How the Jehovah’s Witness Cult Creates Mental Illness

_{Preview: All cults perpetrate psychological harm on their members. In this article I explain how the Jehovah’s Witness cult creates mental illness.}

Curled up my desk chair, my knees tucked under my chin. Arms clamped against my ribs, in a defensive position, my hands pressing into the sides of my face.

Hiding. My body tries to shrink itself.

The room around me faded to black, my vision tunneling. I gripped the desk in front of me, worried I would fall off my chair. My hands and feet tingled. The last meal I ate threatened to come back up. Though I hadn’t had a drop of alcohol, the room swirled around me.

“I need to lie down“, I told my therapist.

Thankfully, because our session was virtual, my bed was just behind me. Fearing I’d hit my head on the wood floors or the sharp corners of my desk if I lost consciousness, I crouched low, virtually crawling to my bed.

I was in the middle of an EMDR session experiencing a panic attack.

In our last session, I told my therapist I’d been enjoying winter, and the sensation of cold on my skin was refreshing. This was a new and odd experience, because I’d formerly hated being cold.

Shivering in my cold minivan as it warmed up on a winter morning, or simply stepping out of a steamy shower into a cool bathroom, every time I shivered, I had invasive, unwanted thoughts of torture.

Where did this fear come from, and why am I telling you this story?

These intrusive thoughts came from my upbringing in a cult that used stories of torture to induce fear and compliance. They’re symptoms of Religious Trauma Syndrome.

I’m sharing this so you’ll know that Jehovah’s Witnesses are an abusive, dangerous cult whose teachings and policies create mental illness in their members.

During the EMDR session, my therapist was attempting to help me process these painful memories so I would no longer experience flashbacks.

So I just kept breathing, intentionally slowing my breath, and continued following the dot with my eyes.

_{Note: I am not a mental health expert. I’m sharing my opinions based on research I’ve done into cults generally, and the specific cult I was raised in. This is not a scholarly work, but I include references at the end of this article and encourage you to consult those for more research.}

Mental Illness and Cults: The Chicken or the Egg?

Anyone, regardless of their personality or background, is vulnerable to cult involvement due to the psychological tactics cults employ to recruit members. But, there’s some evidence that people with undiagnosed mental illness, or who have a history of trauma, are more likely to join cults. (source)

People who join cults often do so out of a strong desire to belong, matter, and give meaning to their lives. In reality, cults often don’t provide these things, instead demanding complete commitment to the organization, which can inflict severe psychological harm on their members…

MentalHealth.com – “How Being in a Cult Can Affect Your Mental Health”, emphasis mine

Once a person joins a high-control religion, many aspects of cult life can contribute to psychological distress. And compared to people who join cults as adults, children who are raised inside (“born-ins”) suffer additional challenges, whether they leave or not. (source)

Dependence and Infantilization

Followers are encouraged to become regressed and infantilized, to believe that their life depends on pleasing the cult leader.

Spiritual Abuse Resources

The Governing Body (the ruling council of Jehovah’s Witnesses) suffers from a shared psychosis, a delusion that they’re “God’s channel”, the only group disseminating religious truth. They make the bold claim that no one can have a relationship with God without their interpretation and leadership. This creates dependency in their members, who believe that leaving the organization is tantamount to leaving God.

The infantilization of cult members results in stunted emotional growth. One of my favorite online therapists, who specializes in helping people heal from religious trauma says this:

Jehovah’s Witnesses suffer undue influence from the cult leaders into every single aspect of their lives. Cult members are not autonomous adults who are encouraged to use their critical thinking faculties to make wise choices. Instead, many of these are dictated for them.

From their personal grooming, employment, education, right down to the hair on the men’s faces.

Recently, the Governing Body announced that beards were acceptable for appointed men in the organization, a flip-flop on a policy that’s over 100 years old. Every JW instantly changed their belief and practices, based on the words coming from these men. Last month, the G.B. began allowing women to wear pants and men to skip jackets and ties.

