Rumors of 19 year old females going on missions

[creekster]

i thought the convention was to add alternating Ps and Ss, as opposed to only adding Ps?

Really? That doesn't make sense to me. But I have always tried to avoid too many of them

[jay santos]

I'm big on missions. I'm also big on this new missionary age change. I say take it another step, and tell the girls they can go when they're 18 also. Send them all out when they graduate, boys and girls.

But let's also not set them up for failure. Let's scale back the expectations and the guilt trips for stats and numbers. Let's be realistic about what activities they have available to do with their time, and not grind them down with meaningless, nonproductive work for more than a few hours a day. Give them other options, like service. If homesickness and loneliness is a problem, then let's reevaluate the rules about how often they can contact parents.

I don't know if it's true that more missionaries are coming home with depression and mental health issues because they can't hack it, but if it's true, then let's not fix or blame it on the supply side, let's fix it on the demand side (yeah i know that comparison didn't really work--oh well). Missions are damn hard. It's OK to make them just a little easier.

[TripletDaddy]

Really? That doesn't make sense to me. But I have always tried to avoid too many of them

to be honest, i wasn't serious at all with that post. It was more like a practice swing in the on-deck circle. Apparently the question has garnered enough serious responses that perhaps it is a legitimate topic.

I'm with you. Adding a PS to something is great when you are in high school, I guess. On a message board, don't see the need.

PS a quick look at wiki seems to indicate that PSS, PPS, and PPPS all have their own time and place. In other words, great news everybody, we are all right and Uncle Ted is wrong, as usual!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postscript

[Uncle Ted]

I admit to having little-to-no experience with mental health problems. Your post just seemed like you were making a claim that was obviously true, when it was not at all obvious to me. A few points. Do we know for sure there has been a surge in people leaving their missions for mental health reasons? Is the number anywhere near 10%? If there are substantial numbers leaving purportedly due to mental health issues, do we know what percentage of them are really mental health issues? (I'm sure they can all be classified as mental health, but many likely amount to "I really don't like this").

The article I quoted above seems to indicate that the percentage of missionaries returning is now in "the double digits". This is up significantly given it use to be something around 1.5% or something like that.

Of those returning home...

Doty, a Mormon and head of UVU's behavioral science department, enlisted the help of several students and conducted in-depth interviews with a dozen early returnees. The researchers then surveyed 348 such missionaries — 81 percent male, 19 percent female.


They found that the largest chunk (39 percent) came home early for personal reasons. Nearly as many (36 percent) return for mental health issues and 34 percent for physical reasons. About a quarter (23 percent) had "unresolved transgression" or disobeyed mission rules.


More than half (58 percent) felt they were treated poorly or indifferently by fellow ward members and nearly a third said they encountered similar chilly receptions from family and friends. A whopping 73 percent of all respondents reported feelings of failure.


"That was heartbreaking," Doty says.

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/lifesty...-says.html.csp

So it seems a significant percentage will develop some sort of a mental health issue after they return especially when they find out that the YW leaders have taught the all YW that they should only marry a RM and BYU is requiring them to sit out a year for returning early. I guess this is why UVU did the study given they have a good supply of former BYU students that have been abandoned by their church.

[imanihonjin]

The article I quoted above seems to indicate that the percentage of missionaries returning is now in "the double digits". This is up significantly given it use to be something around 1.5% or something like that.

Of those returning home...


http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/lifesty...-says.html.csp

So it seems a significant percentage will develop some sort of a mental health issue after they return especially when they find out that the YW leaders have taught the all YW that they should only marry a RM and BYU is requiring them to sit out a year for returning early. I guess this is why UVU did the study given they have a good supply of former BYU students that have been abandoned by their church.

BYU is requiring missionaries who come home early to sit out for year?

[Uncle Ted]

not starting with edit 0? keep showing your true colors, pal

"Edit 0:" is implied with the initial message. Optionally one can add it.

[falafel]

Do you only have one set of missionaries in your ward? If so, count yourself lucky.

Yes, just one set. Before the age-change, we had one set for every two wards and I hardly ever saw them. Now I'm feeding missionaries every other week on average.

[Uncle Ted]

BYU is requiring missionaries who come home early to sit out for year?

