Cults remain an enduring source of fascination. What prompts someone to enter a cult? What pushes them to leave? One aspect that hasn’t drawn quite the same level of concern is the potential impact on health. Christchurch GP Caroline Ansley is doing her best to change this.
“Cults want to control every aspect of your life,” says Ansley, who spent several months in Auckland’s Centrepoint commune as a child. “They most certainly want to control your mind, but they also want to control your body. So, there are lots of ways that a person’s healthcare needs may be neglected while in a cult. They might have a treatable illness that simply doesn’t get the medical care it needs, like kids having an asthma attack and being prayed over instead of being taken to a doctor.”
In Queensland, one small religious group, known as the Saints, is accused of withholding a diabetic child’s insulin for six days, believing God would heal her. That child, 8-year-old Elizabeth Struhs, suffered insulin withdrawal and died.
In the US, a larger religious cult, the Followers of Christ, which shuns medical care in favour of faith healing, has hit the headlines because of its very high rate of preventable deaths among children.
“In cults, they are taught that doctors are on the outside,” explains Ansley. “The outside is always thrown in a negative light. You distrust anyone on the outside. Some cults are openly anti-medicine. Then there are the ideologies that usually come through in cults that we put the group first, we ignore our own needs.
“Ultimately, it’s a perfect storm for people’s health needs to be completely ignored. If you’re a healthy young person, the consequences of that may not be so bad, but you may be a child with a serious illness, someone who needs glasses or breaks their leg, you may have a disability or be living in an environment with a high risk of infectious disease.”
Some groups will allow people to see endorsed doctors and others have had medical professionals as members, but in either case, the clinician may be making compromises to go along with group control. Even if an individual leaves the group, their medical needs might continue to be neglected because of a lingering distrust of doctors, a sense of shame, mental illness or a deeply ingrained belief that if something is wrong with them, it must be their own fault.
“People might physically leave a group, but they don’t necessarily leave it psychologically at the same time,” says Ansley. “Part of what I’m doing is to increase healthcare workers’ understanding of a person who is in, or has been in, a coercively controlling group. These people haven’t chosen not to get vaccinated; they haven’t chosen to work in dangerous environments where they get injured and don’t get the treatment they need. They’ve probably made very few truly free choices about healthcare and may have very little understanding of the health system and how to interact with it.”
About 10,000 New Zealanders are estimated to be affected by cults (that figure includes family members on the outside who have lost someone to a group). Gloriavale is home to about 700 followers. South Korean group Shincheonji is operating all over New Zealand. Also targeting Kiwis is another cult, Eastern Lightning, which originated in China. There are smaller groups that fly under the radar, plus religious movements such as Falun Gong, which have cult-like characteristics.
Ansley works for the Canterbury division of HealthPathways, a platform medical professionals can use to keep up-to-date with best practice. She has been developing a pathway for clinicians who are supporting members or leavers of high-control groups.
This is due to go live in October, and she is hoping it will be picked up around New Zealand. She will be among the speakers at the country’s first-ever cult awareness conference, Decult, in October. And she is a co-presenter on the podcast Cult Chat.
“Cults are all about control and power,” she says. “But I also have power because of the authority of my profession. And I will use that power to change things as much as I can.”
