On religion and mental illness

Karl Marx, a 19th century philosopher, told us that religion “is the opium of the people”. He meant not that it makes you believe things that aren’t real and see things that aren’t there, but that it has the soothing and calming effects opium has on the human mind in amongst the turbulence of what goes on in the real world. So then the question becomes, what is real? Is God real? Actually, it’s not what I intend on discussing here, but rather an anecdotal relationship I have noted between those with mental illness and their religious beliefs.

I may have discussed it earlier, but there was the story that was told to me by a neuroscience professor: There was once a very devout Christian religious minister who developed a brain tumour. The tumour affected this man’s thinking capacity, his cognitive function, and interestingly it made him unable to understand or believe in a non-physical, abstract, concept such as God. He lost his faith not because he was disappointed in God, but because the part of his brain related to religious faith was damaged! My professor took this as hard evidence that God and religious faith is nothing more than a human cognitive construct and in fact there is no God out there in wherever a person believes he is. Now, that is a pretty good deduction, but perhaps a bit premature. For example, if the antenna broke on my TV and I could no longer receive the signals that transmit my favourite shows, would I be right in concluding that in fact the television channels never existed in the first place or even that they have stopped transmitting the moment my antenna broke?

The opposite to the scenario proposed by my university professor could also happen. Some people with epilepsy and even those with migraines can experience an “aura” before an attack. The aura is different for everyone and some will suddenly experience a particular taste on their tongue, a music in their ears, a vision in their sight, a smell in their nose, etc. – yet these sensations are all originating from brain activity, not the organs they appear to be coming from. There are the rare people who experience very complex auras, things like seeing a halo-like figure of a person who resembles how a religious figure is depicted in art, or who hear a voice like that of a relative who is now dead. Of course, in the medical world we may call them auras or a sign of temporal lobe epilepsy or aberrant brain activity, but then other people may call them religious experiences. I won’t even try to conclude anything from that for anyone, but it is an interesting thought.

A quote often attributed to Robert M. Pirsig, a writer and philosopher, is “When one person suffers from a delusion it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Religion”. As a medical student doing a post in a psychiatric ward, I first started to notice how a large number of patients’ delusions revolved around God and other religious concepts. As an example, a person might believe that electricity is controlled by the devil and every time you plug in an appliance to a powerpoint then that lets the devil into your house. Or she may be obsessed with keeping her clothes clean all the time and protects them from being invaded by others and germs and other such things because she has read some scripture in the bible about guarding your heart and wearing the armour (of faith) and has taken her armour to be her clothes and she guards it by standing in the same spot for hours on end watching out that no one or nothing gets to it. Others have believed they are carrying the devil’s child in their pregnant bellies as foretold by some scripture they have read/misread somewhere. Or that the people putting thoughts in their heads are either angels or demons or God himself and that they must heed their ministry of whatever they’re been instructed to do… These people, however, have ended up in mental hospitals because what they’ve done or attempted to do has posed a threat of physical damage to themselves or others. Generally that is why they’re considered “crazy” and not just a founder (or follower) of a religion with those beliefs.

Now, I will very openly admit to being a Christian; one who believes things about God and other divine creatures that neither I or anyone anywhere on Earth currently has ever seen with human eyes. Yet I also remain curious about the relationship between religious belief and mental illness, especially when it comes to psychosis. Consider a person who has never had any religious inclination at all; perhaps someone the opposite of the religious minister of my neuroscience professor’s story. Suddenly, and I mean within a space of a few days, this person starts to believe that he can speak in a language new to him but that isn’t a language of this world or of a fictional book or film and can be understood by no one of this world. To all human ears he appears to just be making sounds with his mouth. Along with this “speaking in tongues”, he believes that God is giving him dreams that have special meaning about the past, present, and future. He also believes that he has been chosen by God and can exert God’s will of healing by merely touching the infirm of body and/or spirit. Unfortunately, due to his unique position before God, he believes that the devil (God’s enemy) is trying to hurt him. To minimize the hurt from the devil, he may engage in ritualistic behaviours such as rocking back and forth in his chair, hitting his head against the wall, or cutting himself to let out the bad energies. His new life revolves around speaking and singing about God and his newfound faith whenever he can and to whomever is around, sometimes even when no one is around… A psychiatrist may diagnose this man with a delusional disorder. Someone else may say ‘here’s a new member of the Pentecostal church who has reached enlightenment’.

Lastly, I will leave you with a comical quote by George Carlin that I found amusing:

“Religion has convinced people that there's an invisible man living in the sky, who watches everything you do every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a list of ten specific things he doesn't want you to do. And if you do any of these things, he will send you to a special place, of burning and fire and smoke and torture and anguish for you to live forever, and suffer, and suffer, and burn, and scream, until the end of time. But he loves you. He loves you. He loves you and he needs money.”