Religion and Insanity

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Nov 2, 1882

Religion and Insanity

THE more recent writers on insanity frankly disavow the imputation found in some earlier works, that religion is to be considered one of its causes. Thus the editor of the American Journal of Insanity says, that he is "not able to recognize any reality in the term Religious Insanity. A man may take cold at a prayer-meeting, but the consumption which follows it is not to be called a religious consumption." Insanity is a disease of the physical organism, principally of the brain and nervous system; and a thousand causes may operate to produce it. To many temperaments extreme religious excitement would be mischievous; but so have been manias for invention or for speculation, and the passions of love, joy, hope, grief, remorse, despair, when overwrought and uncontrolled. The reason why religious fanaticisms have seemed conspicuous in connection with insanity is that interest in religious subjects is deeper and more universal among both sexes—not that the doctrines have any hurtful tendency. The general tendency of the faith and teaching common in America is beneficial and protective.—Intelligencer.