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Could the very high rate of mental illness in Europe be related to religion decline?

Agatha said:
As a group, atheists have a name, but that doesn't make it atheism a religion in any sense of the word 'religion'. Support groups can be of many different sorts for those who need them, not just religions.

And SCOTUS decisions are not binding or relevant to the 95.5% of the world population which is outside the US, I am baffled that you would think otherwise.
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just to get this straight from a few of you on here. If say SCOTUS does rule atheism as a religion, would that make atheists outside of USA hate other atheists for accepting it or 'using' it as a religion? Once a country like USA has made it public - which we are doubting atm due to lack of source but evidence of a man using it in a court of law - the rest of the world could pick atheist apart because you have divided yourselves. Where as say Christianity for example, not started/ruled by court is not divided but China for one, hunts done churches and closes them.
 
welshdean said:
Who was it that said (paraphrased), "We are both atheists, I just go one god further than you."

Novest, what do you call the religion that doesn't believe in Allah? You should know, you are a member, right?
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Dawkins :)
 
welshdean said:
Who was it that said (paraphrased), "We are both atheists, I just go one god further than you."
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Stephen Henry RobertsWP: "I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."
 
Getting back to this thread's OP, DOC and his supporters really haven't made a case for equating increases in mental illness with a decline in religion. Rather,what we see is this: Those forms of mental illness associated with aging: dementias and some forms of depression, are higher in developed nations, which have a higher ratio of people living into old age than do underdeveloped nations. Further, situational stresses, such as cultural disruption, revolutionary change, high unemployment and civil strife raise rates of mental illness. Some examples are: Ukraine - westernization and rampant unemployment; Lebanon - internal strife between Christians, Muslims and Jews. Then there are inexplicable, idiosyncratic differences between national states. What else can explain the fact that the rate of mental illness in France is twice that of neighboring Germany?

I might also point out that in places such as the Netherlands, women's shelters, housing abused spouses fleeing chronic physical assault from their husbands are overwhelmingly filled with Muslim women. Does this say something about Islam? Possibly. However, there are other factors at work in the immigrant Muslim population: cultural disruption, racial and ethnic prejudice, lack of opportunity and poverty. All of these are affecting Muslim populations in western Europe, and all of them also raise the level of mental illness. It would be interesting to compare the levels of Muslim population in France and Germany to see if this has any impact on their respective levels of mental illness.

Be that as it may, the only way one might indicate a connection between levels of religiosity and rates of mental illness would be to compare two countries otherwise equal that have different levels of religiosity.
 
according to this website, http://http://www.cmha.ca/bins/content_page.asp?cid=6-20-23-43 only 20% of Canadians suffer mental illness. According to this onehttp://www.nimh.nih.gov/statistics/1ANYDIS_ADULT.shtml the overall mental illness rate in the U.S. is 46.4%.

According to this site http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_United_States church attendance in the U.S. is about 40%.According to this site http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100814152307AAdwCVo Canadian church attendance is comperable to that ofthe U.S.

Taken together, this shows no particular correlation between religion and the widely varying rates of mental illness in these two very similar countries.
 
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TimCallahan said:
according to this website, http://http://www.cmha.ca/bins/content_page.asp?cid=6-20-23-43 only 20% of Canadians suffer mental illness. According to this onehttp://www.nimh.nih.gov/statistics/1ANYDIS_ADULT.shtml the overall mental illness rate in the U.S. is 46.4%.

According to this site http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_United_States church attendance in the U.S. is about 40%.According to this site http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100814152307AAdwCVo Canadian church attendance is comperable to that ofthe U.S.

Taken together, this shows no particular correlation between religion and the widely varying rates of mental illness in these two very similar countries.
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DOC, How do you explain the fact that mental illness rates in the U.S. are over twice what they are in Canada, when the two countries have about the same rate of church attendance?
 
welshdean said:
Hate is more a xtian trait ...
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Hate is unfortunately a human trait, shared by us all ... believers and non-believers alike.

It's only because Christianity has been so popular, that it's brand of hatred has been so successfully expressed.
 
DOC said:
I was surprised to see just how high the figures for mental illness are in Europe.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44394646/#.Tma_hI672_I

I maintain that an increase in secularism and decrease in religiosity could be a major reason.
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The consumption of ice cream leads to both drowning and shark attack.