Facial hair and clothing are small matters. Other policies involving health care and treatment have cost people their lives.

“Although there are no officially published statistics, it is estimated that about 1,000 Jehovah Witnesses die each year through abstaining from blood transfusions.”

Chua R, Tham K F, Singapore Medical Journal, Will “No Blood” Kill Jehovah Witnesses?

Under Pressure

JWs experience intense pressure from the cult leadership, congregation elders, and fellow adherents.

“Intense social pressures lead people into anxiety and depression.”

Mark Manson, I Traveled to the Most Depressed Country in the World

There is pressure to conform to the group’s rules, both written and unwritten. And the cost of disobedience is high. JWs can be disfellowshipped (excommunicated and shunned) for such offenses as: having premarital sex, smoking, voting, or even expressing doubts about the leadership.

Even if a JW avoids so-called “sins”, they’re not free from being under a microscope. The organization constantly tells them to do more, more, more. More time preaching, more volunteer labor, more donations, more responsibilities.

Elders in the congregation counsel members for a long list of minor infractions. Recently, in the Reddit group, one exJW asked, “What was the dumbest thing you were counseled for?“

A few of the responses: doing yoga, having brightly colored hair, wearing sideburns, wearing a hat backwards, watching too much TV, having a two door (versus a four door) car, watching anime, wearing “loud” socks, red lipstick, red shoes or fishnet stockings.

Watchtower literature doesn’t forbid most of these things. However, if someone gets offended by nearly anything you do, it becomes a problem you must solve.

No matter what you do for the organization, it’s never enough. One reader emailed me saying this about her experience:

“I wasn’t baptized as a teen, but went back to it later in life and was (baptized). I lasted about four years and could feel myself stressed  over never doing enough or never being good enough.” 

Anonymous

This is a common refrain among exJWs.

Tattling Culture

Witnesses have to worry about elders (congregation leaders) disciplining them for breaking the rules. Their fellow congregants also instill fear in them about being reported. They are instructed to “keep the congregation clean” by tattling.

Every JW has experienced the embarrassment of elders exposing their minor infractions. I’m no exception. Sometimes, those accusations were laughably false. In one scenario, an obviously mentally ill woman in my congregation accused me of pointing to her in the middle of the Kingdom Hall and yelling, “Ugly! Ugly!Ugly!“. I had to apologize despite being a child and the accusation being preposterous.

I got tattled on for: dying my hair red, kissing my boyfriend, talking about sex with a group of my teenage friends (who were all doing the same thing, but since they were male in a misogynistic religion, it wasn’t a problem), and other ridiculous nothing-burgers. It’s Orwell’s Oceania, where everyone lives in fear of their neighbor.

Sexual Control And Shame

The undue influence that Watchtower perpetrates on its members doesn’t stop at the bedroom. The instruction to JWs is that masturbation, sex outside of marriage, and homosexual sex are sinful. Some activities, I kid you not, are forbidden even for married couples.

Mental health experts recognize that purity culture causes trauma. Shockingly, its effects mirror those of sexual assault victims.

There are serious mental health implications for people impacted by purity culture, including but not limited to: religious trauma syndrome, feeling ashamed of your body, sexuality or gender identity, feeling controlled or pressured to behave in rigid ways with limiting rules, and a warping of one’s worldview that can reduce autonomy and increase shame and stress.

Hannah Mayderry, LMHC

Purity culture “creates systems of internalized and externalized oppression, shame, and judgment that can restrict sexual agency and exacerbate rape culture, racism, and misogyny.”

Megan Von Fricken, LCSW explains that purity culture resembles sexual assault trauma, often creating the same symptoms. “Both purity culture and sexual assault force or coerce people into surrendering their sovereign rights to their own bodies, often resulting in feelings of disempowerment, violation, and loss of self.”

