A psychologist would not classify religious or spiritual beliefs as a hallucination. They are well within the normal human range of thoughts even if we here think they are not based in anything factual. A religious person is not having any abnormal mental issues when they think god is “talking” to them. In the same way a moving piece of music can cause strong emotions, so can religious ideas or experiences. Praying, sermons, shit like that, it gives them strong emotions and that’s why they keep going back. They just experience an emotion or a vibe and they mistakenly think that emotion is being caused by God when in reality you can get the same feeling sitting out in nature or listening to Taylor Swift. It’s just a mistake about the cause not a hallucination.
A hallucination is a tangible sensory experience. During a manic episode I had 4 years ago caused by the antidepressants I was on I ended up hearing voices and whispering. I actually thought there was sounds there and I would look for the source of the sounds. It was a tangible sensory malfunction, not just some mistaken belief about normal sensory experiences.
Psychologists are trained to distinguish these sorts of things.
And the problem here is that excessive respect for specific beliefs may lead some people to rest weight to the possibility that someone may really be experiencing hallucinations.
I don’t deny that plenty of psychiatric medication is prescribed without solid foundations (both about the patience’s situation and the research behind the drug), and sometimes has negative consequences (I’ve had bad experiences with antidepressants myself), but not all forms of distrust are equally valid, productive or safe. Let’s assume that the person at OP genuinely suffered a bad reaction to the drug (personally I think it’s likely), even then there are still two possibilities: either A) They did mistake their internal trail of thought with an external voice due to religious interpretation, or B) They are genuinely experiencing hallucinations. If it’s A, there’s isn’t a great issue with ignoring it, they’re a fool but there are plenty of fools in the world*. If it’s B, they likely have another mental health condition that requires identification and treatment, but excessive respect for irrational beliefs muddles the question. If the immense majority of the people this person interacts with share their beliefs, the chances that they’ll confront them when they realize that they’re speaking to someone that is not there will heavily diminish.
*You could still argue that someone mistaking their own thoughts with the voice of God can also become a serious trouble if they reach some dangerous belief, such as a form of violent political radicalism, but I assume that schizophrenia is far more likely to be an issue.
How do you tell a person who believes their own thoughts belong to an external entity from another with is literally hallucinating those voices?
A psychologist would not classify religious or spiritual beliefs as a hallucination. They are well within the normal human range of thoughts even if we here think they are not based in anything factual. A religious person is not having any abnormal mental issues when they think god is “talking” to them. In the same way a moving piece of music can cause strong emotions, so can religious ideas or experiences. Praying, sermons, shit like that, it gives them strong emotions and that’s why they keep going back. They just experience an emotion or a vibe and they mistakenly think that emotion is being caused by God when in reality you can get the same feeling sitting out in nature or listening to Taylor Swift. It’s just a mistake about the cause not a hallucination.
A hallucination is a tangible sensory experience. During a manic episode I had 4 years ago caused by the antidepressants I was on I ended up hearing voices and whispering. I actually thought there was sounds there and I would look for the source of the sounds. It was a tangible sensory malfunction, not just some mistaken belief about normal sensory experiences.
Psychologists are trained to distinguish these sorts of things.
And the problem here is that excessive respect for specific beliefs may lead some people to rest weight to the possibility that someone may really be experiencing hallucinations.
I don’t deny that plenty of psychiatric medication is prescribed without solid foundations (both about the patience’s situation and the research behind the drug), and sometimes has negative consequences (I’ve had bad experiences with antidepressants myself), but not all forms of distrust are equally valid, productive or safe. Let’s assume that the person at OP genuinely suffered a bad reaction to the drug (personally I think it’s likely), even then there are still two possibilities: either A) They did mistake their internal trail of thought with an external voice due to religious interpretation, or B) They are genuinely experiencing hallucinations. If it’s A, there’s isn’t a great issue with ignoring it, they’re a fool but there are plenty of fools in the world*. If it’s B, they likely have another mental health condition that requires identification and treatment, but excessive respect for irrational beliefs muddles the question. If the immense majority of the people this person interacts with share their beliefs, the chances that they’ll confront them when they realize that they’re speaking to someone that is not there will heavily diminish.
*You could still argue that someone mistaking their own thoughts with the voice of God can also become a serious trouble if they reach some dangerous belief, such as a form of violent political radicalism, but I assume that schizophrenia is far more likely to be an issue.