Using Secular Means to Fight Against Religion in Mental Health Care

Using Secular Means to Fight Against Religion in Mental Health Care

Um, so what next? We have a Yeah, we have another caller. Uh, and this one actually is a a great one, I think, for both of us. Um, this is an atheist, Lisa. She her from Canada wants to talk about what atheists/thecientific community can do about religious beliefs interfering with medical care. Lisa, you are live on Talk Heathen. Um, what is your discussion topic today? Um, hi. Sorry, I’m a little nervous. Um, no problem. Um, so I, um, can I just give like an example of what I mean by that? Mhm. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Um um I uh volunteer with a mental health organization in my city and um we deal with people you know from all different kinds of mental health disorders and um what I mean is how do we like let how do we stop religion from interfering with people getting proper healthcare? There was someone um there was someone who we were trying to help um in the past and they were living in a a group home. You know, they needed some help taking care of themselves. Um they had schizophrenia and all was going well until the people who are running that facility thought that they should do an exorcism on him. And you know, things like that. Not only do not only are they but uh it causes I think a lot of emotional damage to people um you know some people don’t want don’t won’t take their kids to the doctor, you know, thoughts and prayers kind of thing, you know, or maybe we’re just being tested and our faith needs to get better and and they’ll get better. But um I think sometimes that religion interferes in more areas than we think it does. And it’s the religious people who suffer as a result of that. Um, I’m not saying that all religious people. Um, I’m not I’m not saying that all religious people have medical neglect. Um, obviously that’s not true. Um, but I do think that religion can interfere with our physical and mental wellness. And how do we as atheists try to um try to put a stop to that from interfering into someone getting medical services? It is a conundrum. Um and I don’t just take it from an atheist standpoint. Um it’s it it can become a broader topic of people who do not properly engage with medical services due to misinformation. Of course, religion and religious doctrine is very powerful, but you’ve also got things like the antivax movement and stuff like that. There’s two things. One, if it’s the caretakers of people who are not engaging with the medical field on behalf of the person they’re caring for, especially parents. We do have laws and things around that. But one of the most sacrosan things in my opinion is bodily autonomy. And as unfortunate as it is, we cannot force someone to undertake a medical or mental health uh intervention without their permission unless we can declare them um unable to make those decisions themselves. And that’s very important to me that patient autonomy and dignity is is preserved. And yet we have religious denominations that in their very doctrine prohibit things like blood transfusions for Jehovah’s Witnesses, that kind of thing. Um, and there isn’t really a very easy way to do it on a broad scale. We can’t ban these religions. I wouldn’t want to ban them. I wouldn’t want to make it illegal to refuse doctor’s orders or to have people compelled to undertake a medical procedure that they don’t want to do for whatever reason. Um, now I have I I am only secondhand in this. I work parallel to the health care uh system uh in my role in a in a cancer charity. But these issues pop up. Now, I’ve also seen the flip side where people um are emboldened to keep going and to engage with medical uh uh things, especially when things like really horrific side effects keep people feeling sick. And chemotherapy is real tough on some people, but their faith is one of the things that keeps them strong enough to keep going. So I’m not saying that religion as a whole is entirely detrimental to people’s ability to seek the best medical outcomes, but I haven’t done a medical ethics class. I think you Dr. Ben might have a bit more insight on that. Yeah, I suppose more like I guess maybe I was referring more to like ethic, you know, stopping kind of these I don’t want to I’m trying to figure out how to say it without stopping kind of like religious like if someone’s a caretaker like you said and they’re religious like there has to be I just think that like when May I ask a quick question for uh for the example you gave about the exorcism? Was that a group home that was explicitly like labeled as a religious institution or was this like a like a group home that services the public and serves as you know like a a not a specifically religious entity? I’m not sure if it was religion based. I don’t think it was um because if it wasn’t if it wasn’t a religious institution like if if the patient wasn’t consenting to be placed in a religious group home that’s a big legal problem. Um because even if you’re a minor uh or if you’re an adult or if you have uh whatever condition, it doesn’t matter like you should have the ability to consent to what religious procedures are done um for you in the same way as uh medical procedures. like if if this is a group home meant to help take care of you and keep you safe, make sure you’re getting your medical treatments, etc., and you are not explicitly, it’s not transparently a religious place, um, they should not be forcing an exorcism on anybody. They should not be doing that at a at a public institution. So, that’s that’s one facet of this. Like I I just think that personally just my opinion I don’t think that religious organizations should have like their own hospitals and be selective based on that religion’s morality. Yeah, I agree. um or their either to to discclude certain right like there was a case uh in my province few hours north of here and there was this they had um one of the things that were kind of