Update: It looks like my initial concern regarding the shooter’s religion and his mental health may not have been totally unfounded (emphasis mine):
Gothard’s teachings have been criticized by other conservative Christians who allege that he has deviated from true Bible teaching. He takes a stand against rock music — even Christian rock — and is suspicious of modern medicine, believing in spiritual roots of disease. He is against women working outside the home, and certain toys. Gothard warned followers in a 1986 letter that Cabbage Patch dolls can cause “strange, destructive behavior.” STLtoday
I do not think that homeschooling had anything to do with this, nor even strict religious beliefs. But I do have a concern that his mental illness was not being properly treated. We can blame the music if we want, but if you read his postings and if they have any accuracy whatsoever, he tried Jesus first. And when that didn’t work, he turned to the occult. He sounds much more like a young man with serious mental health issues, seeking an answer no one could give him.
And back to the original post…
An interesting discussion has begun in response to my post about the shootings in Colorado. Julie of Shanan Trail brought up a question about how Christians in particular view mental illness in light of her experience with her daughter.
What I have found in the homeschooling and Christian community is almost a denial that mental illness is real. Behavioral problems are all blamed on sin. I cannot tell you how often people who have never walked in my shoes take issue with my medicating my child or how often I have read blog entries in the homeschooling community addressing the issue of medication for childhood behavioral problems.
It is a view I have seen as well, although it is generally expressed as a general disdain for mental health professionals and any medications designed to aid the mentally ill. An article posted on the Internet by the Kingdom Baptist Church expresses this view well. It is summarized perfectly in the opening sentence of the third paragraph:
I do not like the counterfeit religions of psychology and psychiatry.
He goes on with typical divisiveness, accusing those who disagree of replacing God’s word with a lie:
Christians everywhere need to stand strong against this lie! Christians are intimidated to embrace the new religion of psychiatry with its new “biological, medical model”, just like many embraced psychology decades ago. Psychiatry, with its drugs, pills, diseases, and brain chemistry terminology, is too much for many to contend against. Why not simply embrace it, give in to the monster, and let it share a place beside our Christianity? It is a trick! Even many secular leaders can see through the scam. Replacing God’s truth (as revealed in the inspired Scriptures) with psychiatric brain dope is to embrace a broken cistern…
I do not know how pervasive this type of thinking is, and I suspect it isn’t really necessarily a uniquely Christian viewpoint. Mental illness is difficult to understand. I have run into this thinking most often among fundamentalist Christians, but I heard it first from the Scientologists. After each of these types of tragedies, my email box begins to fill with speculations about what kinds of psychotropic drugs the perpetrator was taking and how the field of psychiatry is to blame.
An article by WorldNet Daily which exposes the “shocking link between psychiatric drugs, suicide, violence and mass murder” connects several shootings with the medications the murderers were on and has been emailed to me more times than I can count.
But I have two very simple questions regarding this hypothesized connection. With “tens of millions of Americans” taking these medications and the extreme rarity of mass murder, how can we be so sure that the medication has any connection to the crimes? Is it not more likely that the underlying mental illness which presumably prompted the prescription is to blame?
This question is impossible to study in a controlled laboratory. It would require too large a sample size, given the rarity of these sorts of events, even with the prevalence of psychotropic drugs being used to treat the mentally ill. And it would involve leaving people with known problems untreated to see if they were any more likely to commit murder.
But the rising concerns of suspected over use of such strong medications has led the Food and Drug Administration to issue warnings about prescribing these medications which resulted in a dramatic drop in their use in 2004 and 2005.
The warnings led to a broad decline in SSRI prescriptions for all patients younger than 60, [Professor of psychostatistics and psychology Robert] Gibbons said. Prescription rates continued to rise among those older than 60, and this was the only group in which suicides dropped between 2003 and 2004, his study found. The Washington Post
With what is described as a “precipitous drop” in the prescribed use of medications such as Zoloft, Prozac and Paxil, suicide amongst American teenagers soared, rising 14% in a single year, the largest since the government began collecting suicide statistics. The phenomenon was more striking in the Netherlands. With a 22% decrease in the use of anti-depressants, they saw a 49% increase in teen suicides between 2003 and 2005.
