Per Google "From 2018 to 2020, the age-adjusted suicide rate in Utah was 21.4 per 100,000 persons, with an average of 657 suicides per year. Utah had the 6th highest age-adjusted suicide rate in the U.S. in 2019. In 2020, suicide was the leading cause of death for Utahns ages 10 to 17 and 18-24.Dec 6, 2021"
"In his opening message of April 2022 general conference, President Russell M. Nelson strongly reaffirmed that “the Lord has asked every worthy, able young man to prepare for and serve a mission.” He further emphasized that for “young and able sisters, a mission is also a powerful, but optional, opportunity.”
I was an AP on my mission so I saw the mission more holistically than most missionaries. Peer pressure is what keeps missions going and that comes at a cost. We had missionaries crack under pressure. Some missionaries are naughty. More sex going on missions than anyone would ever imagine. Missionaries who were just doing time for some reward afterwards, had low testimonies and were basically just hucksters seemed to do best in the mission field. Missionaries serve for different reasons. Some serve for inheritance, tuition, women, social status, jobs ect..
Mormonism is a social construct. It can become a community to get what you want from it. It can become a prison. It can become something to exploit. It can be a joke. It can be an opportunity. It's all about what you want from it and what you see it as.
I would say the percentage of people who actually have a solid belief that the church is true is rather small. I also think these are the people who have the most psychological trauma when they learn it's not true. The other people who have trauma are the ones who don't fit in and are under pressure to do so. This is why homosexuals and women who want to be treated as equals have a high level of trauma from the church.
The suicide is the result of the trauma the peer pressure in the church creates. Some people exit the church that way. They can't take it no more. Sad but true.
Rubicon Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > More sex > going on missions than anyone would ever imagine.
I found this to be true. I was naive enough to be shocked. Some of the missionaries just laughed at me for my reaction to some revelations (no pun intended) about it. That was also shocking. It came across to me that they were deliberately wandering around lying to people about the church and they thought that was okay.
I don't necessarily blame the missionaries. I could (belatedly) pick up on some of the seamy side of Mormonism, which includes the expectation and pressure, for young males at least, to spend two precious years of their life going through the motions, marking time, preaching s**t they don't even believe just to conform, to cross off another Mormon milestone, with the next urgent one being to find a marriage partner and quickly create more Mormons to keep the rough stone rolling.
> I would say the percentage of people who actually > have a solid belief that the church is true is > rather small. I also think these are the people > who have the most psychological trauma when they > learn it's not true.
I've sometimes thought that the church could offer more options, i.e. one year domestic missions vs. two year foreign missions. A one year mission might be more bearable for the emotionally vulnerable.
I think the church is more cognizant of mental illness and the stress of serving a mission than 30 years ago when I served. I still think they need to do more.
My second to last companion was severely depressed and I was neither prepared nor trained to handle it. I was dropped off at my new apartment because my new companion had locked himself in the bathroom. After 6 hours he slipped a note under the door that he might talk to me in the morning. I kept calling the zone leader and he finally told me to take a chill pill and stop worrying about my new companion. I was TERRIFIED that he would be die.
To this day, I have no idea if how close he was to ending his life- He may have been cutting himself with a razor. He suffered social anxiety and poor self esteem.
30 years ago, the standard answer for any mission non-compliance to rules/commandments was sin and that included any sign of mental illness.
"My second to last companion was severely depressed and I was neither prepared nor trained to handle it. I was dropped off at my new apartment because my new companion had locked himself in the bathroom. After 6 hours he slipped a note under the door that he might talk to me in the morning. I kept calling the zone leader and he finally told me to take a chill pill and stop worrying about my new companion. I was TERRIFIED that he would be die."
That missionary companion could have been admitted to the hospital for a 72 hour suicide watch. Glad that he was alive.
A relative of mine went to UK on his mission after much fanfare. He returned about 6 months later due to depression and had stopped eating. The family quietly received him back home. I didn't hear a lot about what had happened but am glad they didn't make him stay out as his mental health was clearly declining severely. I internally weep for each new missionary announcement from family or neighbors. I wish they would give up on the practice that puts so many young people in harm's way mentally and many times physically as well.
I had a companion whose mother died some 10 months into his mission. He asked to be allowed to go home to her funeral and return to finish his mission in France. Our mission president told him that if he went home, he wouldn't be allowed to return to our mission. So my companion obeyed the mission president and stayed in the field.
From that point on, he was clearly depressed and barely ate. By the time I got him as a companion, his weight was down by about 60 lbs.
After the mission president changed, one of the senior couples who knew my companion from his previous area called the new mission president to tell him of this elder's plight. The new mission president called my companion in and after interviewing him to find out what he wanted done sent my companion home honorably discharging him from his mission several months early. Had he stayed around the mission, he'd probably have wound up in the hospital.
My companion recovered physically, but I have no doubt that the experience left emotional scars.