Due to the cult’s misogyny, married women are to submit to their husband’s “headship”. Marital rape is not acknowledged. Victims of sexual assault have to prove to church elders that they weren’t “willing participants”. Here are some of the organization’s writings on the topic.

Distrubingly, even minors who are sexually abused by adults must prove their innocence. The paperwork elders send to headquarters asks if the victim was a “willing participant” in the assault.

In the vast majority of cases, the authorities are not notified, historically, even where required by law. This is a primary reason why several governments, including the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Norway have conducted inquiries into their practices of child protection. These inquiries have called JWs horribly negligent. In 2023, Pennsylvania’s District Attorney announced charges against nine JW men for CSA (child sexual abuse), part of an ongoing investigation.

The cult’s strict control on sexuality leads young people to marry very young. Often, to partners they haven’t had time to properly vet for compatibility.

Young people in their teens (like me, wed at 18) marry, having no idea whether they are sexually or otherwise a fit for their partner. Many are stuck in abusive or loveless marriages. I use the word stuck, because the cult forbids divorce except on the grounds of adultery.

“Beard” or “lavender” marriages aren’t uncommon, since gay people inside the organization are unable to express their sexuality.

Sadly, some closeted LGBTQ+ Witnesses take their lives, as did the nephew of Governing Body member Stephen Lett. Lett famously went on a homophobic rant at a large convention of JWs just weeks after his nephew Steven’s death. His niece, Brandy Schmiedel (Steven’s sister) heard the diatribe and left the cult. She is now an outspoken apostate who shares her story on YouTube.

Phobia Induction

Inducing phobias is a universal mind-control tool used by cults to exert undue influence. 

Steven Hassan, PhD, Psychology Today, “Phobias: A Tool of Cult Indoctrination”

The Jehovah’s Witnesses are no exception. They create fears of the outside world and its institutions. This includes governments, military, even the educational system, science, business, medicine, the entertainment industry. While healthy skepticism is good, this is paranoia.

The Witnesses teach that people outside (referred to with the pejorative “worldly”) are dangerous to one’s faith and under the influence of Satan. They claim that all religions (but theirs, of course!) are false and a tool of the devil. They also have superstitious fear of demons.

_{Photo by munshots on Unsplash}

Persecution Porn

As a child, I endured graphic descriptions of JWs being tortured due to religious persecution, which caused phobias and invasive thoughts that persisted even decades later.

You can see examples of disturbing J.W. apocalyptic artwork with a Google image search. Note that many examples of graphic, violent art appears in books written specifically for children.

Disturbingly, the official JW website recently featured a cartoon music video for children portraying authorities hauling off a father to jail due to religious persecution. When the young girl predictably erupts into tears, she’s instructed to rely on God and pray, followed by the next scene showing her being love-bombed at a religious meeting. This propaganda targets the most vulnerable, and it’s shameful. I refuse to link to the site, but you can find it by Googling.

The cult does not separate children from parents during their meetings, so even very young kids are swallowing the same material as the adults. This is obviously problematic, as some themes are inappropriate for children. The recent “bunker” videos (shown at large conventions of JWs on massive screens that felt eerily reminiscent of Big Brother) depicting JWs hiding in basements while police storm their doors are an example. At the end of one of these, I began crying uncontrollably. As a woman in her 40’s, I can only imagine how frightening these were for children.

The aforementioned G.B. member, Stephen Lett, addressed the concern of JW parents who had written headquarters about this very thing on their May 2020 broadcast. To sum up, his response was, “Get over it.” Unsurprising, coming from the man who became internet famous for claiming in 2022 that babies are little “enemies of God“.

This persecution porn is disturbing not just for children. Parents also find it frightening. They’re told that during a coming Great Tribulation, the governments will turn on religion, ushering in a period of chaos worse than the world has ever known.

During the mid 1990’s, the organization discouraged child rearing (they’d done this since their inception, but it had ramped up at various points in their history, depending on how anti-child the currently serving Governing Body members were).