While other bloggers have looked at this case and postulated the involvement of psychotropic drugs (see the comment section on Why Homeschool’s entry), my first reaction was the opposite. Particular with his involvement in a fundamentalist church, founded by Ted Haggard (made famous by his involvement with the youth camp better known as “Jesus Camp” because of the movie), I questioned first whether his mental illness was being treated at all. Or was this troubled young man being treated with only the laying on of hands, prayer and admonitions to read the bible?
Please do not misunderstand me. These medications are strong, with a list of side effects that is frightening. And some of the more common side effects of these medications are often the very symptoms they are designed to relieve. Little is known about their effects in children and their use should always be monitored by trained professionals who can chart their progress. Parents need to be well-educated about what to watch for. But mental illness is equally as frightening, both for the victim and the victim’s family. Unfortunately, children can suffer from these serious diseases, as well.
If we shun the use of all psychotropic drugs, how are we to treat mental illness? And will our children suffer as a result?
[tags]pharmakia, mental illness, fundamentalism, Christianity[/tags]
Principled Discovery is a place to stop and discuss news and information related to faith, family and particularly education. Pour yourself a cup of tea and join the conversation! 
One of the most righteous, awesome men of God that I know, also takes anti-depressants.
He tried the prayer route, which he strongly believes in….he tried all sorts of things. For YEARS. He battled it for years this way.
The medication helped him to stay with his family. Sounds like a good thing to me.
I know more than one person who says they owe their life to Zoloft.
Unfortunately, I also know a few people who have been openly criticized by well-meaning Christians and even have had their salvation questioned because of depression and/or a need for medication.
I do believe there is an increasing tendency to treat the mind as purely biochemical in nature, and to adjust mood through medication even when other treatments may be preferable. But there also seems to be a wholesale attack against all of these medications in every situation.
I think there can be a balance. I have been in Fundie Baptist churches since I was 4 yrs old, and the principles I was taught concerning possible mental health issues were that one should employ a sort of process of elimination. First, pinpoint and clear the life and conscience of behaviors that are damaging to oneself and others. In Fundiespeak, this would be “Repent of your sins and quit yer meanness”.
Then take into account lifestyle factors such and diet, exercise, and sleep. Get a physical to see if there are actual physical problems, and then, once these factors have been eliminated, and if it is clear that there is something else going on, seek professional psychiatric help.
I don’t think there is anything wrong with this approach, as long as folks aren’t in denial that the problems a person is experiencing really could be psychiatric in nature, and if at any point is it evident that there are serious mental issues that need to be addressed, then obviously one should get help, or find help for their loved one.
What I perceive is that folks *don’t* look to see if lifestyle factors and destructive behaviors are causing the problem. The *first* thing they do is seek psychiatric help, instead of going on a diet, getting some exercise and adequate sleep, and dealing with unhealthy appetites in areas such as sex, drugs, alcohol, and porn. There are studies that link problems such as depression with too much sedentary time in front of the tv- which has its own physiological and psychological effects. These things must be investigated as well, as they *can be* contributing factors.
I recently read an article about sleep deprivation children, and that the symptoms of sleep deprivation are *identical* to the symptoms of ADD and ADHD. So IMO a legitimate question is-”How many kids are being unnecessarily medicated when what they need is 8-10 hours of ZZZZ?”
I have also read Oliver Sacks’ books, one of which was titled “The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat”. I have no doubt that there are many folks out there with real mental health issues that are physiological or psychological in nature, and our compassionate concern would be much more helpful than the tripe and sillines such as what was posted from Kingdom Baptist Church. I personally think their views are in the minority.
