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Race, women and health · Claim record

By September 1986 Awake! was treating mental illness as a disease of brain chemistry, describing antipsychotic medication as effective treatment and asking 'Why, then, look upon patients who use these medications as weak-minded or as drug addicts?'

Claim ID claim-attitudes-mental-illness-1986-diseaseConcerns 8 September 1986Later reinterpretation
Later reinterpretation · 8 September 1986 Verified

By September 1986 Awake! was treating mental illness as a disease of brain chemistry, describing antipsychotic medication as effective treatment and asking 'Why, then, look upon patients who use these medications as weak-minded or as drug addicts?' Awake!, 8 September 1986

Show the evidence (1 source)
Primary JW publication Verified

Awake!, “Mental Illness—Is There a Cure?”

8 September 1986 · pp.6-10 · Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania

“Why, then, look upon patients who use these medications as weak-minded or as drug addicts? Antipsychotic drugs are not addictive, do not make patients high, and are not taken for pleasure.”

Part of an issue-length treatment headed 'Taking the Mystery out of Mental Illness'. It follows a woman through electroshock therapy, hospitalisation and antipsychotic medication, quotes NIMH researchers, treats schizophrenia as a disease of brain chemistry, and cautions against 'sensational claims' for alternative treatments including orthomolecular psychiatry.

Official source

Provenance and verification note

Confidence note. Full article read on the Watchtower Online Library on 19 September 2026; page markers in the page's own HTML place the quoted paragraph on page 7.

Notes. Eleven years earlier the same publisher had told readers to scrutinise any treatment a psychiatrist recommended (Questions From Readers, 15 April 1975).

Accessed. 19 September 2026 · Source ID. src-hlth-g-1986-0908-mental-illness-cure

Claim page Correct or update

A direct link to this claim is https://jwtruth.org/evidence/claim-attitudes-mental-illness-1986-disease/. Every source above opens the original document or the best available copy. If you believe the wording, date or context is wrong, report an error.