During the height of this fear campaign, my sister, a mother of four, left JW conventions in tears, terrified that her children would be unsafe or that she’d be forced to make a decision between her faith or the torture of her babies.

Doomsday Messaging

“Try to picture this, friends. This gruesome picture. Dead bodies and body parts of the wicked will lie strewn on the surface of the ground. In streets, alleyways, fields and buildings. Now notice that God in this verse tells us that no one will mourn or bury these dead ones. Now what does this tell us? It shows us that we will not be traumatized by His mass annihiliation of these individuals. No, his divine execution of the wicked will not haunt us for the rest of our lives. Rather, we will react to it today as we do when a vicious serial murderer is executed- how do you feel about him when he gets it? Why, we will feel an inner satisfaction.”

Ciro Aulicino, Bethel (JW headquarters) representative, “You Will Be With Me in Paradise”, 2007

(For any current and questioning JWs reading, Ciro Aulicino is noteworthy, because of his involvement with The Watchtower joining the United Nations as an NGO, shocking and hypocritical because the organization claims that the U.N. is the “image of the wild beast” depicted in Revelation 13.)

Jehovah’s Witnesses are accurately classified as a doomsday, apocalyptic religion. They’ve been predicting the end of the world since their inception (and have the accompanying long list of failed predictions).

When these prophecies inevitably disappoint (as in the most famous of failed JW predictions, 1975), the religion suffers losses as many disillusioned people leave. The ones who stay double-down on their beliefs, in an attempt to avoid the intense pain of cognitive dissonance.

The organization gaslights those who believed the very predictions they made or subtly encouraged. In the case of the 1975 debacle, the Watchtower claims that only a few individuals attached a specific date to the end of the world, but JWs who were believers at that time and later left the organization tell a very different story. Even a recently “cancelled” (with no explanation given) Governing Body member, Anthony Morris III, let it slip (no doubt unintentionally) that believers at the time didn’t think their children would ever graduate high school.

The rewriting of history is an abusive tactic.

Cults do this on a large scale, which is designed to keep its disciples or followers in a state of perpetual doubt about their opinions and follow the opinions and ideas of the cult leader. It is an exercise in maintaining power over others and abdicating any responsibility for one’s actions. 

Brighton and Hove Psychotherapy, The Psychological Impact on Children who Grow Up in Cults

Even among true believers, unrelenting “last days” indoctrination puts the body in a perpetual state of fight or flight, and qualifies as emotional abuse. This is one reason why children born into the JW religion score higher on the ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experience) test than never-JW children.

Fear of “The Other”

As mentioned above, the organization creates a fear of “the world”, claiming that it’s “lying in the power of the wicked one (Satan)”, the foundations of civilized society including governments, the military, and even the medical and educational system. This obviously creates deep distrust in the members for the very systems that exist to benefit them.

This constant fear-mongering and belief that the world is “out to get you” is unhealthy and leads to anxiety and bad decision-making. By fostering this unhealthy suspicion, cult leaders maintain control over followers, limiting their exposure to alternative perspectives and information.

More disturbingly, fear of these institutions may lead to a lack of accountability within the cult, allowing leaders to exploit their followers without fear of legal repercussions. This is precisely what’s been happening for decades in the organization. For example, the organization tells victims of C.S.A. or other abuse to “wait on Jehovah” rather than to contact the proper child protection services.

“Mentally Diseased”

Suppose that a doctor told you to avoid contact with someone who is infected with a contagious, deadly disease… Well, apostates are “mentally diseased,” and they seek to infect others with their disloyal teachings. (1 Tim. 6:3, 4) Jehovah, the Great Physician, tells us to avoid contact with them. We know what he means, but are we determined to heed his warning in all respects?

Watchtower, 7/15/11

Another fear the cult creates, with great success, is that of leaving the group.

The organization refers to apostates as “mentally diseased,” “criminals” (Watchtower 7/15/11 Simplified Edition), “feeding at the table of Satan” (Watchtower 7/1/94), and other defamatory insults.