This is a complicated issue. On the one hand, as J.P. Moreland has noted, the technological state of our culture tends to cause us to place our belief in naturalistic remedies vs. supernaturalistic ones; while on the other hand, we do live in a physical world, based upon the laws of physics that God established. When discussing the Christian’s response to science, in adult Sunday School settings, I would often pose the scenario in which a member of the class suddenly has a heart attack. I then ask for comments as to what people would do, in such a case. Typically you will get responses such as: pray, administer CPR, call 911. My ultimate point was that, despite the belief of all the Christians in the room that God could supernaturally intercede, through prayer, to resolve the situation, everyone also believed that, based on the laws of physics, they were responsible for taking physical action themselves.
[I would often pose the scenario in which a member of the class suddenly has a heart attack] And, each and every answer is right and is an example of a person’s spiritual gifts. The person who prays has the gift of faith, the person who intervenes has a gift of helps, the person who stands next to the person’s wife and holds her hand has the gift of mercy… the one calling 911 and standing out in the parking lot to direct the emergency responders has the gift of leadership. The body behaving exactly how it was designed to behave.
[First, pinpoint and clear the life and conscience of behaviors that are damaging to oneself and others.] This statement presupposes a brain that functions typically. Mental illness, developmental disabilities, atypical neurodevelopment or even post-traumatic brain injuries (after a car accident, fall or stroke) can mean that a brain isn’t functioning normally. With a functioning brain, I am able to stop, think, plan ahead, imagine consequences and predict how others will react to my behavior. Planning, predicting and imagining consequences are things that are difficult for people with mental illness. If we make changing behavior a prerequisite for seeking treatment, many people will go without.
Mental illness is much broader and more debilitating than mere depression. I have struggled with prolonged periods of sadness. My sadness did not diminish my capacity to function or cope with ordinary life stressors. Mental illness is when the persons level of anxiety, mood, grasp of reality, thought processes and, yes, whether or not they are in control of their behavior from moment to moment decrease the persons ability to function from day to day.
Until 1963, most of the people truly mentally ill were institutionalized. We are the first generation who have had to live side by side with a mentally ill population who are not segregated from society. I medicate my daughter because it helps her function. But, I think our society has a long way to go in accomodating and accepting people like my daughter whose brains work differently.
I did want to say, that I know all Christians do not deny the existence of mental illness. The American Baptist Resolution on Mental Illness is a nice antithesis to the position Dana presented in this entry. But, for every article I read that embraces those with mental illness, I can find someone debunking psycholgy and using the Bible to do it.
I think it isn’t an “either or” situation. Sometimes drugs can be helpful and sometimes they make the situation worse. Sometimes they even make the patient able enough to function so they can carry out these types of terrible crimes against others - or themselves.
Psychotropic mind altering drugs are definitely something we ought to investigate before using, otherwise there wouldn’t be things like black box warnings.
I also think that the additives and junk in our food supply have much to do with our behaviors. Many additives are neurotoxins plain and simple.
Suffice it to say that certain additives that are in children’s vaccines also affects the brain and nervous system according to some doctors.
There are many factors to what makes people do the things they do. Even the stuff we are seeing on TV which de-sensitizes us to murder and mayhem has an effect on our thoughts.
So we cannot blame these tragedies just on medication alone, or homeschooling, or religious fanaticism or whatever else. What we must do is make sure people are aware of drug side affects, as well as some of the warning signs of this type of thing (like personality changes etc.)and to give compassionate care to those who are having difficulty coping with their lives. Drugs are not always the answer, yet they are a tool in the toolbox to be used with care.
Dana quotes:
“What I have found in the homeschooling and Christian community is almost a denial that mental illness is real. Behavioral problems are all blamed on sin.”
I grew up in the opposite environment, where everything was blamed on mental illness. Granted, there is some genuine mental illness in my family. I suspect there are some nutritional issues that contribute to that. But there is also a whole culture of manipulativeness and meanness that gets a free ride under that umbrella as well. My upbringing taught me to just put up with that silently because they were “sick” or “depressed” or “co-dependent” or whatever and they couldn’t help it.
