Reply With QuoteGood grief. Your boggle threshold might well be well and truly breached; my own gob is thoroughly smacked.
At the moment I'm trying to collate a list of online resources on ethical and philosophical issues in mental health care for use by student nurses. I was particularly looking for stuff on the personal and spiritual dimensions of people who may be experiencing mental health difficulties and lo-and-behold I came across:
A Resource List for the Spirituality and Psychiatry Special Interest Group of the Royal College of Psychiatrists:
Has anyone seen this??
http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/college/spe...nisations.aspx
Check out the top named resource
http://www.spiritrelease.com/
That sounds an awful lot like exorcism to me....Endorsed by the Royal College???
My boggle threshold is well and truly breached...
"Expect the Inquisition..."
Good grief. Your boggle threshold might well be well and truly breached; my own gob is thoroughly smacked.
*Lies down in a darkened room *
Hi - I saw dalriada's info at BadPsychics and so thought I'd also add my reply here FYI:
The Spirit Release website might be bad enough with its 'case studies' (including proof from spirits coming thro in trance!) You could excuse one oddball psychiatrist's website and even think the Royal college just hasnt checked the site BUT IT'S WORSE THAN THAT...
If you are into reading heavy articles go to the royal college's website :
http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/college/spe...rituality.aspxSpirituality
scroll down to newsletters and have a read.
There are psychiatrist pieces on why Disassociate Disorder is really possession, quoting Djwhal Khul (a Tibetan 'Master' who 'talked' via Theosophist Alice Bailey!) :
http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/pdf/Laura%20Har....y%201.5 .06.pdf;
how mediums help you realise you are also a medium (surprise surprise):
http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/pdf/A%20persona....al%20EDITED.pdf;
and gems such as this:
These days, science is so bent on the impersonal credibility of normothetic statistics that case studies are seriously out of fashion. Although many parapsychological experiments have now been shown to stand up to statistical scrutiny, the phenomena associated with Mediumship are more elusive and highly individual. Perhaps this is the quantum effect. I remember talking with a medical colleague whose wife had a tumour. They went to the Philippines to see a psychic surgeon and my friend described standing next to his wife and seeing the healer’s hand disappear right into her abdomen, and re-emerge, without leaving a mark.http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/pdf/APowellReviewDFontana.pdf
this has to be one of the best phrases of nonsense I have read in ages and I love how he uses quantum!
There is a goldmine of fun reading here. The credulity in some of these articles in a psychiatrists journal is breathtaking, hilarious and then pretty worrying!
That is really bad. Using exorcism on a patient would only 'feed their delusions' and make the patients condition worse.
I don't get it, psychologists that try to conduct research into measuarable phenomena get their balls busted at the mere sight of anything unethical but the psychiatrists are allowed to perform exorcisms on the mentally ill and vulnerable?
Pfft.
Would it though? ritual is a powerful cultural tool, who is to say an exorcism on a person who genuinely believes they are possessed may help someone come to terms with their condition or help them cope with the problems that their illness causes them.Originally Posted by ForAllOfThis
Well no because seeing as there is not actually a demon or spirit inside them then whatever underlying causes (biological or otherwise) that have created the delusions that they are being possessed will not be removed. The fact that they are being exoricsed will just reinforce their delusions because it shows that other people believe that the individual has a demon/spirit inside them as well.
^^
It is easy to assume someone is delusional because they hold what you consider to be a strange belief, however, it maybe that the individual is from a culture where spirit possession is considered normal or that the patient comes from a culture where the idea of possession and the self is different to yours, it could simply be that the person is not particularly well educated and their assumption that they are possessed is perfectly rational.
Remember also, even if the patient is delusion, the goal here isnt to "stop them being delusion", the goal is to give the patient the best quality of life. It could well be that trying to treat the patient with drugs and talking therapies is inapropriate for that individual and they would be better off with something that helps them cope with day to day life, an if that involves some bizarre ooga-booga ritual, then sure, why not?
Last edited by VoodooJoe; 10th April 2008 at 04:05 PM.
repeat post
Delusion - Psychiatry. a fixed false belief that is resistant to reason or confrontation with actual fact: a paranoid delusion.
