FACTORS AFFECTING THE FORMATION OF RELIGIOUS IDENTITY IN ENDOGENOUS MENTALLY ILL PEOPLE

This article is devoted to an aempt to establish a link between mental pathology and religious identity. Factors of influence on formation of religious identity are revealed. In the preliminary study the very fact of the appeal to the faith and consequently the specificity of the formation of religious identity becomes the main. The study was conducted on the basis of department of special forms of mental pathology of MHRC, where mentally ill persons with religious worldview are observed. The main group were patients with schizophrenia (50 people). As a control group were taken students of spiritual schools (50 people). The modified expressive projective method “Psychological autobiography” by E.Yu. Korzhova was used as a tool. On the basis of qualitative analysis several main variants of reference to faith in both groups were identified. The aainment of faith had a clear specificity in the main group of patients: coming to faith as a way to cope with mental illness, appeal to religiousness – search for the meaning of life, coming to faith on delusional motives. In the control group, coming to faith was most often caused by the religiosity of the whole family and the closest environment. Mental illness, in some cases, being a predictor of the development of pathological religiosity, is not exhausted by it. Sometimes it serves as a stimulus for the formation of internal, deep religious orientation. This study is a pilot in the study of religious identity and needs further elaboration.