early in the morning to talk about kingdom hall related stuff. There's a couple of ministerial servants that behave nutty also, and the funny stuff is that all of these people's kids are mentally ill too, some physically as well and that's sad.
In the congregation I used to attend, in the New England area, the number of people with mental illness outnumbered the normal people. I used to always complaint about that, and it discouraged me greatly.
How can an outfit supposedly belonging to the Almighty be led in its majority by nuts???!!!
DY
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itsallgoodnow
There's lots of depression and anxiety problems, and people deal with these things in different ways. I once heard from a District Convention that Witness teens were more "well adjusted" than other teens, but I find that difficult to prove, and even more difficult to believe. It's that kind of stuff they say to get people to think that as a whole Witnesses are calm and grounded, but in reality, the environment is toxic and wears everybody down.
As far as really severe mental illnesses, I'm sure there are a few, but probably they would have had these illnesses before they became a Witness and they were looking for a way to deal with their huge insurmountable problems by joining a religion that claimed to have all their answers.
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Lady Lee
It's been a while but I recall one diagnosed schizophrenic person and one alcoholic htat were known to everyone.
But the incidence of stress-related health problems was epidemic. Many people suffered from physical problems all of which were aggravated by stress. Many had problems that were rare illnesses or just very odd things no one had ever heard of before. I suspect their bodies were just screaming at them that they were in a toxic religion but they could not hear that. I know mine was and after I left most of my health problems disappeared
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badboy
liz2cool,were u the only sane 1 there?
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donkey
All believers, including JWs, are mentally ill.
If you describe people who have an imaginary (cannot be proved) friends and who talk to the imaginary friends then are they mentally ill? If they said they had an invisible dog and kept talking to it would they seem mentally ill? How is this different - except for the fact that people do it en masse and the fact that they have done it for a long time and now they get away with it because they call their imaginary friend "God" and they tell the rest of us we need faith in order to know the friend is not imaginary but is in fact real?