Also, what is this “culturally sensitive psychiatry” stuff? Is it just about maximizing the likelihood of patient compliance by not being a dick, or is science actually supposed to be grovelling in front of whatever two-bit hokum they happen to believe in the old country or down at the pub?

I have been treated in the past for several psychoses myself.

Beside a part time looney, I am also a journalist and a geochemist. In 2007 a book was published in Holland, that got quite some resonance with our press, check my URL. I wrote this book together with prize winning Dutch philosopher Wouter Kusters. In it we argue, among other things, that:

1. Yes, psychosis is a symptom of disease
2. Yes, what people experience during psychosis can be seen as an encounter with the divine.

There is a reason for the fact that many cultures induce psychosis, for instance by prolonged starvation, sleep deprivation and self-torture. Native Americans, for one, get themselves into this state to encounter their Totem.

In medieval times there were similar beliefs in the West.
But ever since the age of enlightenment, there has been very little supporting culture for the experiences of ‘psychiatric patients’ during psychosis. By the way, this class of people arrived in our lingo at around the same time that psychiatrists started to appear ( I am quoting French philosopher Michel Foucault here).

Psychiatrists encourage patients today to forget about the content of their experiences ASAP. I believe that this does not help people recover. Acknowledging the fact that they have had a relatively uncommon, life changing experience can help patients on the long, long way to recovery, that can take years. some people never recover.

So yes, it is also a symptom of disease, and we need to medicate psychotic people, but there is no need to add insult to injury by denying people access to the contenta of their psychosic experiences.

I can send you an essay on this stuff, if you like.

Kind regards,

Sam Gerrits

This begs the question, if the patient was treated for his belief in spirit possession and his apparent hallucinations as to the reality of the ghost, why were the chaplain and the others not considered to be ill ?

There’s a difference between being schizophrenic and a believer in supernatural phenomena. They may both be wrong, but the wrongness of the chaplain didn’t have a crippling effect on his life. He didn’t go out and kill people or rob stores (or whatever it is the scizophrenic did) because ghosts told him to. He could live a perfectly functional and healthy life despite his faith in oogly-booglys. Delusion doesn’t become a mental illness until it is seriously affecting your life in a negative way.

Also, it would be a total pain in the ass locking up every religious person, truther, birther and ouija board manufacturer in the world. That’s just not practical.

is science actually supposed to be grovelling in front of whatever two-bit hokum they happen to believe in the old country or down at the pub?

How well do you think it would work out if psychiatry dropped the charade and diagnosed 85% of the population as paranoid schizophrenic because they believe that a Jewish zombie was observing them 24/7 and constantly interceding on their behalf to prevent his father from roasting them after they die?

So yeah, it’s a reality that the medical profession has to pay lip service to whatever they believe down at the pub.

I’m putting that on a t-shirt.

“How well do you think it would work out if psychiatry dropped the charade and diagnosed 85% of the population as paranoid schizophrenic because they believe that a Jewish zombie was observing them 24/7 and constantly interceding on their behalf to prevent his father from roasting them after they die?”

long artice;
http://www.awakeninthedream.com/artis/AreWePossessed.html

I recommend it..

From the full article:

“An aunt jealous of the success of the patient’s family, fed hime and his elder brother cursed sweet rice, rendering them susceptible to spirit possession. His brother was afflicted by years of physical weakness and impotence.”

More interestingly is the statement: “Our hospital chaplain concurred on genuine possesion. This is an acceptable belief within the context of pastoral counselling (Isaacs, 1987).” They seriously reference an article about believing in ghosts.

… The patient underwent remission… despite previous evidence of genuine possession.”

So the British Journal of Psychiatry believes in “genuine possession”?

http://drvitelli.typepad.com/providentia/2008/09/exorcising-anne.html

http://drvitelli.typepad.com/providentia/2007/02/romanian_exorci.html

http://drvitelli.typepad.com/providentia/2007/02/mentally_ill_ma.html

http://drvitelli.typepad.com/providentia/2008/12/ghana-news-spiritual-leader-kills-boy-7-for-witchcraft-breaking-news-news-in-ghana-news.html

You are awarded internet dollars from my personal stock.

(waves hands)

I have done many drugs, including LSD and mushrooms – heh, I spent three weeks in Amsterdam. Nothing compares to the experience I had when I had my major break. I literally thought I was God. The hallucinations were fantastic. I saw peoples faces contort, like agent Smith at the end of the Matrix. I saw the sky change from light to dark, as my mood changed. I experienced physical hallucinations too, like some invisible hand poking me as I tried to sleep. I stayed awake for ten days strait.

It was beutiful, but scary.

Even psychiatrists may be confused, because sometimes psychotic delusions can take very mundane form. Likewise, non-psychotic religious experiences can be intense. Further confusing is that people who are not psychotic or delusional can describe their experiences in very literal terms. And they think they are being literal: “God told me to do this.” But psychosis takes literal to the next level. The disconnect between literal and LITERAL causes a great deal of confusion and grief, and also causes non psychotic bystanders to get “sucked in” to psychotic delusions. In fact, a psychotic is the world’s best method actor, and it’s very hard to stand in the presence of someone with a “demonic possession” delusion and not lose your grip on reality for even one second. A misty ghostlike presence is vague enough that it’s pretty clear to me that the witnesses were just having the experience of being drawn into the delusions, as many of us are when we are dealing with schizophrenics.

I do not discount the possibility of real supernatural encounters, but schizophrenia is powerful enough to mimic *any* reality, supernatural or natural.

It is not at all useful to accuse people of having a mental illness if they are religious. Chosen belief is not the same thing as a mental illness, and it is actually insulting and denigrating to the mentally ill because it implies that they have chosen or control their delusions when in fact it is in fact an illness like any other illness.