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Religiosity gap in psychiatry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

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Abstract

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This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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Copyright © The Royal College of Psychiatrists, 2010

I thank the authors Reference Dein, Cook, Powell and Eagger1 for their well-considered and helpful article which argues for more understanding and discussion of people's religious and spiritual beliefs. They make the point that ‘Individuals with religious beliefs may be extremely reluctant to engage with psychiatric services that they perceive to be atheistic, scientific and disparaging of religion’. They then cite the example of ultra-Orthodox Hasidic Jews that fear misdiagnosis.

How strange and very unfortunate then that in the very same month, the British Journal of Psychiatry publishes an article that basically diagnoses Ezekiel, a prominent Old Testament Biblical prophet, as having schizophrenia. Reference Stein2 All of Ezekiel's experiences are attributed to the illness, thus dismissing the possibility that God actually did communicate with him in the ways described. The Old Testament is of course the basic scripture for Orthodox Jews.

No wonder that there is a problem then - the religiosity gap between psychiatrist and patient described by Dein et al Reference Dein, Cook, Powell and Eagger1 is demonstrated in a painfully clear way.

References

1 Dein, S, Cook, CCH, Powell, A, Eagger, S. Religion, spirituality and mental health. Psychiatrist 2010; 34: 63–4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2 Stein, G. The voices that Ezekiel hears – Psychiatry in the Old Testament. Br J Psychiatry 2010; 196: 101.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
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