The modern evangelical tendency is a sharp dichotomy between the physical and the spiritual, and the danger is a gnostic disdain for the material world. In reality they are much more tightly intertwined. A wholistic approach like Sunnymom’s is inkeeping with that. (A little ‘repent and quit yer meanness’ would have probably saved a lot of people a lot of heartache on that side of my family. I wish they would have started there instead of at the other end of the list.)
Whew…I agree with everyone so far. : ) Balance is key and of course the first step to dealing with mental illness is to look at the root causes, if any can be determined. But sometimes medication can be necessary to even get to the point of confronting the problem.
My concern is that as I see valid concerns being passed around the internet, well-meaning Christians desiring to do what is right will be influenced by these arguments taken from scripture. Or will take a valid concern with medicating children to an unhealthy extreme.
I guess it is rather personal with me because I have worked with children who were on these meds. Some of them were on a LOT of meds. And I hate to say this, but I never had the impression they were being over-medicated in order to control them in the foster system. The meds were necessary. Or the kids couldn’t function.
There was a time when a person would have been institutionalized for things we now treat with medication. I believe fully in “least restrictive environment” but maybe sometimes we are too patient with the medication in serious cases? Or maybe it is just too hard to tell because some people can be very manipulative.
Oh…and I did not mean to implicate Baptist teaching in general with the selection from that church…it was just an article which represented the position I have seen in forums well. There is a great deal of disagreement even within denominations about these issues.
I purposely skipped comments to write this—I didn’t want to shift my gut reaction after reading everyone’s great comments
Here’s my take: Mental illness is nothing different from physical illness. It happens. Yes, there are some people who abuse the system and just want psychotropic drugs for the wrong reasons. But most people who are on meds are on them for a very good reason. Ask me how I know. I was one of them. After losing our second child I was deeply, deeply depressed. It was an emotional thing, but it was also physical because my body’s hormones were so out of whack from two failed pregnancies back to back. My brain was sick. My mind could not function. I took some very heavy drugs and the truth is, THEY HELPED ME. It didn’t make me less dependent on God. It was a tool to help me.
Likewise, and similar, our family carries a rare genetic disorder. Any baby we have has a 50% chance of having this oftentimes fatal disease. We’ve chosen not to have any more children because we just can’t take it. (we have 2 in heaven, 2 children who are living and affected and 1 healthy child) I’ve been told more than once by God-fearing Christians that I’m just not trusting enough or faithful enough. If I’d just trust God more, He *might* take care of me and wipe off the disease and if not, then he means for me to have a sick child or a dead baby. It is well intentioned advice, meant to help me feel better, but it is STUPID advice.
You cannot understand things fully like mental illness or the death of a child until you’ve walked in those shoes. The cliche’ is true.
So my whole point with this comment is that the church has NO BUSINESS trying to play the role of doctor or psychiatrist. Leave well enough alone, and focus on HELPING people spiritually, not mentally or physically.
Can God swoop down and heal us from mental illnesses and genetic defects? You betcha. But sometimes, we have a different road to take, and that may include drugs or treatment.
Dana — I was a pharmacy tech in the Air Force and worked the same job in the civilian sector for 3 years afterwards. I keep up with medicine now because it is something I’d like to continue again when my children are grown. Many drugs are not tested the way they should be and I saw too many children used as guini pigs for medicines because they didn’t fit the cookie cutter mold that teachers, etc. wanted them to fit. In my own family, we have both hyper and hypo sensitivities to medicine so I know that mostly it comes down to each individual person as to what fits within their make-up. Medicine used to be an art and science. Now, it’s a money maker for a good portion.
God bless!
Sallie
The debate between thoughtful Christians about the causes of and cures for mental pain is very interesting. Because counseling psychology comes so close to the heart of the Gospel message, the debate sometimes gets ugly. I have noticed something about the homeschool community that I think is related to the sometimes-vitriolic nature of the debate.
