It's 2016. Mental illness has been at the forefront of many current discussions everywhere from science to politics and casual conversation.
I figured this is a good topic for healthy discussion here in GC. I want to present to you a theoretical case and have discussion on what we'd all do in the given case.
Your friend believes he is Jesus or another divinity. He truly believes this. You can tell that biologically, there is nothing about him that is divine. He performs no miracles, he cannot walk on water, cannot feed thousands with only a few loaves of bread, or do other Jesus-like or divine things. You clearly recognize that he is not a divinity.What do you do?
Do you go along with his belief? After all, it's his life, his choices. If he's not hurting anyone, who cares what he's doing? Do you think that going along with his delusion will make him happy? Essentially in this case, you are recognizing the situation, but thinking "nah, this is cool, my friend can believe he's Jesus if he wants. No need to intervene or get professional help."
Or do you recognize his mental illness might be a problem, and do what you can to get him professional help? In this case, you decide that your friend believing he is a divinity will not ultimately make him happy. You might understand that delusions are not healthy and need to be fixed. Or you might just want to get him back to normal.
There is an interesting study of these sorts of cases you may have heard of before;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three_Christs_of_Ypsilanti Essentially when you take three men with this same delusion and put them into a room together, all three men will independently conclude that the other two are mentally ill, while *they* are the one who is truly Jesus.
Interested to see some discussion on this topic here from eliters, many of whom are traditionally educated in psychology and other sciences.
Poll