Targeting the mentally ill.

by Fleshybirdfodder 8 Replies latest jw friends

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  Fleshybirdfodder

  Perhaps this is just my personal experience (I grew up in a less than liberal, "fire and brimstone" congregation) but it seemed to me that we attracted and "exploited" (for lack of a better word) people who had mental illnesses and most definitely should have been directed to professional help. I think it may be because our congregation was in a small town, and our territory was "slim pickings" as one elder described it, so if they could target the weak with promises of a glorious paradise to beef up their monthly report, so be it. It was easy to target those who may feel like pariahs, promise them friendship and love, dunk them and drop them when their needs interfere with the theocratic agenda. "Witnessed" it happening again and again. I wonder if this was unique to my congregation?

  FBF
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  looking_glass

  I know the question has been raised before. In the end it is a "chicken or the egg" kind of thing. Do the JWs seek out the mentally ill or are the mentally ill attracted to the religion. I think it is a little of both. I have seen people walking the mental tight rope and then after they have been in the religion for a while, living in the glass fish bowl becomes too much and they break. But who can blame them. Though as we all know, mental health help is not allowed. Just believe in Jah more, just pray more, just preach more. You can never be happy in this system, so your unhappiness is the system you are living in, not the fact that you are mentally ill. Blah, blah, blah. We all know it and have seen it. Some here have personally experienced it.
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  bikerchic

  I have seen people walking the mental tight rope and then after they have been in the religion for a while, living in the glass fish bowl becomes too much and they break. But who can blame them. Though as we all know, mental health help is not allowed. Just believe in Jah more, just pray more, just preach more. You can never be happy in this system, so your unhappiness is the system you are living in, not the fact that you are mentally ill.

  l_g right on with that analogy. I think in some cases the organization causes mental illness and heaven help you if you are mentally ill and a JW! Wouldn't wish that on my worse enemy!
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  looking_glass

  Unfortunately my grams was psychophrenic. She was a JW from the early daze. When she and my gramps got married and her mental illness really started to shine thru, he tried to get help, but when the elders found out, they told him that if he was a better dub that her mental illness would go either go away or lessen. He tried and tried, but it never got any better. My mother bucked the elders and their advice when she drove her mother up to a mental institution and had her committed. That was a haunting moment for my mother, to have to institutionalize her mother. My grams was a regular part of my life. We saw her all the time and in the early days when she was not soooo bad, she would spend the week-ends with us. But eventually mental illness took her for good. The only people other then family that visited her, where her old time JW female friends and eventually they stopped.

  When my grams died and my mother wanted the elders to give her funeral talk, they said "no" and this devastated my mother. Do you know that not one old time elder came to her funeral. And one elder even had the nerve to tell my mother that he did not think my grams would be in the "new system" because three months b/4 she died, she took a blood transfusion. This put my mother in such a depression that she did not get out of bed for 2 weeks. I had some choice words for that guy! I was the one that had to deal with my mother's depression because not one elder or JW stepped in to help. And me the inactive one.

  I saw a special on the History Channel yesterday about Jim Jones and his cult and it so reminded me of the WTBTS and what they say to bring the fold back in line.
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  choosing life

  I have seen them dunk mentally ill persons who didn't have a clue what the religion was about. They just responded to the attention shown from the love bombing. It usually doesn't last long, though. One man comitted suicide in our congregation related to severe mental illness. They never would let him get baptized because he couldn't stop smoking.

  This played right into his severe depressive episodes. He never felt worthy or even officially part of the group, although he came to all the meetings. Someone should have seen it coming. He started to give his posessions away to people he was fond of. Then he took too many pills.
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  Threestars

  I think they attract each other for a lot of reasons. The Dub love-bombing attracts those who are social misfits due to their illness plus they are often superreligious themselves, or go through periods of it.

  When I was a child there was a young man who was most likely bipolar who was one of those "instant" conversions and baptisms. When he started to act funny at the meetings and with some of the cong members he was DFed. He shot himself a couple of weeks later. He couldn't have a JW funeral and I was told he wouldn't make it into the new system since he was DFed and a suicide. I cried and cried--he had been kind to me.

  Later I knew a young man who had to take a lot of meds and was convinced by some of the sisters who were into health foods and juices that he could throw away his pills if he would just eat right. Also he was a fairly recent convert so he was led to believe that the borg was all he needed, you know, prayer, meetings, field service, blah, blah, blah. He went off the deep end, got all crazy, got DFed, and died in a skid row hotel room.

  I also knew of a bizarre JW in my parent's cong after I was out who used to do his streetwork in the middle of the night in front of the all night market--scaring people half to death 'cause he looked really strange and just stood there waving the Watchtowers at them. The elders had to make him stop.
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  changeling

  W/o the mentally ill the borg's #s would go way down. When you're in the borg you were either already crazy or made crazy by the borg. Anyone who stays in the borg is certifiably crazy!!!

  Sorry for the overgeneralizing - I'm in a venting mood!
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  nvrgnbk

  I believe that mental illness is at the heart of the JW organization. I left because I wanted to reclaim my sanity. I'm not sure if there's any hope of that. But I am sure I'll never go back to that cult.

  Nvrgnbk
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  blondie

  Homes for the developmentally disabled, nursing homes, hospitals are fair game to many JWs. Anyone with a problem that only the "new system" can cure MUST want to live forever in paradise on earth without sickness, pain or sorrow. A little dark humor.