| Subject: Re: Published studies showing jehovah's witnesses have high rate of mental illness |
Author:
Donald
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Date Posted: 07:58:23 05/19/04 Wed
In reply to:
Scooter
's message, "Published studies showing jehovah's witnesses have high rate of mental illness" on 05:31:09 05/18/04 Tue
Scooter,
So what kind of 'scientific studies' are these? Most, if not all, have been produced by ex-Witnesses with an axe to grind. Ex-Witness Bergman has written on themes as varied as psychology, Nazi Germany and Creation Science. The only thing that permeates all his 'scholarly' contributions on such diverse subjects being his desire to attack Jehovah's Witnesses on all fronts. Social Scientist Singelenberg commented regarding one of Bergman's publications:
"The annotations suffer from subjective usage, unfounded or incomplete evaluations, and tabloid irrelevance. Partially, these problems can be explained by the compiler's former religious allegiance; Bergman is an ex-JW and notorious adversary of the WBTS."
Bergman cannot be trusted to give a fair evaluation of any topic concerning Jehovah's Witnesses.
It is interesting that you quote (or, rather, the person you copied from quotes) Penton (also an ex-Witness) concerning the internal report about mental health among Witnesses. But what I find more interesting is that you (he) decided not to include Penton's own conclusion regarding the claim that Jehovah's Witnesses have a higher rate of mental illness. He showed that the studies claiming to show a higher rate of mental illness rely on a mishandling of the data. This is particularly so with the study of mental patients in Western Australia (by Spencer), upon which later articles have relied heavily. The Spencer article is suspect on a number of fronts, as respects the reliability and accuracy of its statistical conclusions. Most important, the author did not realise that a consistently higher number of people describe themselves as Jehovah's Witnesses than are counted as Publishers within the group - he treated the two measures as inter-changeable. In America, for example, there are just over a million publishers; yet when people are asked to report their religious affiliation during the census, more than 2 million people describe themselves as Jehovah's Witnesses. The pattern is likely to be similar in Australia, meaning that, while there were only 1000 Witnesses in Western Australia during the study according to Witness statistics (that is where the author got his information), more than double that number would actually consider themselves as Jehovah's Witnesses and would report themselves as such when asked. If this is taken into account, then the figures from that seminal article actually show Jehovah's Witnesses slightly underrepresented in the mental hospital compared with the general population.
Havor Montague is another ex-Witness who relies on hearsay as well as the flawed Spencer article on Western Australian patients to back up his own views as to why Jehovah's Witness beliefs are harmful. Even Penton, also an ex-Witness, has to admit that although he finds Montague's speculations interesting, Montague offers no actual evidence that Witnesses are more prone to mental illness. What I find really interesting about the place of this article in the series compiled by James Beckford is that Beckford himself does not express agreement with this study. His own book on Jehovah's Witnesses (the most comprehensive sociological account of Jehovah's Witnesses) does not even mention such speculation that Jehovah's Witnesses suffer from higher rates of mental illness.
Boting and Boting - again, these are notorious ex-Witnesses, and their agenda is plain from the title of their book.
As for the study of Jehovah's Witness conscientious objectors in prison, here again even Penton acknowledges that using this as evidence is problematic. Firstly, if these patients really suffered more from mental illness, then it has to be asked how much this was brought on by their confinement. Secondly, Penton, who apparently has read the reports about these Witnesses, due to their sensational descriptions, concludes that the condition of the Witnesses' mental health was unfairly represented in the reports.
As for the other studies, I must admit that I have not read them, but I would not be surprised if many of these articles also rely on the faulty evaluation of the Spencer article. I also think it is fair to be slightly sceptical of a Journal entitled the "Cultic Studies Journal". Unfortunately I cannot read Norwegian either, so I have to rely on your reading (if indeed you have read this or any of the other articles cited) for the interpretation of that article. And I don't have access to the German book (indeed, a search of the Internet shows that only Bergman and the person you copied from have mentioned this book online). Dr. R. Potter is only mentioned by the page you copied and it seems from his title that his treatment concerns not only Jehovah's Witnesses, but 'fundamentalist Christianity'. The research of Dr. U. Sack apparently deals only with the mental health of defectors from Jehovah's Witnesses rather than among Jehovah's Witnesses themselves, and no published work is cited for his research.
Scooter, I doubt you have read many (or even any) of these articles or books. I have read a good number of them, and the web page you have coped has misrepresented Penton badly; it has also ignored the flaws in the Spencer article - the article upon which later speculations have relied. Bergman says nothing new and relies heavily on the Spencer article. He often quotes works in foreign languages (often languages he himself does not read!!!) that are not easy to access, and his track record (even as pointed out by non-Jehovah's Witnesses such as Singelenberg) does not inspire confidence that he would give an unbiased account.
Also, I wonder what you have to say about the material in academic Journals showing that Pentecostals have higher rates of mental illness than the general population? What kind of church do you attend Scooter, so I can see if I can drag something up about them too.
Donald
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