Sequel – The Appropriateness of Religion Providing Health Care

Sequel – The Appropriateness of Religion Providing Health Care


By Marvin Ross

Not unexpected and always welcome, I got some comments on the blog last week on fundamentalist Christians providing supportive care for the mentally ill. My concern was the fact that not all of them accept mental illness as a no fault health problem but as a failure of some sort. Possibly a moral failure or a failure of faith. I’m not really sure.

One comment was that some Christian groups do good work in supporting the mentally ill and the example was the Good Shepherd. As you can see from the list of their services, they assist and support in many areas from meals to hospice care. “The work of Good Shepherd is based on a fundamental belief in providing hope and restoring dignity to the most vulnerable members of our community.” Nowhere do they say, as Indwell does, that people are ill “due to the fall into sin and need the healing touch of our Saviour and Lord.”

Contrast that with the Sisters of St Joseph who founded Hamilton’s St Joseph Health Centre. They began in 1852 in Hamilton fighting a cholera epidemic with the belief that “it is an honour to serve – and in particular to ensure that those most vulnerable and marginalized have access to compassionate, high quality care.” They add “While our history is deeply rooted in the Catholic faith, our people reflect the best of Canada’s multicultural, multi-faith and diverse community…..”

Extremes of any religion seem to lead to unscientific views of illness and treatments. Vaccine hesitancy is one area where religious beliefs play an influence. Christian Scientists do not belief in the need for doctors or medicine but, instead, believe in the power of prayer. Jehovah Witnesses do not accept blood transfusions even if needed to save a life.

A few years ago, I was reading a memoir by a woman who grew up and escaped an ultra orthodox Chasidic family in Brooklyn. She mentioned that her brother had schizophrenia which the family did not understand so they locked him up in his bedroom.

We need less dogma and more science to deal with health problems.

This comment on the last blog I really liked:

Great post. Got me thinking, fundamentalist Christians and post-modernists share similar beliefs about mental illness, addictions, and ‘housing first.’

Fundamentalists don’t really care about treating mental illness because they are not even sure it exists to begin with (could be demons) and all the mentally ill and addicts need is to be saved “by the blood of the lamb or Dr. Jesus” or whatever gobbledygook they use. ‘Housing first’ makes sense because it’s charitable and it gives people a chance to be saved by Jesus.

Post-modernists don’t really care about treating mental illness or addictions because they see these as mere lifestyle choices. They think the mentally ill should be allowed to go off their meds and live in cardboard boxes, and addicts should be given drugs to continue their habits because these are their lifestyle choices. Anything other than this is “colonial, hetero-normative, cis-gender mansplaining” or whatever gobbledygook they use.

These post-modernists who have worked their way into social work, planning, law, and various policy positions have found an unlikely ally with Indwell. The ‘unhoused’ are given homes that don’t require medication compliance or abstinence of illegal drug use, which is perfect for the post-modernists because they don’t believe in these policies.

The person who wrote that grew up watching his father continually fight with the health care system to get proper care for his (the commentator’s) uncle. He spent his life in substandard lodging homes for the mentally ill until his early death.

Now that RFK Jr has discovered the cause of Autism, maybe he can turn his attention to severe mental illnesses.



Source link

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *