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Seems there are some odd folks out there who have funny ideas about how mental illnesses work, or what should be done about them.

The mainstream Christian and Muslim view seems to be encouraging people to seek treatment and, in the meantime, offering them spiritual guidance. The Jewish view, it seems, is that it doesn't exist and that the mentally ill should be shunned, or mocked perhaps. (Being Jewish, this makes me furious, but what're you going to do, anyway?)

My personal favorite is the Quaker approach. The Quakers believed that mentally ill people were ill rather than possessed or evil, and as such tried to house and care for them in pleasant environments, and counsel them until such time as they were able to get back on their feet in the community. Needless to say, this experiment in caregiving has never been tried since in the US.

That was a random aside, please pardon my rambling. My real question is, where do religious attitudes toward mental illnesses come from? Do they originate from purely secular social forces, or is there a specifically religious nature to them? And what is the significance of those answers, with respect to the treatment of individuals who are suffering from their brains having gone a little off-key?

You should check out the thread "Religion and mental-illness", if you haven't already, to read more posts people have made about how their own religion regards mental-illness.



I feel that it's probably a little of both, for many religions. First, secular social forces in the general culture decide whether the symptoms of a particular mental-illness are a "good thing" or a "bad thing." At that point, the philosophy of the religion in quesiton might step in if they have a specific belief about where "good" or "bad" things come from.



At this point there may be religious mandates based on the theories above, or there may simply be the normal social force of fear acting upon those dealing with the mentally-ill.