They also claim that when people leave the cult, their lives immediately become a catastrophic trainwreck.

Their literature fills with stories (typically, lacking names, locations, and dates that could be verified) of people who left the organization, hit rock bottom, only to come crawling back to the “best life ever”. They fail to acknowledge the truth: Watchtower members who leave suffer from psychological (and often other) abuse and trauma.

Isolation

When an adult converts to the Witnesses, they are told even before baptism to begin limiting association with anyone, even family, who is “opposed” to their studying the Bible with JWs. Their definition of opposition can be as mild as a loving relative expressing concern or encouraging critical thinking.

Sadly, I never developed close relationships with my never-JW relatives, something I’ll regret to my dying day. Watchtower told me my entire life that people outside the organization were a danger to my faith and safety.

When I exited the religion, I met with and apologized to my two aunts. It was painfully clear to me that, despite my dad’s conversion fifty years earlier, the pain and anger at the change his decision made in his family was still alive and well in his sisters. They minced no words when referring to his faith as a cult. One of my aunts regaled me with stories of friends of hers who had escaped the Witnesses, and how she successfully, unabashedly halted recruitment attempts when JWs knocked on her door.

Witnesses make the false claim that they don’t isolate their members, simply because some cults physically contain their adherents in compounds.

While JWs typically attend public school and work with “worldly” people, they are still imprisoned by an ideology. The ideology prohibits them from dating, marrying, or forming close friendships with outsiders. Even extracurricular school activities and hobbies are discouraged, to prevent Witnesses from spending too much time with unbelievers.

JWs who struggle to find a mate inside the organization and marry outside the group are considered “unevenly yoked” and are subject to soft-shunning, as they are viewed as spiritually weak.

Their children are also second-class citizens in the JW social hierarchy. My older children experienced this treatment first hand when their biological father left the religion.

Unlike adult converts who underwent normal phases of development and differentiation from their parents, children raised in a cult never develop an authentic personality. The group controls their lives, decisions, and thoughts from infancy.

Even when children do come into contact with outsiders, their behavior is often scripted and dishonest.

ICSA (International Cultic Studies Association)

I can attest to this. Even though I went to public school and rubbed shoulders with nonJW children, I felt constant guilt if I wasn’t preaching to them. Children who do use school as their “personal territory”, as instructed by the religion, become the target of bullies.

Everyone Else Burns

For most of the cult’s history, they taught that only Jehovah’s Witnesses would survive a coming apocalypse. Recently, they got “new light” that people would have an opportunity to be saved even after the “Great Tribulation” broke out. This reversed an old doctrine. They formerly stated that once that event erupted, the door was closed.

My strong suspicion, shared by many former JWs, is that the newest crop of leaders is attempting to create a kinder, gentler organization, in response to the many lawsuits and government investigations they’re facing.

For millions of former Jehovah’s Witnesses, the damage has been done. This idea that they are God’s favorite and everyone else burns is toxic, a covert, collective narcissism.

Additionally, inside the cult, people with narcissistic tendencies can find cover for their abuse because the cult normalizes their behaviors.

The organization itself can be classified as a narcissistic abuser.

Disconnection from Self

People inside a cult present a pseudo-self in order to survive the experience. Saying the quiet part out loud, the Watchtower literature constantly warns about the evils of living a “double life”. This is an acknowledgement that the authentic self is constantly attempting to show itself, to rebel against high control.

The high-control nature of JW life is especially tragic for children.

The organization produces the “Become Jehovah’s Friend” video cartoon series. The propaganda videos feature Caleb and Sophia, fictitious children, designed to appeal to young kids. The videos shame the children for: eating a birthday cupcake during a friend’s school celebration, wanting to join the school science club (extracurriculars are prohibited for JW kids), accepting a wizard toy from a school friend, and other innocent kid stuff.

