At the congress with the theme, The Jehovah’s Witnesses in scholarly perspective: What is new in the scientific study of the movement? In Antwerp, Belgium, in 2016, I read the paper entitled “The Mental Health of Jehovah’s Witnesses.” It was published in Acta Comparanda — Subsidia III, 2017.
The paper was based on a study of the mental health of 15,675 Jehovah’s Witnesses in 15 different countries. The conclusions were that psychosis among the Witnesses were 35.7% of the rate in the population as a whole, bipolar disorder was 37.5%, and severe depression was 17.2% of the rate in the population as a whole. The rate of suicide among the Witnesses in Norway was 36.6% of the rate in the population as a whole. I am quite certain that these numbers are representative of the worldwide community in 2026, as they were in 2016.
At one time, I was not certain that I would be able to attend the congress in Antwerp. Therefore, I made a video presentation of my paper. You can see it on You Tube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYXGivw8-fE)
While the mental health of Jehovah’s Witnesses is much better than the mental health of the population as a whole, the mental health of disfellowshipped and resigned Witnesses, who are shunned, is generally much worse than the mental health of the population as a whole.
Two years ago, the periodical Mental Health, Religion & Culture Volume 26, 2023 – Issue 7, had the article, “Characteristics of health and well-being in former Jehovah’s Witnesses in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland,” by Myriam V. Thoma, Andreas Goreis, Shauna L. Rohner, Urs M. Nater, Eva Heim & Jan Höltge.
The study included 424 disfellowshipped and resigned Witnesses, who were interviewed about their situations after leaving Jehovah’s Witnesses:
| 131 | Reported that they were dependent of professional support. |
| 161 | Reported that they got into a crisis and did
not know what they should do with their life anymore. |
| 139 | Reported that that they had thoughts about taking their own life. |
| 42 | Reported that they had attempted to take their own life. |
| 156 | Reported that they enjoyed their lives to the fullest extent and did things that they were not allowed to do before. |
| 161 | Reported that they formed new friends/contacts and reactivated previous contacts. |
During the 21st century, about 1,5 million Witnesses have been disfellowshipped, and about 900,000 of these have never returned to their congregations.
Being suddenly totally isolated from friends and family, as disfellowshipped and resigned Witnesses are, is an extremely strong psychical blow. I have not studied the mental health of disfellowshipped and resigned Witnesses, so I cannot confirm the numbers in the article. However, based on my experience as an elder for 56 years, I have seen a great number of ruined lives and broken families of disfellowshipped and shunned persons. So, I believe the numbers in the article are representative of disfellowshipped and resigned Witnesses throughout the whole world.
