Mental illness and religion

I work in mental health.

Many mental health workers and some NGO health providers are Christian.

One clinical study showed that the most intractable mental illness with the longest staying category of residents in our mental health service was males with schizophrenia. The most common general diagnosis by number was females with depression and sometimes PTSD or Borderline Personality, however stay was shorter and the recovery rate is higher for these.

So what should Christian mental health providers do with those schizophrenics who have religious delusions? What do we do if our residents are persecuted by their delusional religious beliefs? What do we do if they feel chased by demons? What do we do if they literally fear attack by Satan? What do we do if they think that they have made a detrimental pact with God and fear divine wrath if they break it? What do we do if they think that they are an incarnation of Jesus? What do we do...?

I know what some people do, even I am not innocent of these charges. They avoid the question. They don't challenge their ideas. They postpone confrontation until somebody "qualified" like a Pastor can talk to them (if that ever happens). They nibble around the edges with careful words. They pray with them / at them and hope that they take the hint. They give them Bible verses and inquire gently, which more often than not only implicitly strengthens their dangerous delusion by the unspoken agreement with their underlying religious paradigm.

What they don't say are things like, "that doesn't sound like realistic thinking to me", "I don't think that is right", "those things don't exist," or "I wouldn't worry about that."

They don't tell them that they're talking a load of nonsense.

Why? Because which parts can we criticise?
Oh, yes, Satan exists except he's just not really out to get you... well, perhaps, but only in a general sense.
Yes, the Creator of the Universe thinks that you are special and formed you in your mother's womb but your DNA isn't the divine template for humanity.
Sure, it's historically true that this guy Jesus incarnated as a man who was fully human and fully divine but you're just a regular bloke.
Ancient Israel made lots of promises to God and was punished for not keeping the commandments and the law but your secret pact with God just isn't realistic.

In April, after a tirade of mentally disturbed, religious, anti-atheist, and anti-evolution YouTube posts, Anthony Powell of Michigan randomly took a shotgun to 20-year-old College peer, Asia McGowan, and then killed himself.

What would I have done if Tony had been in my care? What COULD I have done?

"Yes, Tony, I know that it says vessels of wrath... but God actually loves atheists too."
"Yes, Tony, I know that it mentions 6 days and it sounds like Jesus refers to it literally, but it's really all just metaphors."
"No no, Tony, what you're saying doesn't sound like the God that I know. Trust me, your version isn't biblical."

But I know what I would have done. I would have spent the day hanging out with Tony, having some conversations and watching him get more and more annoyed and animated. I would have written an M by Tony's name in a folder, circled it, and then told the Staff on the next shift that "Tony is on Monitor for elevated mood and agitation."
Then I would have gone home and seen him on the evening news.

The Re-unleashing Begins?

I know, I'm a bad, bad blogger.

But I've been thinking. Specifically, I've done a semester's worth of thinking, reading, philosophising, learning, and generally pondering to interesting effect.

I've still got SO MUCH TO GO. So much to learn. The world is so big and life is so enormously complex and rich. Awesome.

I really should get back to regularly posting here. I've remained busy and silent for long enough. My essays for semester 1 are pretty much complete (one remains), and I have a two or so weeks until next semester. I should try to pen my thoughts down as I learn next semester.

To be honest, I've been hiding. Hiding and hibernating. Just to wet your appetite and ignite your curiousity, here are some of the ideas that I have been contemplating with fervour...

By Topic:

Philosophy, theology, Christianity, atheism, cognitive science, psychology, "neurotheology," biology, evolution & the origin of life, morality & meta-ethics, physical cosmology (origins of the universe, origin and nature of time, the big bang, inflation, and the origins of symmetry/asymmetry), quantum physics, biblical archeology, origins of our existing biblical manuscripts, historicity of and evidence for the events of the New Testament (such as extra-biblical information about the life of Jesus), and, more recently, information on pre-nicene religious texts and beliefs.

Lots of stuff goin' on up in my head.

I have also seen a collection of debates starring Alister McGrath, opposition including but not limited to Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Peter Atkins. They inspired me to start to compile questions that I would like answers to based on McGraths major points of argument. I may possibly get around to discussing them here on the blog. I have simply sorted them into groups, some questions are similar because they come up in multiple debates.

List of questions:

Morality and Meaning:
Does Christianity add and fulfill our longing for what is right/good & correct us when necessary, or does it go too far and add anything positively immoral?
Is there a link between belief in god and violence?
What does research tell us about the empirical effect that religion has on people? (Why would this matter? Does this prove anything?)
Is the damage done by religion typical or fringe? Who are the normal people and who are the fanatics?
Do all worldviews have the same capacity to animate people in morally reprehensible ways? Is there something about human nature that explains this?
Can one have a viable moral system without a transcendent basis?
Is an evolutionary account of morality adequate to do the job?
Does an ‘enlightenment worldview’ lead to intolerance, conflict and violence?
Is postmodernity good?
Can christianity survive postmodernity?

