Posts by LisaRose

51

Dallas Texas 5 Police Officers dead & 6 wounded ?

by smiddy in

and it is still ongoing ?.

obviously sparked off by the 2 afro american citizens gunned down by police officers these past few days.?.

when is this sort of violence going to end ?.

LisaRose

hy would anyone assume these criminal gunmen, who shot the cops, got these guns legally?
Why would anyone think that, if guns were outlawed for citizens, that events like this would not happen? The Boston Bombers used a pressure cooker. Should we ban pressure cookers?

Well, some countries are getting nuclear weapons. Should we just throw our hands up and say, Oh well, North Korea can get them, so anybody can, let's just give up, because we aren't going to win?

An extreme example, but just following your logic. There is no reason for any private citizen to have high capacity weapons. End. Of. Story. We could have banned them years ago and greatly reduced the number now floating around, but some people don't see the difference between gun control and gun bans and fight even common sense gun legislation. As long as we have a powerful gun lobby and a congress that refuses to act, we will keep getting what we are getting. That you will never get rid of them all is a red herring, you can and will get rid of a lot of them and make them much harder to obtain.

28

What is the current suicide and mental illness rate among JWs and previous members

by 060702015 in

jw
friends

there seems to be no current data on this information and there is questions concerning the validation of past data.

apparently there is high rate of mental illness and suicide.

jehovahs witnesses suicide rate 5 to 10 times above average.

LisaRose

Are the mental illnesses preexisiting? or develops within or after leaving the organization ?

I think a little of both. I think the religion attracts people that are struggling, but I also think their teachings cause some people to suffer to a certain extent. I think if you are talking about more serious issues, like schizophrenia or bipolar, then there has to be some kind of predisposition, it's unlikely that the religion could cause it, although it might make it worse. But if you are talking depression, then it's possible they could cause it, it's a religion of guilt. I think in most cases it's a combination of both, nature and nurture.

With my daughter I have to say I can't blame her issues entirely on the religion, she was always going to be different. But when you have a child who worries about everything, having her exposed to the concept of Armageddon on a regular basis was probably not a healthy thing. She was about seven or eight when the Yearbook about the JWs in the concentration camp came out. She obsessed about being put in a concentration camp for a year. But did that cause her issues? Who knows? Most children were obviously not affected in that way. Maybe she was the canary in the coal mine, maybe she would have turned out the same anyway. She also obsessed about growing up and having to pay taxes, she actually cried on her birthday because she had to get older and pay taxes. She's fine now btw.

70

Did I open the gate to the realm of demons?

by redpilltwice in

this is what happened.

i had a sore tendon in my wrist.

i could work with it, but nevertheless the pain was there.

LisaRose

My neighbors told me this story. They got a Newfoundland dog for nothing because she had a genetic defect and wasn't expected to live for more than a year or two. They were walking the dog when someone they didn't know walked up to the dog and put her hands on it. The woman then said. "Your dog was sick, but I fixed her". The dog lived to a ripe old age. Well, a ripe age for a hundred and fifty pound dog.

28

What is the current suicide and mental illness rate among JWs and previous members

by 060702015 in

jw
friends

there seems to be no current data on this information and there is questions concerning the validation of past data.

apparently there is high rate of mental illness and suicide.

jehovahs witnesses suicide rate 5 to 10 times above average.

LisaRose

Not sure why you think this is an inevitable outcome of such disorders.

I don't, not at all. Things arent as bad as they used to be, but there is still a stigma to being mentally ill and an attitude that the religion should be enough to fix your problems. I have been out for a while, but from what I read here, things havent changed that much, its not acceptable to admit you are unhappy.
Given the distrust of "worldly" authority, the belief that they live in a "spiritual paradise" and their fear of "bringing reproach upon Jehovah", its not hard to make a case that Jehovahs Witnesses are less likely to get adequate mental health care than average. So using only statistics on how many Jehovahs Witness seek mental health care is not really a good indicator of whether they actually have more or less mental illness than average.

28

What is the current suicide and mental illness rate among JWs and previous members

by 060702015 in

jw
friends

there seems to be no current data on this information and there is questions concerning the validation of past data.

apparently there is high rate of mental illness and suicide.

jehovahs witnesses suicide rate 5 to 10 times above average.

LisaRose

The criterion for mental illness and depression was that the person had been admitted to a mental hospital or had been treated by a psychiatrist. That is an objective criterion and you do not need to understand mental illness to reach the conclusions he did.

As everyone knows, the religion discourages people from consulting psychologists or psychiatrists, so that you can't reliably use this as criteria for determining mental illness in this religion. Someone who is experienced in these kind of studies and impartial would have figured that out, but Rolf is not impartial and not experienced, he is too close to the subject to see clearly.

Jehovah's Witnesses are told that just about any problem can be fixed by more study, meetings, prayer and field service and to be wary of "worldly" therapists. I know of many Jehovah's Witnesses that were obviously suffering from some kind of mental illness but who never got treatment of any kind. Elders have no training in therapy or counseling and are not qualified to determine if someone needs treatment, and most JWs will consult an elder before going to any kind of therapy.

And your statement that you don't need experience in mental health to interpret statistics on mental health is patently ridiculous. As the Mark Twain quote goes, there are three kinds of lies; lies, damn lies and statistics. Statistics have to be interpreted to be meaningful, and how good can the interpretation be if the person involved has no training in the field and worse, is obviously biased?

