ok... i'm kinda doing this at 1234 am.. after 2 glasses of wine and reading dav's REALLY inspiring (i quote) 'scholarly post' on his blog... [http://www.drumstix.blogspot.com/] so... y not?! he's always game for some debate anyways....
well, wrt to what he mentioned about journal article (yes dav, i READ the article... well, kinda browsed through), i'd say that dav's kinda making a mountain out of a molehill.... oops... or rather the author of the article...
well, first thing first, the role of 'religion' in dealing with illness (mental or physical) has been recently dealt with affirmative comments in its function of 'self efficacy' in helping patients deal with the particular illness. This is particuarly seen in incurable illnesses such as cancer etc where patient's dealing with the illness has been proven to be dependent on his/her self-assessed ability to deal with the illness. apparently, recent attention has been placed on the role of religion in promoting methods in helping. so when it has shown its effectiveness (as proven even in teh article: pp2) why pose such criticism to it?!
also, seriously, freud and the other freud-ians' theory of religion and mental illness isnt really convincing for me.. well, i always belive that freud doesn really have a place in terms of abnormal psychology and mental illness... someone who theorizes that mental illness arises due to any inability to relieve the sexual urge that you have towards ya common-sex parent?! i mean... yeah... it doesn work for me at least. so i cant agree on his claim that religious involvement LEADS to mental illnesses like depressiona n schizo. also, lets face it, the study of schizo has shown that etiology is mainly attributed to abnormal brain structures. so again, his view doesn quite work for me... Directionality of relationship (schizo & bizzare religious beliefs) is also unclear and purely a claim on its own without evident validity. [pp4]
last but not least, the claim that "Seeking miraculous faith cures instead of timely medical care can delay accurate diagnosis and enable treatable diseases to advance out of control (pp.5-6)"?! Firstly, the study by Lannin and colleagues [30] would SEEM to validate the above claim.. but then again, it was stated the limitations of its results. Study purely shows a correlational relationship without proving a causal relationship. furthermore, i believe that religious beliefs are sort of a mediatory factor in patients approach towards another alternative method of medicine (i.e. supernatural healing etc). Non-conventional /alternative medicine has been in existence since the history of china with the advent of acupuncture, chinese herbs even poisonous ones), tai ji/calligraphy (the connection between the mind & body) where no proven evidence has shown its validity in curing the illness. Yet, it has proven its effectiveness in curing illnesses over the past hundreds of years... so i really see no point in overclaiming the 'negative effects' of religious beliefs on physical health...
btw, i only read till pp6... ahaha. well, i kinda have other assignments to read up on as well... HAha..
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