patients who have been in self help cults?

[nancysinatra]

Does anyone know if it's common for patients to seek psychiatric treatment as part of having belonged to a self-help or psychological "cult?" You know, those groups that meet in hotels and hold new agey conferences, and are super relentless about expanding membership, to the point where they threaten and manipulate existing members to achieve this? I'm wondering if some of these people might qualify as having been brainwashed, and what the treatment for that would be?

I have known two people in my life who joined such groups, to the horror of everyone around them. One later escaped and wrote a newspaper article about the experience of being sucked into the group. (I hope revealing this doesn't get this post closed though. I'm in no way seeking input on these actual people, just explaining how I got this weird interest.) Ever since then I've been interested in the subject and would love to research it if there's anything written about it. I also hoped I might get to meet a brainwashing patient during my psych clerkship, but that didn't happen.

Can someone also tell me where the best online places for looking up psychiatric information or research articles are? Is it pubmed? Somewhere on Ovid? Or someplace else? It can't be uptodate. I'm sorry if this question brands me as someone who never should have made it to third year without a nice little warning from the dean, but honestly I just haven't been shown where to look up these subjects.

Thanks!

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[whopper]

Does anyone know if it's common for patients to seek psychiatric treatment as part of having belonged to a self-help or psychological "cult?"

I don't have hard numbers but I only had 1 patient that was part of a cult in 3.5 years of practice as a resident. If anyone in our program had one, we would've told all the others because this is rare.


I have seen some on the board be somewhat anti-wikipedia, but wikipedia's listing for the anti-cult movement is very good.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Cult_Movement

Be careful about researching cults on the net. One of the largest anti-cult groups was bought out by Scientologists. Some self proclaimed anti-cult groups are themselves cults that are against specific cults but for others.

 

[freudianslip]

Im doing my Grand Rounds on just this.

Look up Margaret Thaler Singer and "Cults in our Midst". Informative into generals.

Robert Lifton, Psychiatrist and analyst wrote one called Totalism and The Theory Behind Thought Reform....a great one on brainwashing.

Xenu.net is a source for all sources as well. Funny as well.

Good luck. Fascinating.

 

[nancysinatra]

Thanks! I will check those sources. As far as online research, what I was wondering about was more along the lines of which scientific journal article catalogs that my library has online would be best for looking up topics in psychiatry, especially things that are more psychology oriented. Pubmed doesn't often turn up a lot on subjects like "cults."

Next week I am meeting with a psychiatry professor at my school to talk about research opportunities. It would have to be something involving a literature review. I don't know if I am brave enough to suggest "cults" as my area of interest, but it's worth looking up on my own at least. The Wikipedia entry mentions the anti-cult movement's tendency to "medicalize" cult membership, and also mentions that the debate tends to spark a lot of polemics, which doesn't surprise me.

It's not surprising that these patients are rare, I guess, but I've always wondered if cult-like groups tend to appeal to people who have pre-existing mental health problems, especially some of the cluster B people. Someone without a strong sense of who they are just seems like they might be more inclined to buy into a persuasive new philosophy like that for awhile, at least.