What are Sweden and Denmark's rates of mental illness? If your idea is true Sweden should have a very high rate.
 
Somehow I doubt that church membership reflects the same percent of mental illness that exists in the wider population.

Ah you say, this is proof that religion is some kind of awesome mental health benefit.

Ah I say, this is because mentally ill people are not welcome in churches.
 
Kopji said:
Ah I say, this is because mentally ill people are not welcome in churches.
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Then you, too, would be no better than DOC in spouting half-baked bollocks

Mentally ill people ARE welcome in MANY churches, welcomed and supported by sincere and well intentioned people who genuinely care about the mental health of their 'neighbours' whilst making a conscious effort to resist any urge to push their own woo
 
six7s said:
Then you, too, would be no better than DOC in spouting half-baked bollocks

Mentally ill people ARE welcome in MANY churches, welcomed and supported by sincere and well intentioned people who genuinely care about the mental health of their 'neighbours' whilst making a conscious effort to resist any urge to push their own woo
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I'm sorry, I keep hearing how church attenders live longer and are happier etc etc. The assumption is always something other than the obvious fact that churches are a self selecting population of rather normal healthy people with fewer problems. The rest are a burden.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110622115307.htm

ScienceDaily (June 22, 2011) — Mental illness of a family member can destroy the family's connection with the religious community, a new study by Baylor University psychologists has found, leading many affected families to leave the church and their faith behind.

The study shows that while families with a member who has mental illness have less involvement in faith practices, they would like their congregation to provide assistance with those issues. However, the rest of the church community seemed to overlook their need entirely. In fact, the study found that while help from the church with depression and mental illness was the second priority of families with mental illness, it ranked 42nd on the list of requests from families that did not have a family member with mental illness.

"The difference in response is staggering, especially given the picture of distress painted by the data...
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Elypsis44 said:
You need to brush up on your causation/correlation understanding.

There is a correlation between increased instances of drowning and ice cream consumption, but that does not mean one causes the other.

Fail.

:rolleyes:
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If you call the assertion OP makes a failure, then I call what follows a major collapse of reason on the part of the "critical thinkers" who have been incapable of producing a short and comprehensive data-based argument that would make the idea that absence of religion is a main contributing factor to the development of mental illness very unlikely. Most of what I come across are emotional outbursts, ridicule, poor reasoning, ignorance and other signs which unmistakeably point toward the mob-spirited, anti-religion branch of atheism. Like always, the arguers dump a pile of crap on the OP and delude themselves into thinking that are righteously correct once again in refuting someone insight that dares to smear the mad doctrine which they go by.

You failed miserably in your criticism; you didn't move a finger to show that there is no significant correlation that would warrant the conclusion in OP. You only pointed out that there may be other causes to the observed, which is not enough to call someone's assumption a failure. Of course, the Local Worshipers of Pseudo-Reason have different standards.
 
epix said:
If you call the assertion OP makes a failure, then I call what follows a major collapse of reason on the part of the "critical thinkers" who have been incapable of producing a short and comprehensive data-based argument that would make the idea that absence of religion is a main contributing factor to the development of mental illness very unlikely. Most of what I come across are emotional outbursts, ridicule, poor reasoning, ignorance and other signs which unmistakeably point toward the mob-spirited, anti-religion branch of atheism. Like always, the arguers dump a pile of crap on the OP and delude themselves into thinking that are righteously correct once again in refuting someone insight that dares to smear the mad doctrine which they go by.

You failed miserably in your criticism; you didn't move a finger to show that there is no significant correlation that would warrant the conclusion in OP. You only pointed out that there may be other causes to the observed, which is not enough to call someone's assumption a failure. Of course, the Local Worshipers of Pseudo-Reason have different standards.
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You seem to miss the point. The link in the first post said nothing that would support the OP. The burden of proof is on the claimant.


If DOC wants to assume that secularism is a cause of mental illness, then it is up to him to produce the evidence.

An assumption is not proof. I'm amazed you don't understand this.
 
Not to mention causation was never established, and anybody who has taken a high school statistics class knows that correlation does not immediately imply causation.
 
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