Find a curriculum seller’s catalogue or website. Look for a text to teach intro psych. You probably will not find one. I think one reason is that when Christians hear the word “psychology” they equate it with personality theory, Sigmund Freud, and psychotherapy. I believe that because some Christians get so “fired up” about counseling psychology and equate counseling psychology with the entire discipline, many Christians decide they wouldn’t touch it with a 10 foot pole.
Psychology is much more than Freud, Prozac, and Adderall. Psychology is about the brain, behavior, perception, motivation, learning, memory, thought, personality, and more. We’re caught in a downward spiral. Without Christian thought leaders in psychology (in the broad sense) we are inadequately represented in psychology in the more narrow counseling sense. In the meantime, the study of the wonders of the human brain is left to non-Christians.
As someone with a psychology education, i can appreciate the difficulty some have with it. Like any biological science its messy and has a much higher degree of art incorporated than say physics or chemistry. I do believe that some things are over diagnosed, but out right dismissal like the person discusses of a science that has helped millions of people is absurd.
As one who has benefited from psychiatric treatment for PTSD and dissociative disorder (”emotion-based” mental illnesses as opposed to, say, schizophrenia which is strongly associated with a combination of genetic and environmental factors) I’m very much in favor of psychiatric treatment. It is not and never was a threat or a hindrance to my faith, any more than my husband’s cancer treatment was to his.
People who believe in forgoing our God-given modern medical treatment for mental illness should be consistent and forgo physical medical treatment as well. That said, I think Sunnymom’s 6:08 pm process of elimination checklist was excellent.
Rebecca, you mention a dichotomy between the physical and spiritual which is true…and there is another false dichotomy which seems to be gaining ground recently: that between faith and reason. Normally, I hear this brought up as a charge against atheists, that they deny that one can employ reason if one has faith in a supernatural being.
But I have also seen something that looks like the same thing to me in discussions with some groups. There is a general disdain for science in some groups, and I am not talking about evolution. Without being able to think of any actual examples at the moment, I’m probably not making myself very clear, but it seems potentially relevant to this discussion.
Lindsey, you are very right. If your degree is in theology, you shouldn’t be giving medical advice beyond perhaps suggesting a doctor to someone if they need that kind of assistance. There is the whole field of medical ethics which pastors do have a valid role in, but that does not include the medicating of the mentally ill.
Sallie, thank you for sharing your thoughts. My intent is certainly not to support the wholesale use of medications to treat every wiggle in the classroom. I am talking only about an extreme view that holds all psychotropic medication as “sorcery” and to be avoided without exception. I just wanted to be clear on that. : )
TheCo, it is very messy. And you can’t see it like you can see a broken leg. I really think that is why people who have not actually dealt with it have a hard time understanding and reach to their own experience. “Why don’t you just snap out of it?” is commonly asked of people suffering from depression. But it isn’t so easy.
Advising parents to exercise caution and/or to always seek a second opinion before allowing their child to be medicated with these drugs is sound advice. Telling them that these medications are “of the devil” and embracing them is akin to replacing God’s word is irresponsible and dangerous.
Thank you, Laura, and I agree. I firmly believe my husband would not be here today if it were not for Zoloft. He no longer needs medication, but it was very necessary in the beginning. He wasn’t capable of learning any coping strategies without it.
As a nurse, I have observed many patients on psychotropic medications and am well aquainted with the side effects. It’s important to remember that the use of these drugs is based on the presumption that certain chemical imbalances are present in the body. However, tests are rarely conducted to see if those imbalances are actually present. It’s also important to know that the main effect of many antipsychotics is just sedation - instead of actually treating the problem, we are just doping them up so we don’t have to deal with the behavior. Although I think that antipsychotics have a place in treating severe and dangerous behaviors, I know from experience that a whole lot of TLC works better than all the antipsychotics in the world.
