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I'd appreciate your thoughts on the answers in certain threads regarding mental health, where a presumed illness of the person asking sometimes is being assessed, diagnosed, and suggested a specific buddhist practice with assumed good effects on health.

I believe the answers come from a will to help. However, i also believe that it's not exclusively a buddhist topic. I suspect this is not a new subject, but i am curious to see what your take is on this?

Coming from the clinical world, i believe there are good reasons for being cautious, for the sake of safety and health.

I would have responded directly in the topic at hand, but my reputation score prevents me from doing it.

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Thanks for asking.

What do you recommend: that the question be closed? Or modified? Or answered in a certain way?

Given your reputation you could post an answer of your own, only you couldn't comment on an existing answer.

Just as it happened I have some experience with psychosis, more 2nd-hand than 1st- ... I imagine I know some of the reasons for caution.

I guess I allowed (didn't close) the question, partly because:

  • This site is more liberal than most other sites, about what questions are permitted
  • I'm hoping perhaps naively that users who reply will be cautious and do no harm
  • "Talk to a doctor" is cautious but not the be-all and end-all of life -- the doctors I've met know medications, and something of the difficulties patients have, and about society, but ...
  • The OP has obviously talked to a doctor already (and the symptoms if any appear to be intermittent, e.g. the question is lucid)
  • I've read here that Buddhism (to some extent) attracts people with a mental illness, and I hope that experienced practitioners might have met this before and know how to answer to this question.

I guess another reason is that I'm conscious that a diagnosis can be a stigma, which causes other people to act weird and to exclude you from (their) society, e.g., "we can't talk about that... we can't talk with you... go somewhere else ..." -- and "coming from a will to help", as you said, I don't want to respond like that e.g. by forbidding the topic, nor e.g. the OP's access to Q+A here.

  • Thanks for your input. I'm not sure the alternatives is for me alone to recommend, i brought it up primarily to hear others thoughts. But since you ask, i think it's a two sided thing: 1. There will probably always be an overlap between clinical health topics and buddhist topics, and i prefer an accepting attitude towards questions about it. I am more interested in the consequences of the answers provided. 2. Some of the specific concepts brought up makes me uncertain whether buddhism adress them at all, as they are modern concepts in a sense. – Erik Dec 25 '18 at 21:56
  • Lastly, i feel hesitant to pinpoint a specific post, but rather look at the topic in a general sense. – Erik Dec 25 '18 at 21:59

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