struggling with in the west in Canada is they’re um creating more you know um hospitals that are kind of like run by religious groups and you know and I don’t care what anyone’s opinion is on abortion My opinion is that it’s part of healthcare. I don’t know the reason. It’s none of my business. But, you know, to to not offer, you know, I live in a province that there’s only two cities. Everywhere else is a rural place. Uh, so there aren’t a lot of options. But to deny someone life know that could possibly be a life-saving procedure but you know if the say like they’re miscarrying or something but the nearest hospital is Catholic run and they they refuse to do that procedure right I just don’t think that me uh medical groups should really be involved in medical care I think it’s wrong and I also think that and this is just my opinion right you know when people are suffering, when people are desperate, sometimes they do turn to religion. And that’s not like to criticize them. You know, it we’ve all been there where we we want something to grab onto because we’re afraid. Um, and I think that along with, and I’m not saying all religious organizations, you know, do that or manipulate them or whatever, but there is an influence with ulterior motives. Uh, in some places that I’ve seen like, and I also think there, um, as a result of that, there’s a lot of emotional abuse that goes on. Um, when I was when I was 13, uh, I grew up in a very Catholic household. And when I was 13, I I was diagnosed with epilepsy. I just started having seizures. Mh. And I didn’t grow out of it. Some people grow out of it, some people don’t. And I didn’t grow out of it. And, you know what my my Catholic mom told me was, you know, this is a test from God. And I thought to myself, a chronic illness is a test from God. What could I have a as a 13-year-old, what could I have done to have some sort of, you know, need to be tested this way for the rest of my life? What or, you know, some people will say you’re sick because you’re sick because it’s a punishment. You did something wrong. Well, I don’t I don’t know. I just think that it doesn’t just cause physical harm. It doesn’t just cause harm in the medical system, but I also think it’s emotionally abusive. Um, no, it definitely definitely is. Like when I and when I was 22, I went to uh I was traveling France and I don’t know if you’ve heard of this before, but there’s this place in France called Lords and they have like apparently there was this miracle where the Virgin Mary came down and by the Lord’s fountain and healed people. And so I went there not because I believe in God is I wanted to get some water from there as a present for my Catholic mother. Um I just thought I just thought it would have meaning to her. And um yeah I I see these people you know they’re from all over the world bringing hum you know humongous drugs to and I’m I almost said it out loud. I didn’t. I’m glad I didn’t, but I almost said it like, you know, it’s just water, right? And like, can you imagine like funding someone from South America with religious donations to fly all the way to France just to get water and then these people are going to be disappointed because, well, obviously they are not cured. And that and that money and that money and the money could have been used to give them evidence-based treatment. Like it might not cover all of the treatment, but it could at least give them a head start in getting a specialist evaluation or or something that’s more tangible and more likely to succeed. And yeah, I I’m I’m with you on how frustrating uh this whole thing is. I uh I’ve worked with a fair number of religious physicians. I’ve worked at uh I did I did rotations um during med school at Catholic facilities uh and it is very frustrating when you have this disconnect between you know religion and evidence-based medicine um and I wholeheartedly agree that I I don’t think that churches should be able to have um like basically a monopoly like they do on community health. they have it on like rural health uh and a lot of the more service-based uh medical charities are run through religious institutions. And I think kind of the one of the big ways that we can fight this is by establishing more secular organizations uh that can do the same thing without requiring people to adopt certain belief system uh that won’t require people to sit through a sermon in order to get their medical care. we can have more people with initiatives setting up um evidence-based groups uh and secular groups to go out to these communities uh who may have only had missionary groups show up. Um I mean, if you have a missionary group of doctors show up and you get treatment that you need, uh of course you’re more likely to lean on a religious belief after that because that’s that’s the only group of people that gave you help. Um, so if we start kind of getting on board and establishing services like that, I think that would help. Um, as far as the the autonomy issue, I’m 100% with Jamie and the fact that we can’t force people to not make or make decisions based on their own, you know, religious uh, perspective. There there’s kind of some nuance with how you play out these conversations. And I think a lot of this is related to education and how we present the information. Of course, there’s always going to be people um for example, Jehovah’s Witnesses who won’t accept a blood transfusion. There’s there’s informed consent that you have to have with um obtaining a a medical procedure, but there’s also a degree of informed consent with declining a procedure. And there’s a very detailed discussion that you should be having with patients either way. Um, like I can give a recommendation and if somebody is declining the recommendation, I should be having a a good conversation with them, making sure that they actually do understand the risks of not of not accepting this particular piece of care. Ultimately, they do get the the decision. they get to make the decision of whether