Date Posted:10:08:35 03/04/05 Fri Author: Joe Subject: Re: Mental illness and suicide In reply to:
Elizabeth
's message, "Mental Illness" on 15:11:06 03/03/05 Thu
An excerpt:
People with schizophrenia are not often driven to take their own lives by "voices" or by delusions, such as flying from a high building. People with a severe mental illness are likely to commit suicide for similar reasons to everyone else - the collapse of personal relationships, the loss of a job or home and so on - all factors likely to be created by the mental illness itself.
The point here is that it is usually the depressing circumstances that one finds his/herself in life that makes one contemplate and/or attempt suicide. We may have put ourselves in such dire circumstances through mistakes or wrong decisions we've made. Or as the article states, having a mental illness itself certainly does contribute to the dire circumstances we may find ourselves in; in that case, we hopefully have a decent support system around us (as someone like John Nash had).
But in a cult, there is likely to be nothing resembling a support system. And the cult itself, through its totalist and controlling "shepherding and discipling", may have put us in the depressing circumstances of life that we find ourselves in after years of obeying human leaders when they told us what to major in, what job to take, where to live, whom to marry, how much to weigh, how much to offer, etc.
