by maputo95 11 Replies latest jw friends
Hi All
Is there a link to JW involvement and hypochondria? Are people made mentally ill from their involvement in a cult? I mean all those gory pictures of people being destroyed at Armageddon must impinge on impressionable child-like minds. Nothing a 1000 hours of auditing can't solve. Lol!! My ex -JW friend whom I love dearly has a big hypochondriac problem and I am trying to be a comfort to him. Any suggestions?
http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/watchtower/medical/180848/1/The-toll-on-women
Touched on in this thread.
Thank you Mickey
Almost every JW and ex-JW that were born-ins that I know currently are hypochondriacs. None of them are happy. In fact, they're miserable and sad and very anxious.
Thank you Scarred for Life. take care now.
Well, the only excuse to miss a meeting or not go in service is to be sick! Plus, to many the only thing to "fix" anything much is, well, the new world is coming 'soon,' so such thinking puts their lives on hold to get better much. So just being sickly miserable is accepted as okay, because after all to JWs, 'miserable' is kind of acceptable, understandable. Getting some psychological help is not valued among JWs. Why would JWs want to get better anyway, as they would just have to go out in service more anyway.
yes,,,,,most definately....quite sad really....
Noticeably, it happens every time there is an Asleep! rag with an article on a disease. As soon as the rag comes out, there is a pandemic of that disease within the congregation--and, the one that came out shortly before I quit was the Asleep! article on Marfans syndrome in 2005. That pandemic seemed to have affected the witlesses around late June 2005, which happened to be the last time I ever went out in field circus. (And yes, I did turn apostate about a year later.)
Hi ya,
I've been researching JW's from academic sources. A guy called Spencer suggested that Jehovah's Witnesses have an greater chance to be admitted to a psychiatric hospital and that a diagnosis of schizophrenia are three times more likely and a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia are four times more likely than the general population.
I suppose it's the chicken or the egg question :- Do people with a higher likelihood of a mental illness be drawn to a religion or does the religion make them mentally ill?
Psychiatric support can help, but again it's finding someone who fits with the individual's personality and empathy with the nature of the religion.
It seems pretty normal for some kind of projection in these cases. Maybe his hypochondria hides some deep seated fear or insecurity that stemmed from the religion. Keep him talking and make him feel secure, get him to seek help and hopefully things will start to improve.
HTH
Claire
My personal opinion is that most of the hypochondriacs in the bORG are magnifying their ills so they can have an excuse to get out of doing all the BS they have to do or think they have to do.
LD
