In 2013, “The Rainbow Project,” a pro-gay UK organization centered in Northern Ireland, conducted a survey which found that homosexuals have very high rates of mental illness, oftentimes severe forms of mental illness, with: “35.3% of respondents experiencing self-harm, 25.7% experiencing a suicide attempt, 46.9% experiencing suicidal ideation, and 70.9% experiencing depression…” In addition, the most common form of self-harm (72.3%) was “cutting.”
From my own experience, in the context of homosexuality, there is often a fine line between mental illness and demonic influence. During my last few months in the “gay” lifestyle, when things became particularly dark for me, I would often wake-up in the middle of the night covered in blood. Somehow, while I was asleep, I would scratch and cut myself. In Holy Scripture, the famous Gerasens demonic would cut himself: “And he was always day and night in the monuments and in the mountains, crying and cutting himself with stones.” (Mark 5:5) The signs of demonic possession include: “speaking in a language the person has never learned; extraordinary shows of strength; a sudden aversion to spiritual things like holy water or the name of God; and severe sleeplessness, lack of appetite and cutting, scratching and biting the skin.”
After a Catholic priest read the prayers of deliverance over me, the cutting symptoms stopped.
Link to report:
Two earlier blogs on “gay” men and mental illness: