Mental health campaigns have been able to achieve a great deal in terms of reducing stigma and encouraging people to have honest conversations about their mental health. This has to be applauded. A culture of openness and non-judgement helps people living with mental health issues to feel less alienated, ashamed, and embarrassed about their suffering,…
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There are possibly many ways in which we can define a religious experience. We need to ask ourselves: What features should such an experience exemplify? There is also the issue of trying to ascertain whether a certain experience is pathological in nature. For reasons which will become clear, I will be using the term religious…
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While the classical serotonergic psychedelics (LSD, mescaline, psilocybin, and DMT) are generally considered physiologically safe and non-addictive, they are certainly not without their risks. Negative experiences do occur – although, under a system where psychedelics are legal and regulated, this risk could be minimised. For a very tiny minority with a pre-existing or latent mental…
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An individual can display certain symptoms, but whether they are an indication of schizophrenia or shamanic abilities depends largely on the cultural context. By cultural context I mean the collective beliefs, values, expectations and responses of the community which shape the mentality and behaviour of the individuals within that community. Mental illness is heavily influenced…
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Louis Wain (1860 – 1939) was an English artist best known for his drawings of anthropomorphised cats. In his later life, Wain developed schizophrenia, which psychiatrists speculated at the time was brought on by toxoplasmosis, a parasitic infection that can be contracted from cats. He was first committed to a mental hospital in 1924. He…
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