In one installment that went viral online, Sophia contributes her quarter to the organization’s deep coffers rather than buy herself an ice cream on a summer day. Another features Sophia’s mom instructing her to evangelize to a school friend who has “two mommies“. She leaves out the part that God at Armageddon will destroy the lesbian moms.

JW children are in a terrible double-bind. If they don’t preach to their schoolmates, they feel unrelenting guilt because they’re told they’ll be “bloodguilty.” If they do, they risk bulling and ostracism by their peers. For me, this created an anxiety disorder that I’ve only recently conquered.

Suppression of the personality is a requirement of cult life. The Witnesses brag about putting on the “new personality” and joke about needing “brainwashing”, as in this talk given by Governing Body member Samuel Herd.

Cult and mental health experts refer to this creation of a false self in various terms. “Doubling”, “dual self”, “snapping”, “double personality” or “cult personality”. This divergence of the authentic self with the cult self can cause symptoms similar to dissociative personality disorder, a subclinical manifestation of dissociative identity disorder (formerly called multiple personalities).

Exhaustion

As I mentioned earlier, JW life is equivalent to a part-time job at the very least. The busywork that JWs are made to perform for this rich organization, free of charge, keeps them too tired and distracted to research or critically examine their own beliefs.

This is precisely why the organization has been losing members during and post-pandemic, when they were forced to utilize Zoom for their indoctrination sessions instead of in-person meetings.

Worldwide reports in the exJW community describe empty Kingdom Halls. The organization consolidates congregations and their Halls are sold to businesses or churches. In-person attendance is a fraction of what it was, with the majority staying home to listen on Zoom (or do chores, drink wine, or play video games with the meeting muted).

Most of the people who log in choose to leave their cameras off (despite constant pressure from congregation elders to turn them on). Many of those are PIMO (physically in, mentally out), doing the bare minimum to avoid being shunned by family.

“Free Beer Tomorrow”

Discouragement due to failed prophecy leads to chronic dissatisfaction and depression, especially among older members who have been waiting for a promised Paradise for decades.

Many elderly people, having been indoctrinated to believe they’d never get old in this “system of things” and having taught their children to avoid focusing on education, career, or retirement savings, find themselves in poverty or isolated. They have shunned their children who left the faith, with little to show for it.

“Millions now living will never die.”

Joseph Rutherford, 2nd president of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, 1925

The second JW president made this bold claim in a series of lectures later collected into a book by the same name. Obviously, adults living in 1925 are all dead! But Witnesses remained convinced that the generation that “saw” 1914 would not die before their promised Paradise, complete with a free panda, materialized.

When the organization realized they’d run out of time, they came up with a solution: the laughable “overlapping generations” teaching. When they announced this “new light” in 2010, I recall a family friend crying, “It’s like they’re moving paradise away from us indefinitely!” That’s precisely it, my friend. That’s because it never existed. The cognitive dissonance this “free jam tomorrow” situation creates is excruciating.

Financial Stress

“If you are a young person, you also need to face the fact that you will never grow old in this present system of things. Why not? Because all the evidence in fulfillment of Bible prophecy indicates that this corrupt system is due to end in a few years. 

 Awake! magazine (published by Jehovah’s Witnesses) 1969 May 22 p.15

According to Pew Research, Jehovah’s Witnesses are among the poorest of religions. In this chart, they appear at the bottom.

Jehovah’s Witnesses also have low household income (4%). In all three of these groups, nearly half of all members have household incomes of less than $30,000 per year.

Pew Research, How income varies among U.S. religious groups

Why?

Because of the cult’s insistence that we’re living in, as Governing Body member Stephen Lett put it, “the final part of the last days, undoubtedly, the final part of the final part of the last days, shortly before the last day of the last day“.

Reader, this man wasn’t having a stroke.

The fact that they’ve been saying this since the cult’s inception in the late 19th century doesn’t deter them. Therefore, they discourage members from planning for the long-term future. Except, of course, when it comes to growing their cult compound. Then they want your money!