Another thing to keep in mind is that many psychotropic medications do not have good clinical evidence for their use. If you actually read the studies conducted by pharmaceutical companies, you will notice that the percentage of patients who appear to benefit from these drugs is actually quite small, and much of that can be attributed to the placebo effect. This is all information I have gotten from nursing school and from the mainstream medical world. There are a lot of misconceptions about these drugs.
Great post with some good comments.
I agree that it is not an either/or question. I think we can all agree that drugs are over used to treat normal behavioral problems. However, there are some mental health issues that require medication. The trick is figuring out if the patient is better off with or without the meds.
Thank you, Vanessa and Janine. And I definitely am not saying that there are no concerns with these kinds of medications…I am just questioning one viewpoint which says unequivocally that Christians cannot take these medications.
Janine, I think that is one thing that foster children often lack…someone to question whether medication is the best route. I will not absolutely say that none of my children will ever take any of these medications…some day they may need them. But if they were prescribed, I would seek a second opinion. I would do a lot of research. I would make sure I knew what the medication was, what it was supposed to do and what side effects to look for. I wouldn’t just start administering it with no questions asked.
Dr. Tim beat me in bringing up the influence of spiritually problematic beliefs on the field of psychology. Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Erik Erikson, Abraham Maslow, B.F. Skinner, and so on have all been tremendously influential in the field and all have promoted ideas that go against traditional Christianity. I was a psychology major in college so I’ve read all of them. There are definitely valid reasons why Christians should be careful in their use of psychotherapy.
That said, I absolutely believe that there is often a biochemical basis of mental illness. This was actually my area of interest in college. I was a human biology minor and most of my coursework were cross-listed in both psych and bio such as neuroscience, cognitive development, and evolutionary psychology.
It’s really too bad that some Christians tend to throw the baby out with the bathwater in terms of psychology. Yes, we should guard against the influence of problematic beliefs but that doesn’t mean we have to suffer needlessly from a biochemical imbalance.
Thank you Crimson Wife. The same thing happened to psychology that happened to biology around the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species. Evolutionary thought imposed itself on biology and then excluded every Christian. Likewise, Darwinian evolution imposed itself on psychology and then tried to exclude everything Christian. In biology, many Christians are fighting back. Hooray for those few who, in psychology, fight back too.
My former boss was (and is again!) a licensed Christian psychologist. He revoked his membership in whatever the big organization was for psychologists when he learned of a Christian organization and joined it.
Do you happen to know the name of it (since that appears to be your field of specialty)? In a quick search, I found the “Christian Association for Psychological Studies,” but I’m not sure that is it.
This was a very thought provoking post.
I have a friend who has a son who is bi-polar. He is able to function normally as long as he stays on his medication. Unfortunately the medication has some nasty side affects and he often goes off his medication mistakenly believing he no longer needs it(legally he can’t be forced to take his medication). When he goes off the medication he becomes a different person, and exhibits violent tendencies. Of course once he becomes violent she can call for help, he is taken by force to a mental hospital and put back on his medication. It’s a vicious cycle. Thankfully he hasn’t seriously harmed anyone when he is off his medication, but it is something she is very concerned about.
To add to her troubles her family belongs to a fundamentalist church that believes that the medication is unnecessary, that if her son would just ‘get right with the Lord’ all his problems would be solved. She has often heard her pastor counsel her son to go off the medication; even though she has attempted to explain how harmful going off the medication is numerous times. So she gets no support from her Church family and many in the church shun them because of her sons mental illness/or what they consider sinful nature.
Thank you for sharing that story, Alasandra. That is exactly the kind of thing I was talking about and have heard myself.
Bi-polar is particularly difficult and the medication “yo-yo” is unfortunately very common. When the medication is working, they seem to feel they do not need it and even feel it is in the way. I believe it is irresponsible of any pastor to counsel an individual to go off medication. It is almost impossible to discuss, however, because people in these churches tend to see “God’s reason” as superior to “man’s reason” and equate all dissenters as lacking faith or even apostates.
I may agree with the premise that God knows more than man, but disagree with the illogical conclusion that we therefore should leave mental illness untreated, and try to deal with it purely through prayer.
