Why is it that some people who report hearing voices end up in
psychiatric institutions, and others end up on TV? I worked for several years
in psychiatric hospitals, and also in the community among people suffering from
a mental illness, together with their families. The majority of the people that
I worked with suffered from schizophrenia, and many of those would regularly
hear voices, alongside their other symptoms. There were those among the staff, nurses and
psychiatrists, who were naturally suspicious of anyone who claimed to have
direct communication with God or spirits. This could make life difficult for
someone working as a chaplain in this context, although I never claimed any
such direct communication myself!
And yet there are plenty of people around who claim to hear God’s (or a
god’s) voice, to be in direct communication with spirits or aliens, or who
claim to “channel” some kind of being. Why are these people not “mentally ill”?
Some would probably say they are! I would not. Misguided, almost certainly, if
not actually fraudulent, but not mentally ill. Anyone who has worked closely
with people with a serious mental illness knows that such a person has great
difficulty functioning in day to day life. When they are psychotic they are in
no condition to run a television show or a business. What they say rarely makes
sense. Those among us who claim to channel an alien intelligence or a great
being from the past may say unbelievable things, but they make sense. By that I
mean only that they are able put words together to form sentences and coherent
speech. I make no judgement about the worth of what they say.
Which of these groups of people, those with a mental illness, which
generally destroys their life, or those who claim to channel a greater intelligence,
or to communicate with us on behalf of departed spirits, represents the greater
threat? We will mostly ignore the psychotic ravings of someone who is seriously
ill, but the words of someone who claims to have tapped into a greater wisdom
can sometimes be seductive. I understand the temptation to believe.
I, at least, am more inclined to listen to someone who speaks with their
own voice.
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