[citation needed]

I'm sure Brian has better sources, but a quick google produces:

[PDF]: "The study has shown a substantive relationship between mental health and religion. This has not been through the use of a randomised, controlled trial but through qualitative research. It should be emphasised that this is evidence that is admissible and should be acceptable by the NHS as a contribution towards evidence based practice.
In this context a U.K. wide qualitative study is recommended focusing solely on this relationship. As in this study it would be useful if sampling could be randomised for religiousness and the non-religious group used as a control."

[Wikipedia]: "There is now extensive research suggesting that religious people are happier and less stressed. There are a number of mechanisms through which religion may make a person happier, including social contact and support that result from religious pursuits, the mental activity that comes with optimism and volunteering, learned coping strategies that enhance one's ability to deal with stress, and psychological factors such as "reason for being." It may also be that religious people engage in behaviors related to good health, such as less substance abuse) since the use of psychotropic substances is sometimes considered abuse. On the other hand, Rastafarians and others use cannabis as a religious sacrament (see Religious and spiritual use of cannabis and Religion and drugs)."

Unless religion is just delusion of course... then people who don't talk to invisible friends will be considered more mentally healthy.

What about crying at films? Do you find that mentally unhealthy also?

So this is an example of one of your lazier posts that thinks it's making a point.

You may want to consider the differences between wrong and deluded and invisible and imaginary.

Is that quote actually mine?

On top of being likely incomplete or wrong:

"Mental health describes a level of psychological well-being, or an absence of a mental disorder. From the perspective of 'positive psychology' or 'holism', mental health may include an individual's ability to enjoy life, and create a balance between life activities and efforts to achieve psychological resilience. Mental health can also be defined as an expression of emotions, and as signifying a successful adaptation to a range of demands."

No. The difference to me is that one is a temporary suspension of reality (I don't know the psychological terminology for this) compared to religion which may be a life log delusion.

Yes, it was a lazy post, I'll accept that criticism.

Those were good enough. I was just going to post something from lmgtfy.com...

We have covered this in sufficient detail for even a deceased cat to come to understanding. Any culturally accepted belief doesn't count as a delusion. Period. No matter what.

You're such a charmer.

As unpleasantly as you put it, it still raises the question, can an entire culture be deluded? If there is no God with a capital G then 2.6 Billion people are without doubt deluded. If they're not deluded, then perhaps the Hindus are, or if not them then the Sikhs. Or maybe the Buddhists who believe that there is no god (or 30 depending on which Buddhist you ask).

Since those culturally accepted beliefs are mutually incompatible and fundamentally contradictory, at least one of them, if not more, surely has to be a mass delusion.

Please, Mightyboosh, just stop. It has been explained to you several times that "deluded" when used as a medical term does not mean what you want it to mean.

No, this is where you're getting hung up time and again. You're shaping this question in terms of "in accordance with reality" or some such - which, when it comes to beliefs, opinions, suppositions etc. is one but not the only avaliable matrix.

The point of the clinical definition of delusion - from what I've gleaned from the thread - is to precisely excluse that fact-based notion to some extend. If a society decides that fat chicks are hot and skinny chicks look starved, then they are and do. Period. There is no ulterior truth to be seeked, no "facts" to be checked no nothing. Society decides. Individuals that adhere to culturally accepted norms and beliefs are by definition behaving as culturally accepted individuals. (And just as a small nod to principality, it has to be so to make diagnosis even possible. If we need to check "the facts" -- whatever they are -- to come to a valid diagnosis, the entire field of clinical psychiatry would be paralyzed because how do we really know that our views on what is acceptable behavior won't be proven wrong by science in a few hundred years?)

Diagnoses of mental disorder aren't done to stroke someone's ego, win a fact checking competition or educating the masses, but for one precise utilitarian motive - to be able to help those individuals that get things really wrong and suffer from it. To that end, you need to find those individuals and a diagnosis is nothing more than a sifting mechanism to differentiate between what's "still ok" and what is "clearly out there". The question of "facts" with regard to the content of beliefs and such has little place in that at all.

If we took the question away from religious beliefs, where you seem to always get hung up on "But what if there is no God", and take it to cases disorders, where there is no such ambiguity, perhaps this point is easier to see. So, say anorexia. It's an eating disorder with a lot of psychological stuff going on in the background. Girl says, to oversimplify that to the extreme, "I look fat, hence I starve." What kind of facts are you going to cite that are able to convince her that she herself is not seeing herself as fat anmore? The simple answer is - there are no such facts. You could cite cultural norms ("everyone thinks you are skinny"). That aren't facts, but norms. You could cite clinical evidence about health and stuff. She'll go "but what does that have to do with me viewing myself as fat". So what else are you going to cite? If you try reasoning, a la "girl, you weight now the same as when you were 12, that can't be healthy", she'll say "ya, I should've stopped gaining weight with 12 - then I wouldn't have been fat."

There is no truth here to be pointed at, just norms.

Actually it's my thread and people are free to answer or not, as they choose. So if it's all the same to you I'll continue until I understand what's being said or until people can't be bothered to answer me anymore, whichever comes first.

I'm not trying to make a point here, I'm trying to understand what language I can use with reference to this issue and why it's not considered delusion.

No I think I get it and it lead to me asking the question "so behaviour, that under other circumstances might be considered deluded, if exhibited in the context of culturally accepted religious beliefs, isn't considered deluded?"

The answer was yes.

That then lead to me trying to understand where the threshold is for 'culturally accepted beliefs' such that one group aren't considered deluded (Christians for example) where another group might be (David Koresh and his followers). The difference really seems to come down to numbers. If enough people agree with you, then it's not delusion.

As I've said, I find that surprising but I understand it. Then I made the stupid comment about 'invisible friends' and it all kicked off again.

By definition, no. No matter what. Believing something that is culturally accepted is a perfectly psychologically healthy thing to do.

And when two cultural beliefs fundamentally contradict each other, and the behaviour itself would be considered deluded in any other context than religious, how can one of those cultures not be considered to be experiencing a mass delusion? It's recognised phenomena isn't it?

MB, really, snap out of it. Apparently 50% of US americans believe Obama is a muslim and born in Kenya. Does that make them deluded in the clinical sense of the word? No, it makes them wrong. The other half believes he's a christian and born in the US. That's a completeley contradicting belief and it isn't only not a clinical conundrum, it's not an issue at all. People hold differing beliefs on flimsy or inexistent evidence all the time.

Many right-wingers sincerely believe that austerity is a good economic theory despite there being nary-a-bit of evidence for that. Does that make them deluded? No. So this is neiterh about contradicting, nor numbers of "believers" nor any other thing.

Srsly, just let it go. This is not leading anywhere and apparently the profession that should have the most insight into these matters (and which seems to have the highest share of atheists in their ranks among all of science) is fairly firm in their belief that this has nothing to do with religions getting an unfair pass or something.

I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that it's simply a matter of perspective.

Pretty sure this is false, so l'm going to ask for a cite.

Ya, it's prolly exaggerated. I remember polls like this

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/07/2...ed-since-2008/

leading up to the election. But I prolly confused GOP and americans. Still curious about quotes like this, though:

From the context, it seems reasonable to assume this is only conservatives, but it doesn't say that.

In any case, my point was not really about the number but more in the sentences that followed.

According to the Pew poll cited, 30% of Republicans say Obama is a Muslim, and 17% of registered voters as of July 2012.

Being possibly incorrect is not sufficient for something to be a delusion. Mass hysteria exists, but is very very rare. Mass delusion is not widely accepted, but is also very very rare if it does exist simply because having a belief that is culturally acceptable is never a delusion.

A simple example of a non-delusion should suffice but I will give several just for fun. There are lots of people who are certain that the price of gold will go up in 2013. There are lots of people who think that the price of gold will go down (with equal confidence). One or the other (or both) is very obviously wrong. Neither is considered psychologically deluded.

There are also people who think that Manchester United is the best and others who think that Chelsea is the best. This belief is impervious to having lost the last match. Neither is considered deluded in a psychological sense even though it is obvious to any rational person that they can't both be right.

Conservatives and liberals and libertarians aren't considered delusional even though they can't all be right.

Though I do want to emphasize that a delusion must be firmly held, such that the person would have no doubt it's correct no matter what evidence you show to the contrary. I doubt anyone in the above examples in Brian's post would fit this criteria, while many religious people would. The point remains that being incorrect does not make one deluded. It would be absurd to think that anyone who is wrong has a mental illness.

And it still has NOTHING to do with religion. Any culturally accepted belief would be safe from the delusion label, no matter how much Mighty ignores this.

I'd like to follow up (and adjust) Mighty's example from earlier: Were David Koresh's* followers considered clinically deluded (obviously their beliefs weren't accepted by the surrounding culture)? If the answer is yes, what happens if you move their population to an uninhabited island where they would now technically compose the entirety of that nation's culture?

*** If you don't like the David Koresh example (or the answer is that no, they were not considered clinically deluded whilst in Waco), feel free to exchange the example for another where you would consider its group deluded. ***

EDIT I: If your response is that the population is STILL clinically deluded despite the technicality of adjusting their surrounding "culture", what happens if a person from, let's say Europe, decides to move to Island Koresh and ends up becoming a full blown member? Can he be considered deluded?

EDIT II: I know what you mean to get across when you say "culturally accepted belief"; I'm just trying to flesh out some of the technicalities and the like.

Also, can you shed any light on Mighty's inquiry into the population threshold for considering something cultural? I realize it's basically the Sorites paradox, but maybe you can offer some insight.

Gangsta, I hope you don't mind the tag team effort. I'm actually enjoying reading where you differ since you are more up to date than I am.

Anyway, determining this would be done on a case by case basis of the individuals, not the group as a whole. It is (as you correctly point out in your Sorites Paradox post) a matter of judgment. We have the same problem with depression ("nah, you are just sad, not depressed").

There are no hard lines in psychology. Most things are on a continuum. What I would look for would be other symptoms of abnormality to help me decide whether a particular Sally was delusional. In particular, I'd be looking for clinical signs of temporolimbic abnormality.