Laura Deveau's The Role Of Spirituality And Religion In Mental Health
610 Words3 Pages
Laura DeVeau’s “The Role of Spirituality and Religion in Mental Health” is an argument written to convince the reader of the importance of spirituality and religion in the professional field of mental health. Although spirituality and religious beliefs may aid in improving psychological disorders, DeVeau’s argument is vague, biased, and contains far too little references from authority figures giving little credibility to her argument.
DeVeau portrays herself as an ordinary person who is an authority figure based upon her past religious experiences. She tries to hide her biasness by providing arguments to support her beliefs as well as the arguments of her opposition. In the second paragraph, DeVeau says, “In this paper, I explore the claims, widely accepted by professional in the field of psychology, that religious and spiritual practices have a negative impact on mental health.” (265). She is not trying to market religious and spiritual beliefs to the average person, rather she is merely trying to educate and convince the reader of the benefits that may be achieved by psychiatric patients through religion and spirituality.…show more content… She was raised Catholic and regards the values she learned through organized religion as very important. On the other hand, she expresses her disgust for the fear-based qualities of Christianity. She was unable to establish a credible argument due to her conflicting viewpoints on organized religion. DeVeau tries to trick the reader into thinking she is open-minded in the opening paragraphs, but becomes more biased as the argument plays out. This subtle trickery almost discredits the entire