Born-ins like me are especially educationally and vocationally deprived.

Theocratic “Education”

There are two main reasons for this. One is because the JW leadership strongly discourages higher education. Instead, the organization urges members to focus on reading the Bible and Watchtower publications.

The Shepherd the Flock of God book is a top-secret manual for JW elders. They don’t allow women to touch or see it. My mother, married to an elder for 50 years, didn’t know it existed. It says that if an elder’s kid goes to university, an inquisition would take place to determine whether he still qualifies to serve as an appointed man.

As a child who deeply desired to go to college, I didn’t dare pursue it. I knew that my father, an elder in the congregation, would have been subject to an inquiry and possibly had his privileges removed. As a teen, I didn’t have a single friend who went to college. It just wasn’t done.

This lack of education has obvious implications for generational wealth among JW, but there’s more to it.

Last Days. We Mean It This Time.

JWs sacrifice lots of time as unpaid volunteers to the organization. The organization strongly discourages focusing on career-building. It guilt-trips members by sharing stories about members who quit their jobs or lucrative scholarships to evangelize full-time or move to an area with few Witnesses. (Read: economically disadvantaged, the only places the JWs experience growth.)

Many old-time JWs viewed investing as akin to gambling. They shamed those who bought real estate or set aside money for retirement as “spiritually weak.”

This is tragic especially since the Watchtower itself is wealthy. They sold their Brooklyn real estate holdings to none other than Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, for a tidy $340 million, “one of the biggest real estate transactions in Brooklyn history“.

That’s but the tip of the iceberg.

The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society began as a publishing company and morphed into a real estate empire.

Lambs to The Slaughter

Volunteer donations and labor finance and build Watchtower facilities, keeping operating costs low and making them wildly profitable. No one knows how much money the Watchtower has, because they don’t publish their financial reports and are accountable to no one.

Sadly, Watchtower will summarily dismiss even those who spend decades serving at their world headquarters, with no support. Their stories are heartbreaking, and some of them end up “waking up” to the truth of their religion, due to this heartless treatment.

An employer would offer a severance package, retirement benefits and more. Watchtower claims that serving them is the “best life ever”, and that the world will “chew them up and spit them out”. Yet they kick people out of their positions with no safety net.

Many of these long-term volunteers avoided childbearing. They shunned relatives who left the organization. They’re distant with never-JW family, and the JW family they have are also struggling financially. This leaves them financially adrift.

With no job history or social security credits after spending their prime working years serving the Borg (as exJWs refer to the organization), they’re reliant on social services. This is duplicitous for a group that claims the world is in Satan’s hands.

Hypocritically, in some congregations the wealthy JWs who did attend college and have careers, either because they were wise enough to ignore the cult dictates or came in after they had obtained their education, end up subsidizing these “special full-time servants”. I witnessed this phenomenon with my own eyes.

Watchtower will throw long-time elders (working for free, as JW have no paid clergy) under the bus in court, as was the case with these two saps, Penkava and Scott. Their crime was failing to report CSA in a mandatory reporting state. In my opinion, they should have faced prison time. By failing to obey the law and report CSA to authorities, a young woman continued to be abused for years.

Some professions are off-limits for JWs, limiting their job options. Watchtower forbids careers in the military, government, tobacco, gambling and other industries. A JW could not become a yoga instructor or a judge.

Even acceptable careers have restrictions. My JW sister, a nurse, cannot give a patient a blood transfusion. A JW waiter can’t sing Happy Birthday to a dining patron. Etc.

All of this is financial abuse, and it’s needless and imposed from above by hierarchical cult leaders. Chronic financial stress is a type of financial trauma.

What Experts Say

We don’t have enough data to prove that JWs experience mental illness at higher rates than the rest of the population. But experts who have reported on the mental health of Jehovah’s Witnesses see problems.

