MENTAL HEALTH

One of the many issues for people leaving high-control groups is the impact of mandated shunning on their mental well-being. While we cannot recommend a particular process for recovery or healing there is support available. Many who leave high-control groups need professional help and that may support ongoing recovery.

Relationships and family connections sometimes require healthy boundaries. Mandated shunning of family and friends is not just setting boundaries. It is an extreme act. It is a violation of human rights when an organisation intervenes in the healthy connections between spouses, partners, children, parents and friends.

Humans need mutually trusting relationships and social connections to maintain mental well-being. Mandated shunning creates a disconnect. It is abuse and a punishment for people who have the right to change their minds. The wounds are deep and lasting. Researchers have highlighted and observed a high incidence of post-traumatic stress among people who have been ostracised and shunned.

It is worth noting Dr Savin Bapir-Tardy's comment and article The Practice of Shunning and its Consequences. Although it focuses on Muslim women, the issue of mandated shunning is similar: "Working therapeutically with people who have been shunned is very challenging. All of the negative beliefs that they hold about themselves are often, in the eyes of the victim, reinforced by the act of being shunned." Dr Savin Bapir-Tardy is a counselling psychologist at the Iranian and Kurdish Women’s Rights Organisation (IKWRO) and a lecturer in psychology at the University of West London.