I’ve spent much of my career working with people with schizophrenia. When speaking with brothers and sisters in Christ about the nature of mental illness, I try to make sure they understand how horrible that illness is. Anxiety and depression are common to us all, so its easier for someone who has never experienced severe anxiety or depression to over-generalize their own experience and minimize what others experience.
I’m not qualified to state that schizophrenia is or isn’t “just a spiritual problem,” but it sure doesn’t seem that way to me. If there’s just one mental illness that isn’t just spiritual, the whole “all mental illnesses are just spiritual problems” position is appears discredited.
Very true, Dr. Tim. And I do believe some of this has to do with well-meaning, faithful Christians sitting down and reading their bibles and thinking a thing is so because that is how they understand the bible.
But they haven’t actually seen it. They haven’t seen its debilitating effects, and the lack of control the person has.
Mental illness does seem to be the common denominator in all the suicidal mass killers, if we subtract the Islamic suicide bombers.
Over at the “All Spin Zone,” in the post “Matthew Murray -nghtmrchld26 in his own words” by Daniel DiRito a guy in the comments section there, ErnestR, also tried to blame it on antidepressants. It seems that all killers did use them. I don’t think they’re the cause though — my reasons here:
http://normdoering.blogspot.com/2007/12/matthew-murray-and-blame-game.html
I’m going to link your post here from mine, you hit on several points I didn’t.
There are many theories on the cause of mental illness. No matter what you have heard no one has established a causal connection between brain chemistry and mental illness. There is only a statistical correlation.
Some drugs used for depression were found because they made people “feel better” when used for other purposes.
Depression can be shown to be an outcome of Subliminal Distraction exposure.
SD was discovered when it caused mental breaks for office workers. The cubicle was designed to deal with normal features of the physiology of sight, and the mental breaks stopped.
VisionAndPsychosis.Net is a five-year project to investigate SD.
Culture Bound Syndromes, small mental events named by local cultures around the world, happen where the conditions for SD exposure exist.
As an unknown and unevaluated stressor for psychiatric problems decreases in SD exposure may be the reason that drugs seem to work.
Perform the psychology demonstration of subliminal sight and habituation in peripheral vision to understand how exposure begins.
http://VisionAndPsychosis.Net
Islamic suicide bombers are an interesting thing on their own, but they seem to be actually raised for that. I don’t know that anyone in any of these cases were. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
“Islamic suicide bombers are an interesting thing on their own, but they seem to be actually raised for that. I don’t know that anyone in any of these cases were.”
But how far off are kids raised by some Evangelicals? How far off are the kids in “Jesus Camp”? If the right preacher came along and told them to do it — how many of their flock would?
Be any interesting question for a reporter.
I don’t know…I am not familiar with this group in particular, but you are talking about true cult behavior, not even fundamentalism anymore when you get to that.
The fundamentalist groups I know of…including the dominionists…are not talking about forcible takeovers as far as I have ever read. “Take back the culture” and “restoration” and even the establishment of a “theocracy” all take place through a combination of political activism which is open to any group in the US and through “changing the American conscience” or essentially through a sort of evangelism.
There is nothing violent in it.
I shudder to think what life would be like in America if a church gained control, but that is not likely. There are dangers in these groups, but more to Christianity than to society.
I don’t accept any of this as “evangelical” Christianity. You will find a number of evangelicals (myself included) criticizing these groups and separating themselves from them and their activities. Evangelicals have historically connected themselves with the abolition movement, the women’s suffrage movement and other activities for the betterment of society. Fundamentalists seem more bent on isolating members, sheltering them from culture and have some odd views on the relationship between the church and state.
There are different groups, but most of them tend toward libertarianism, not a church-run totalitarianism.
Janine,
Good point about the testing. Unfortunately as we both know there are enough variences in ‘normal’ across the spectrum that people would have to be tested as part of their normal checkup several times to establish a baseline.