Yeah believing in an insane overlord of whatever flavor who arbitrarily gets to control me and my existence makes me
so much less suicidal.
Precisely, it was theorised that the people who received a prayer developed underlying stress and anxiety because the act of prayer convinced them that they were sufficiently ill as to need divine intervention to recover. It's like if you're about to go in for a major operation and your surgeon says "good luck" before walking out... It's not likely to fill you with confidence.
I see this happen with mental illness too. It's too common that people inflict their misunderstandings on those who they think are mentally ill instead of earnestly asking them how they feel and what their motivations are, and even for those who do they often distrust that person's self-assessment and perspective because if you're crazy you're considered unreliable or dishonest. Then that person takes on those misconceptions because of the sheer brute force of it, they get worse, and whoever was doing the assessing gets to pat themselves on the back for their self-fulfilling prophecy. It's an accidental way to control people through your own fear, worry and pride, things that only you're responsible for.