The fact that they think their thinking is rational, when it isn't, further supports the idea that it is a delusion. Furthermore the topic is aimed at the royal college of psychiatrists, which is best in the UK. I highly doubt that these psychiatrists are treating anyone that are not in a 'non-western' culture and therefore drug therapies, behavioural therapies and cognitive therapies are acceptable forms of treatment for any individual.
I stand by my opinion that the only way an exorcism could be of any use is if the person has an actual demon or spirit inside them.
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/news...602228237.html
Its also highly unethical.
Leaving aside the argument about the biochemical basis for many forms of mental illness (which I suspect exorcism alters not one bit). I think the key word there is "cultural".
Do we live in a culture involving belief in possession and ritual exorcism?
Should we?
"Expect the Inquisition..."
It is entirely possible for someone to come to the conclusion they are possessed using a rational thought process (taking into account life experience and cultural context of course.)
You shouldnt automatically assume someone is mentally ill if they hold a view you find strange, they might have very good reason to believe what they believe.
Like dalriada rightly points out, culture is a large factor (as is education).
A significant proportion of british society is non-western (interestingly a disproportionate number of british psychiatric patients are from non-western backgrounds, but thats another thread.)
Also dont make the assumption all western cultural groups are educated and place high value in scientific thinking, they dont.
Last edited by VoodooJoe; 10th April 2008 at 08:34 PM.
Don't assume that all non-educated people who live in western cultures believe in possession either =).
And your definition of mental illness is all wrong. Mental illness occurs when it prevents (or increases the difficulty) of performing day to day tasks. In most cases if a person believes they are being possessed by a spirit or demon (even in another culture) this will make day to day tasks a lot more difficult because of suspicion etc.
It is also a mental illness if the symptoms are reoccuring over a certain period of time (otherwise most people in western cultures would have been diagnosed as depressed at some time).
We do live in a multicultural society but it is still a western society and the UK is still a developed country, where western influences are a lot more dominant.
Proof is shown through the change in religion, I know a couple of british Sikhs, and they have cut there hair and do not completely follow the rules of there religion, however in their original cultures this would not have been acceptable. Therefore when another culture is placed in a western country, the western culture influences them greater than you would think and visa versa.
Either way exorcism as a therapy has no use or no place in western cultures at the very least.
Using it in any culture is unethical for several reasons. Firstly a lot of exorcisms are violent practices, where the patients believe they are experiencing pain or do feel physical and emotional pain. How would the patient feel after the therapy, if it was successful as well? Secondly, when should exorcism be used and who gets to decide? If the patient is unfit to make such a decision should the therapy still be used, cause thats not 'informed consent'. Furthermore who gets access to that medical information? Future empoyers would not be impressed if they found out that an applicant had been exorcised, and most of the time patients who have had mental illness have to give details of there mental illness. Can a patient withdraw from the therapy if he/she so wishes? I can't see how its possible because the exorcist would not know if it was the demon/spirit speaking or the patient.
How do we know a person wouldnt respond well to exorcism?
Exorcism has been around for thousands of years and is found in almost every religion and culture, so people must be getting something out of it (?)
Violence is present in nearly every culture (apart from the amish and some buddhist cultures) and religion as well, but it doesn't mean that people are getting anything out of it.
God is in most religions and cultures, doesn't mean that god exist.
Your looking mostly at past cultures (at least in the western cultures) where the church used the idea of hell, demons and the devil as a form of social control.
Its been shown that paranoid schizophrenia has 'adapted' with technological advancements. Before space travel was invented, schizophrenics believe that there head was being invaded by radio waves. However today they believe that aliens or the goverment is using the internet to get into their heads.
Surely before either radio waves and the goverment/aliens were formed as concepts it was possible for a schizophrenic to believe that demons were trying to invade their head, and without prior knowledge the church identified these people as 'needing to be exoricsed'. If it worked at the time it may be because of a behavioural response:
"If I tell people demons are trying to invade my head they will punish me with pain and threaten to send me to hell." Therefore the person may still believe that demons are trying to invade there but just not express it which could make the condition much worse.
In which case just because something removed the behaviour it doesn't mean that the condition is not there still.
One last point, trepanning has been around for 1000's of years and was used on mentally ill patients it does not mean that the patients got anything out of it (other than an infection and possible death).
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