h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This programme features a lot of hurt people being led away from confronting their grief by a charlatan. Shouldn't 'clairvoyants' and 'spiritual healers' be arrested for inflicting, or prolonging, mental suffering?

Do we necessarily know what psychiatrists do is any better?

Fair point, but psychiatrists don't, to the best of my knowledge, pretend to be able to make contact with dead people.

I think the problem is there are always some people prepared to prey on vulnerable people.
Death leaves people at their most vulnerable so may grasp at straws, the more tragic the death the more vulnerable people may be.
No one, however strong they may think they are, is immune from vulnerabilty at such times.

And here we are in a world where Derek Anconah (sp?) is a free man.

And Rabbis and Priests and Vicars...

Psychiatrists are, I would imagine basing their work and methodology on a peer reviewed bank of research which pressumbably shows statistically the ethercy of given methodologies Tis beyond me how people still in this age can resort to the equivelent of visiting the 'wise man/woman', or 'shaman/wizzard...

Well if a psychic is commiting actual fraud, then something really should be done. Randi has some interesting examples. But some probably just hear voices in their head and want to help people.

Aren't people that hear voices in their head usually given large doses of procycladin (sp?) and sat down in a room somewhere?

"Shouldn't 'clairvoyants' and 'spiritual healers' be arrested for inflicting, or prolonging, mental suffering?"

I've only just arrived in this conversation.
Why are you having a go at clairvoyants and spiritual healers.
The ones I have met try to help people.

What do you mean about prolonging mental suffering?

People lose people and they need to accept that the people they have lost are gone. Clairvoyants delay this by pretending that they can contact the dead. This might be a short term comfort for the ignorant but will ultimately just delay the grieving process.

Or it might make them very happy knowing that dead person´s spirit is still around.

Some people take longer to grieve than others.

Don't mix up 'spiritual healers' with 'clairvoyants'.
They are quite different.

A spiritual healer would be more likely to help someone who is grieving than a clairvoyant.

That person's dead spirit is *not* still around. Is deceiving the vulnerable really a commendable ideal?

"Or it might make them very happy knowing that dead person´s spirit is still around."

You can never actually "know" whether they are around or not.

Yep, spiritual healers choose to fleece people in a different way.

I just think I would grieve less if I could believe they were still around. Sadly I tend toward the wormfood school of thought.

'You can never actually "know" whether they are around or not.'

They're dead, therefore they're not around.

"Aren't people that hear voices in their head usually given large doses of procycladin (sp?) and sat down in a room somewhere?"

It isn't like that.
It is more a feeling of something being there rather than voices 'telling you'...

Were they saying they had voices in their head on the programme?

I just used hearing voices as an example.