According to various research, women make up a whopping 70% of cult members around the globe.
I may be a little fixated with this.
You might want to look at the ratio of referals to GIDS based on sex in the last few years.
I believe the numbers put it about 70% female to 30% male. Is that a coincidence or should someone sit up and start asking the right questions about this???
Not only this, but apparently the average age women join religious cults is in their early twenties with them most predeposed to it in their late teens / early twenties.
Looking futher:
As other authors (Buxant et al., 2007, Galanter, 1982, Spero, 1982) have reported, we highlighted a high prevalence of psychiatric and addictive disorders during the year preceding commitment to the group: anxiety disorders (51.6%), mood disorders (45.2%) and addictions (12.9%).
and
Most former cult members stayed in the cult for a long time and found it difficult to leave the group. The average length of membership was almost 9 years. However, the repercussions of membership were important and affected several areas of their life, be it on a social, family, marital, professional or financial level. No part of their life was spared. This inability to change, despite damage and risk, is a close fit to Goodman's addictive disorders criteria (Goodman, 1990). Other features in common with addictive disorders (American Psychiatric Association, 2013) are that all activities of the members are devoted to the cult and that a lot of time is spent in the service of the cult, resulting in social impairment. A previous study found that, during membership, the cultic group held an important and even an exclusive place in the life of the member (Buxant and Saroglou, 2008). Additionally, we found that factors for staying in the group are primarily internal to the group, indicating how central the cult is to the members' life.
and
A previous study found that cult members felt attachment insecurity before joining the cult (Buxant et al., 2007). Moreover, an insecure attachment is usually associated with addictive disorders (Caspers et al., 2005, Reynaud, 2016, Wedekind et al., 2013).
and this one is dead interesting, and possibly would need taking into consideration in terms of long term outcomes and medicalisation. It would beg the question about whether medicalisation itself rather than membership of a social group may provide relief from symptoms...
The majority of members reported feeling psychological relief at the beginning of membership (Galanter, 1996, Salande and Perkins, 2011). This psychological improvement is termed a “honeymoon” in the literature (Galanter and Buckley, 1978, Levine, 1981, Wilson, 1972). For some individuals, addictive disorders serve as a coping strategy to reduce psychological distress (American Society of Addiction Medicine, 2013, Reynaud, 2016, Sinha, 2008). In our sample, we observed a decrease in depressive disorders and addictive disorders during cult membership. We can hypothesize that for some members, the commitment to and involvement with the group managed to relieve psychological suffering and that the context of the cultic group contributed to the lessening of addictive disorders. Another hypothesis for the improvement in addictive disorders is that members who have addictive disorders before joining the cult replace those disorders with cult commitment. This hypothesis is consistent with the phenomenon of addiction “switch” observed in addictive disorders (DuPont, 2017, Haute Autorité de Santé, 2007).
I beleive its known that autistic people are also more at risk of cults (for some of the reasons above which are known co-morbidities). I'm trying to find some data / research which might relate to this, but so far I'm drawing a blank.
The closest I've found so far has been about radicalisation and neurodiversity.
In 2021 there was a controversial speech from a QC on the subject of radicalisation and neurodiversity:
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/jul/07/staggeringly-high-number-of-people-with-autism-on-uk-prevent-scheme
A “staggeringly high” number of autistic people are referred to the government’s anti-radicalisation Prevent programme, a terror laws watchdog will say, calling for discussion about terrorism cases in which the disability features.
Jonathan Hall QC, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, will say autism and terrorism has not received much public attention due to “a very real and respectable fear that making any sort of link will lead to stigma”.
But in a speech as part of the thinktank Bright Blue’s Ludgate lecture series online, he will argue that the criminal justice outcome may not always be the right one for autistic people and needs scrutiny.
This raised a considerable amount of criticism and it was stated that there was no empiral evidence of a link.
www.bournemouth.ac.uk/news/2021-07-12/opinion-no-evidence-links-autism-terrorism-ill-judged-statements-headlines-will-lead-stigma
These remarks and the coverage of the story are indeed staggering to me as a researcher of autism spectrum conditions – but not in the way the authors intended.
At present, there’s no empirical evidence to suggest that autistic people are significantly more susceptible to radicalisation or terrorism. Yet most coverage of the issue fails to discuss the reasons behind autistic people being disproportionately reported to the scheme and instead focuses on limited aspects of the data.
Grossly oversimplified coverage like this risks serious damage to some of the most vulnerable in society. While it’s true that autistic people are more likely than non-autistic people to be over-represented in the Prevent scheme, this statement belies a much more complex story.
Studies show that autistic people are no more likely than non-autistic people to hold sympathetic views for violent protest or terrorism.
In fact, there is some evidence that terror networks are actually more reluctant to recruit people with any kind of mental health problem, perhaps due to societal stigma around mental illness and disability. The promotion of a link between autism and radicalisation is simply irresponsible.
The article goes on to suggest that autistic people might be being referred to Prevent for reasons relating to prejudice, bias and not understanding autism.
Now given the stuff going on with Mermaids, and just stumbling on this by chance whilst having a look into cults and neurodiversity, this has made me go 'huh? hang on a second thats strikingly similar in pattern'. If we can't talk about this, because it might create stigma, how can you go about protecting neurodiverse people if there really is an increased risk of radicalisation? (The use of 'no evidence' as an argument also misses the crucial point that 'absence of evidence is not evidence of absence'.)
Or more to the point, is there a risk that the vulnerabilities of neurodiverse people puts them in a position where they could be exploited / could be susceptible?
I find the relectance to explore the subject - on the basis of fear of what it might show and how society might react to it - one which is notable. I can't think of many subjects where there is this real reticience to advance knowledge.
It feels like I'm standing on the edge of a potential massive rabbit hole of ideas which aren't particularly great, but I do maintain my thinking that I think there is a massive area where adequate research and understanding is missing.
We know that social media and its societial impacts are still really poorly understood. We know there are harms associated with echo chambers and social media algorythms which deliberately try to focus on interests that people have. We are talking in political terms about the harms of social contagion and self harm and certainly we've long had a recognition of this with suicide and media guidelines.
I am saying all this with a degree of personal concern (and indeed vested interest in this subject along several different lines for people I care a great deal about).
Going back to cults, one of the problems with the research into them, is it seems to be small scale research - though patterns seem fairly consistent. Thats problematic in terms of the quality of the research. And I'm really feeling somewhat out of my depth on this one and in danger of jumping to conclusions. I think its an area that needs better qualified minds than mine to look at for this reason.
BUT I do think there is something here, that needs greater exploration in a responsible manner. There seem to be reoccurring themes across a breadth of related subjects and issues.
Ancedotelly I've been online in social groups a very long time, and I've always found them uniquely narrow in their group think compared with the real world. In someways this is comforting and nice. But they also have a tendancy to create drama as a result and can explode into points of conflict that don't seem to happen in the same way as real life. They are MUCH MUCH more intense. (TBH, this is one reason I prefer MN because IME it doesn't tend to have this problem to the same degree). I've met a lot of people online and have some long standing relationships as a result but there is also this element of intimacy from online that isn't the same in relationships from day to day life. I'm now 26 years into online relationship and community experience. Thats significantly longer than average and I do feel like I've been there and got the tshirt to a large degree.
I dunno, like I say there is SOMETHING here, that I think merits PROPER investigation.