March 29, 2016

March 29, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

In “Religion as Schedule-Induced Behavior” (2009) Strand writes “Believers remain faithful for better or worse, through thick and thin, for richer or poorer, and oftentimes report increased fidelity arising from trials and tribulations. It is this steadfastness that captures our attention and demands an explanation.” The same thing can be said about the tenacity of a person’s mental disorder. Anyone who has worked with those who are suffering from mental health problems knows that there is overlap between these two. 

The person who is depressed or schizophrenic believes in and doubts his or her depression or psychosis with the same fervor as someone who believes in God. This is not a mystery if one focuses on the history a person’s verbal behavior. Although not all the environmental variables can be obtained, it is fairly simple to figure out whether someone has experienced a history of more Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) than Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). 

The person with mental health problems always turns out to have a history in which the rates of NVB were significantly higher than among those who didn’t develop a mental disorder. It follows that the most effective way to ‘cure’ such a person’s so-called mental illness is to simply increase his or her exposure to and his or her involvement in SVB and to decrease his or her exposure to and his or her involvement in NVB. This author has done this and he will continue to do this as the effects are absolutely remarkable.

Depressed or psychotic behavior, like religious behavior, comes about due to how others, who are our environment, interact with us. What is needed to create a different behavior is to engage in a different way of talking. Stated differently, NVB causes and maintains mental health problems and SVB causes and maintains mental health. The issue of “creed revision” always involves an individual’s dissatisfaction with the old creed and his or her attraction to another belief, which makes him or her feel better.  Thus, the person’s change of religion, like a person’s recovery from mental health problems or from addiction, is made possible and explained by a decrease in NVB and an increase in SVB. “If change occurs, it is in response to shifting reinforcement contingencies. No other mechanism of change is proposed.” It is by shifting from NVB to SVB that we shift “reinforcement contingencies.”