Mormon Madness

[Pangloss62]

Republican Senator George Smith is on the talk circuit promoting a book about his son Garrett's suicide. He and his wife were on BookSPAN last week. I was trying to follow the chronology of Garrett's demise, when his father said something that made a light go off in my head. After a college roomate of Garrett told the parents he was worried about their son, they went to visit him. He had gained weight, not shaven for weeks, and, according to his parents, he had "let himself go." His parents wanted to help, so they said they could all take a vacation together. Where did Garrett want to go for a break? Back to England, WHERE HE DID HIS PRESCRIBED 2-YEAR MISSION WORK AS A MORMON!

I told myself I shouldn't jump to conclusions, so i did a little research on The Internets. Holy Tabernacle Choir!! I had no idea that there was such a large Mormon Recovery Movement (MRM); and suicide within the Mormon Church is a major issue for both the Mormans and their critics. As it turns out, Post-Mormon Mission Trip Suicide Syndrome (PMMTSS) is a well-documented reality, and this now-dead Garrett kid may well have been a recent casulty.

What really gets me steamed is that this fucking Senator NEVER even mentioned how his son's relationship to the Mormon religion, a religion that was foisted upon him as a young adopted kid, might have played a role in his suicide. No, for him it was all about "depression," and how parents had to watch out for the "signs" of the same. Hey, I get depressed all the time. This world is depressing. But give a kid the burden of Mormon exceptionalism, then send him to England to recruit more Mormons, you run the risk of creating a conflicted kid. The guilt and shame that come from merely questioning your Mormon faith well-documented.