or not they uh they will accept or decline. But we should still try to answer the questions, make sure that they’re not declining because of misinformation. And if there is misinformation, we can address it there and then. Um because sometimes it is on me. Sometimes that laps in communication is because I phrased something inappropriately or if I thought that the person knew something that they didn’t know. A a lot of that does fall on the way I’m presenting info. Uh and and I will admit there are times when it is useful to rely on a bit more religious wording for things knowing that uh this particular issue isn’t going to be what decon converts them. Um but what the important thing is in the here and now for that person maybe saving their life so that later on they can evaluate their belief system. Um but you can kind of almost take like a little bit of a straight epistemology stance with this and just kind of ask ask the questions that maybe they didn’t think of before. Um, for example, if they think that an exorcism is going to like cure them. Um, but then they also might have a belief that doctors are put there uh by God and have been blessed by God in order to do their job. Where’s that disconnect uh at that point? Why are you if you believe that these experts exist because of your faith and because of your God? Um why is that seen why are these people seen as like the secondary option or or why are they seen as less credible? Why are you not trusting them in the way that you are trusting the exorcism? Um there’s some inconsistencies that you may hear with religious people in that. Um I don’t know if any of that helped. I Yeah. And I just I just you know in concluding I I just want to say like I I don’t care what a person believes in. I just when it comes to essential services like hospitals, I don’t think they should be churchrun. I don’t think there should be that religious influence, especially if it’s in a rural place where whether you’re Christian or not, that’s the nearest hospital to go to. Yeah. And and for example, like another thing uh because I’ve kind of been in between jobs lately uh was looking at ways to do some more community medicine and pretty much the only organization going out, well I guess there’s two organizations going out on um ships like big hospital ships, the only one that’s like not militaryrun is a Christian organization. And if you apply to work there, they require a statement of faith. So they require you to share your testimony uh and and to be sure that you believe the right things before you go work on this hospital ship. So that kind of calls into question is your agenda to actually heal people or is your agenda to evangelize? Mh. Um, and so we need we definitely need to step up our game on the the secular humanist side and say, you know, we can have a boat, too. Why don’t we have a boat and go out and do the same things, but just not have the faith statement question. Just have uh what are your credentials and like can you do the job that we need you to do? Yeah, it’s in an ideal world, it would be great to be able to excise like religious bias from these things that all hospitals and secular run and nonprofit if possible and uh and and these kinds of things. But if we just as the world stands right now just excise religion from from medicine um one we’re cutting off as a massive source of um resources and funding uh for everything from the medical care itself to research and and all that kind of stuff and charitable care. And secondly, we are cutting off um comm community outreach. Like if for example, the organization I work for refused to work with religious organizations because of their potential biases, more women out there would have missed their breast cancer screenings and their cervical cancer screenings because it’s those Sunday groups after after mass where the ladies get round and pass out the pamphlets and talk about when they should get their mamograms. And it’s like, is it ideal? No. But it’s kind of it’s the world we live in and the change is going to have to come incrementally uh and really quite painfully slowly. Um so I don’t think it’s an easily solved issue. I don’t think it’s one that’s going to go away anytime soon. And as Dr. Ben was saying it behooves us in the secular humanist community to try and provide better alternatives to allow people to just get what they need without any of the whole and don’t forget to thank Jesus uh for uh for for this healing that you have received. Of course. Okay. Well, thanks for the conversation. I just wanted to know your opinion on that. Uh I think we’re on a wavelength with you there. I really do. Yeah. Yeah. What’s that say? I think we’re very much in agreement with you, Lisa. We’re very much in agreement with you, Lisa. Yeah, we we are very frustrated, too. Okay. Well, thanks so much for listening. Um, I really do appreciate the discussion because I don’t think people sometimes I don’t think that people consider like different ways religion can harm people. Um, and I’m not saying that all religious people are like that. It’s that’s not true. Um, it’s mostly when you see things like that, it’s mostly just kind of people who are on the extreme side. Um, and uh, yeah, anyway, I got to go, but thank you for answering my question and I do hope you guys have a good weekend. Intend to. Thank you so much, Lisa. Have a great rest of your Sunday. Da.

Can secular efforts effectively address medical neglect influenced by religious doctrine? Atheist Lisa in Canada discusses how religious beliefs interfere with medical care, citing exorcisms for mental illness and faith-based hospitals denying essential procedures like abortion. She shares a personal story of emotional abuse from religious interpretations of her epilepsy. The hosts explore the challenges of bodily autonomy and advocate for establishing secular, evidence-based healthcare alternatives to counteract religious influence.

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