In one study published in the British Journal of Psychiatry:

The present study of 50 Jehovah’s Witnesses admitted to the Mental Health Service facilities of Western Australia suggests that members of this section of the community are more likely to be admitted to a psychiatric hospital than the general population. Furthermore, followers of the sect are three times more likely to be diagnosed as suffering from schizophrenia and nearly four times more likely from paranoid schizophrenia than the rest of the population at risk.

The Mental Health of Jehovah’s Witnesses (emphasis mine)

(To be fair, critics have raised concerns about the bias or small sample sizes in some studies on the mental health of JWs, but they remain noteworthy. See examples here.)

Women Talking

This headline is in reference to the excellent movie by the same name, based on the book. It’s based on the true story of women in a Bolovian Mennonite colony. Watching these actors portray the agony of the struggle to maintain faith in the face of abuse in their ranks was triggering and familiar.

Some experts point out that JW women suffer more psychological stresses than men.

“… it is also a culture where patriarchal attitudes limit women’s personal power and predominate in their relationships with men. A group of women responded to a questionnaire about their experiences during membership in the Watchtower Society and after leaving. The results indicate that while in the Watchtower Society, women experience a higher degree of mental health problems than they do after they leave the group.”

ICSA, Wifely Subjection: Mental Health Issues in Jehovah’s Witness Women

Arrested Development

When JW born-ins reach their teen years, they’re unable to experience the normal differentiation process of adolescence. They skip a necessary step on the path to healthy adulthood. The crucial work of a teenager is to separate from their parents.

But JW kids are in a terrible bind. If they wish to leave their parents’ religion, they face shunning. If they want to preserve a relationship with their parents, friends, and entire network, they sacrifice their authentic self.

Born-ins who leave the cult usually “catch up” to their peers developmentally, but it’s a frightening and anxiety-provoking time. They must learn healthy boundaries (non-existent in JW culture). Learn how to listen to the gut feelings they’ve dissociated from. Navigate adult and romantic relationships. Discover their own repressed sexuality and form their moral code.

Furthermore, the demands of everyday life force them to quickly overcome educational and career deficits. When I executed a “hard fade” from the organization, it felt like I was abruptly thrust back into adolescence. While exhilarating initially, it was also terrifying.

Quite literally, I was doing the important psychological work of a teenager while experiencing a divorce, a move, financial strain, being shunned by my eldest son, and other stressful life events.

Sadly, former JWs like myself who attempt to maintain a relationship with their parents often find that it’s nearly impossible. When I tried to explain my complex post-traumatic stress disorder diagnosis to my JW father, he called me “rabid”. When I told him that my definition of sin was that which harms another human being, he claimed that I was “making myself into a god“.

Shortly after this exchange, my mother invented a story to attack my character.

Instead of conducting even the slightest investigation to clear my name of the false accusation, Mom informed me that she had disinherited me. Despite the false accusation being proven wrong, I received no apology.

This behavior is common among JW parents. They typically refuse to acknowledge the pain and trauma their religion has caused their children and grandchildren. Why? Because doing so would cause death to their narcissistic delusions and ego. How nice to have carte blanche to throw children under the bus with no accountability. The character assassination that follows when someone leaves the cult is how the members to soothe their painful cognitive dissonance.

References and More Information:

• How Jehovah’s Witness Teachings Damage Brain Development in Children
• The Pessimistic Sect’s Influence on the Mental Health of Its Members
• Mental Illness Amongst Jehovah’s Witnesses
• 10 Reasons Why Jehovah’s Witnesses are Unhappy
• How Being in a Cult Can Affect Your Mental Health
• Post-Cult Problems: An Exit Counselor’s Perspective
• Impact on Children of Being Born Into/Raised in a Cultic Group
• Born or Raised in Closed, High-Demand Groups: Developmental Considerations
• 141 Things Jehovah’s Witnesses Can’t Do (this excellent list is not exhaustive)
• Cult-Induced Psychopathology