That is what I have been told. (Can we get a ruling on this?)

[jay santos]

The article I quoted above seems to indicate that the percentage of missionaries returning is now in "the double digits". This is up significantly given it use to be something around 1.5% or something like that.

Of those returning home...


http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/lifesty...-says.html.csp

So it seems a significant percentage will develop some sort of a mental health issue after they return especially when they find out that the YW leaders have taught the all YW that they should only marry a RM and BYU is requiring them to sit out a year for returning early. I guess this is why UVU did the study given they have a good supply of former BYU students that have been abandoned by their church.

I skimmed through the Times and Seasons blog where the double digit figure is referenced but couldn't find any data or study to support it. Where are they getting the double digit figure?

[Uncle Ted]

Yes, just one set. Before the age-change, we had one set for every two wards and I hardly ever saw them. Now I'm feeding missionaries every other week on average.

Welcome to my world.

[imanihonjin]

Yes, just one set. Before the age-change, we had one set for every two wards and I hardly ever saw them. Now I'm feeding missionaries every other week on average.

We went from having 2 to 6 as a result of the age change. I feel awful for them. We had a difficult time keeping 2 busy and now with 6 I think everyone has given up trying to even keep 2 busy.

[CardiacCoug]

We had a missionary who came home very early recently, just a month or so in the mission field after 8 weeks in the MTC.

He was welcomed home over the pulpit in Sacrament Meeting and gave a talk about his experience (explaining that he came home due to anxiety and insomnia, etc.) -- everybody acted almost like he had done a complete mission. We have so many old people with dementia maybe a lot of them think he actually served the entire 2 years.

I wonder if it bugged some people (e.g. those with kids serving the entire two years) the way everybody kind of pretended like this kid did a full mission. Gotta say I didn't get the feeling like he was humiliated or ashamed about it much at all, obviously a good thing.

[Uncle Ted]

I skimmed through the Times and Seasons blog where the double digit figure is referenced but couldn't find any data or study to support it. Where are they getting the double digit figure?

I didn't see a reference to hard data. That is why I said, "Rumors of missionaries coming home early..."

[CardiacCoug]

What you're describing in the last paragraph is almost textbook appropriate behavior to some.
So I disagree with you a little here. I've been fortunate to never struggle with depression...except for the first 6-12 months of my mission. Of course, at the time, I had no idea what was going on, being a 19 yr old who ate up everything fed to me in the MTC, particularly the ETB quote about losing myself in my mission and that all my personal cares would slip away. It wasn't until medical school when I studied depression that I realized that I had been clinically depressed. I doubt my companions or president ever even knew because I hid it pretty well and "lost myself in the work", which is a functional way to deal with it to an extent, but in the mission setting can easily become a dysfunctional way.
I had spent a year away (out of state) in college and I had spent a good portion of nearly every summer through high school away from home in various pursuits. I was in my dream country (France) and I had taken a lot of French before my mission and really didn't struggle with the language. I had never struggled with depression before and I never really have since, despite being in some pretty stressful situations, so I disagree that mentally healthy people do just fine on missions. Sure, if I had had a much more mature outlook on the Gospel and my role as a missionary, I may have gotten along better, but I was nineteen. Very few have that sort of perspective at that age, and if they do, it's often beaten out of them in the MTC language of obedience to the white handbook above all. I just think a mission is a very specific kind of stressor and I was uniquely susceptible to it at a pretty young age. I also think some of those stressors just aren't necessary to the missionary experience.

I think I said before that I probably had mild clinical depression in the MTC but was fine for the next 22 months. The Spirit in the MTC was probably just too damn strong for me.

Totally agree that it seems like they should just let missionaries Skype a minimum of once a month and loosen things up to support good mental health.

[Jeff Lebowski]

BYU is requiring missionaries who come home early to sit out for year?

That is what I have been told. (Can we get a ruling on this?)

Six months. You can appeal, but appeals are rarely granted (unless you are an athlete).

The explanation is "If you are too sick to be on a mission, you are too sick to be at BYU" which is pure BS of course. It is a ridiculous rule. The objective of the rule is clearly to apply a form of punishment to help deter people from coming home early.