This whole study is a fraud in my opinion.

28

What is the current suicide and mental illness rate among JWs and previous members

by 060702015 in

jw
friends

there seems to be no current data on this information and there is questions concerning the validation of past data.

apparently there is high rate of mental illness and suicide.

jehovahs witnesses suicide rate 5 to 10 times above average.

LisaRose

As an example, my daughter was raised as a Jehovah's Witness. She began to have mental health issues by age fourteen and so wasn't qualified for baptism, if she had been baptized she would have been disfellowshipped for suicide attempts. She would not have counted in any statistical study of the congregation, they could say they didn't have any mentally ill in the congregation and been truthful, but their practices make that kind of statistical analysis meaningless.

As another example, I knew of a Jehovah's Witnesses who began hearing voices, a sign of schizophrenia. He was disfellowshipped, as they assumed he was demonized.

The study is meaningless because they shoot their wounded.

28

What is the current suicide and mental illness rate among JWs and previous members

by 060702015 in

jw
friends

there seems to be no current data on this information and there is questions concerning the validation of past data.

apparently there is high rate of mental illness and suicide.

jehovahs witnesses suicide rate 5 to 10 times above average.

LisaRose

do not know of any study carried out on the mental health of ex-Witnesses and have no idea how that could be done with any reliability.

Exactly. Which is why Rolf's study is less than worthless.

Picking congregations at random does not make up for the obvious bias of the person doing the study. Being a lecturer in Semitic studies does not qualify you to do a study on mental health, it's frankly laughable. He may mean well but what are his credentials in mental health? What are his credentials in statistical analysis? Was this even peer reviewed?

You are talking about a religion where it is not acceptable to be unhappy, much less admit to mental illness, so how accurate could any casual study actually be? And in a religion that disfellowships people for bad conduct, how meaningful is any one time study anyway? Anyone seriously mentally ill will soon get disfellowshipped, which is going to skew the results. You would have to do a long term study from birth to determine how many actually became mentally ill, which I doubt was done here.

I don't even know how he got this published. It would be very interested to know how that happened.

26

Are gays really condemned in the Bible?

by jws in

so i was having this argument with a friend about the westboro baptist idiots.

my point is that while they are horrible people, they are pretty much right in that the bible is against gays because it has verses in both the old and the new testament.

which is one of many reasons to reject the bible as merely man-made rules from ancient middle-easterners.. and she argued that there are problems in translation, etc.

LisaRose

I think the bible clearly does condemn homosexuality, but then it also very clearly condemns a lot of things. Most Christian religions these days have adopted a position of following the spirit of Christ's teachings without necessarily following the bible to the letter, and I think that is a good thing. Even in early Christian days there were different interpretations of things, so why shouldn't there be now? Even very fundamentalist religions like the JWs pick and choose what things they get their undies in a bunch about, so no group can really say they follow the bible perfectly anyway.

Jesus said of a prostitute that "he who is without sin should cast the first stone", clearly indicating a moving away from the Jewish practice of following laws to the letter. In view of what we know now about homosexuality, that it isn't a choice, I think many Christians see that the more compassionate choice is to leave it up to the conscience of the individual.

I have read the accounts of many gay Jehovah's witnesses and seen their struggle, their feelings of worthlessness and guilt, it's heartbreaking. No matter how hard they tried or how much they prayed they couldn't be other than what they were and they suffered for it because of the religion's harsh stance. To condemn them and treat them as unworthy of love and acceptance is to me the less Christian path.

28

What is the current suicide and mental illness rate among JWs and previous members

by 060702015 in

jw
friends

there seems to be no current data on this information and there is questions concerning the validation of past data.

apparently there is high rate of mental illness and suicide.

jehovahs witnesses suicide rate 5 to 10 times above average.

LisaRose

Rolf Furili was a lecturer in Semtic languages, at Oslo University and is a Jehovah's Witness, so this entire study is highly questionable. His chief claim to fame prior to this was defending the Watchtower's questionable fall of Babylon chronology, he is not an expert in the field of mental illness and he has an obvious bias. This is a shameful attempt by the Watchtower to hide their problem with Mental illness and suicide, they have shown in the past that they will use dishonest methods like this to prop up their beliefs.

From / Wikipedia

Furuli has attempted to defend the religious views of Jehovah's Witnesses—of which Furuli is a member[3]—including their view that Jerusalem was destroyed by theBabylonians in 607 BC rather than the broadly recognised dating of its destruction in 587 BC.[4]

Also from Wikipedia

In a 2004 issue of Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, Lester L. Grabbe, professor of theology at the University of Hull, said of Furuli's study: "Once again we have an amateur who wants to rewrite scholarship. ... F. shows little evidence of having put his theories to the test with specialists in Mesopotamian astronomy and Persian history."[5]

12

Headaches vs. Migraines

by Coded Logic in

a while back a coworker was telling me she had a migraine in the morning and had to take some aspirin before coming to work.

i was like, "yeah, that wasn't a migraine dear.

that was just a headache.

LisaRose

Not all migraine headaches involve debilitating pain, but they do usually involve more than just head pain. A few times I got a weird migraine that affected the vision in one eye. The very center of my vision was completely out of focus in a sawtooth pattern. I was alarmed until my husband told me he gets the same thing occasionally. It went away after a few hours.