Good Reasons vs Scientific Proofs:
Proving God vs. giving reasons for God. Are ‘reasons’ enough?
Is it wrong to say that the simplest explanation is the best one?
How do we know what God is like?
Can the results of the scientific examinations in the natural sciences be interpreted either to support religion or to support atheism, depending on agenda?
Is it true that, “science, by its legitimate methods, cannot adjudicate the God question”? Does nature in itself and of itself force us to either Christian, agnostic or atheist?
Does science remove the conceptual space for god?
Does science put us in a position where atheism is the best explanation?

Faith and Belief:
Is atheism a faith?
The origins of faith: Can they be explained? Meme theory? Otherwise?
What is belief? Can you choose what you believe?
Is Christianity wish-fulfillment? Is Atheism wish-fulfillment?

Biblical stuff:
Are the scriptures inerrant? Does biblical inerrancy matter?
Does archeology support the OT stories?
Is their proof of Jesus outside scripture?
What historical proof do we have of the resurrection?

If you have any particularly burning interest from any of the above then just leave me a comment and shall proffer my opinion once I think of something clever to say about it.

Over-celebration FAIL

I love failblog



So good

Javalujah!

Quite possibly the best YouTube video ever:

What if Starbucks marketed like a church? A parable.


It's funny looking at the comments on the original page though; some people get various messages being made about some church cultures, whereas others think this is damning of Starbucks... brilliant.

Tire fail

My tire blew a while back and - because it happened as I was coming down my street - I hobbled home pretty much on the rim and so my car sat growing cobwebs.

I finally need to get my A into G because some friends think my car might be nice to do a New Year's trip in but, lo, I have run into a bit of a pickle.

My car is stuck at my place because the tire is blown.

I need to repair the tire.

To repair the tire I thought I could either lug it in a friends car to the tire repair shop or change to the emergency tire and get it there myself.

So I jack up my car, whip out the tire-changing-apparatus, and discover that I can't undo the nuts on my mags!

I have the parts that were sold with the car sitting in my boot space but the nut-undoer-thingy is probably the ORIGINAL part and not the part designed to undo my mags!

So I need to take the car to Mag & Turbo so that they can undo it with their universal keys but I can't take the car there because I need to change the tire but I can't change the tire because I don't have a universal key.

*sigh*

Coffee is my home-boy & other miracle cures

Some fascinating tips on how to avoid neurological problems:

1) If you want to avoid Parkinson's Disease...

...have another latte.

Caffeine is protective to some extent and nobody knows why. But who cares whyyy? Make mine a triple shot, thanks.

2) If you want to avoid Alzheimer's Disease...

...make it a Fillet O'Fish.

Maybe not, but Omega-3 Fatty Acids found in fish (particularly oily ones like herring, mackerel, sardines, and anchovies, I believe -- basically all the awesome ones :P) will help there.

As a plus it may also have some positive effect on cardiac disease and cancer. You go girl.

I also recall some BBC documentary that talked about the positive benefit of Omega-3 on learning. You don't have to ask me twice to rip open some kippers. Fishilicious.

And, lastly, in general don't forget to...

3) Use it or lose it.

Work it, work it, lobesercize people! I wanna see those sulci sweat!

Having a fit brain isn't that much of a stupid idea.

Disciplined exercise of your brain by performing challenging tasks can lead to a whole host of benefits including reversing the declines caused by dementia and Alzheimers, as well as improving general cognitive processes and speed even in areas where you didn't specifically train towards.

Now if only I could transfer my brain into a suspension fluid hooked up to the internet I wouldn't have to worry about that ever-pesky physical fitness!

Zombie Scientist Seeks Fun-Loving Brain

This post doesn't have much to do with Zombies, but it IS about brains.

Reading brains!

Just when you thought the brain was an enigma...

...you were right.

But we are making progress in understanding it better. Like take this experiment for example:

Reconstructing visual images by using MRI scans of the visual cortex. Awesome.

[Reconstructed visual images. The reconstruction results of all trials for two subjects are shown with the presented images from the figure image session. The reconstructed images are sorted in ascending order of the mean square error. For the purpose of illustration, each patch is depicted by a homogeneous square, whose intensity represents the contrast of the checkerboard pattern. Each reconstructed image was produced from the data of a single trial, and no postprocessing was applied. The mean images of the reconstructed images are presented at the bottom row. The same images of the alphabet letter ''n'' are displayed in the rightmost and leftmost columns.]

We are a long way from being about to do half of the fun (and fearsome) things that belong to the realm of science-fiction, but this is a brilliant step. As PZ says, visual reconstruction is only possible so easily (relatively speaking) because of the neat mapping onto the visual cortex of what we see. Reading somebody's memory, for example, would require a greater mastery of larger and more distributed areas of the brain.

Still, Johnny Mnemonic and Neo's "Whoa! I know kung fu" here we come.