https://www.berliner-forum-religionen.de/amoklauf/
Here is the translation with deepl.com (better than Google):
Dear members of the AK Religion & Psychiatry and interested parties,
the Hamburg attack on the prayer house of Jehovah's Witnesses a week ago has affected us all. A 35-year-old former member of the congregation forced his way into the religious community's building at the end of a meeting last Thursday evening and indiscriminately killed seven worshippers before shooting himself. Thanks to the quick intervention of the police, several dozen people present survived the rampage only slightly injured. According to the findings so far on the background of the crime, it is very likely that the perpetrator had been suffering from a worsening serious mental illness for several years. In 2021, he had written a book on Christian religious topics with obvious missionary zeal and at the same time had renounced Jehovah's Witnesses. The remarks in his publication suggest delusional ideas that explicitly address aggressive courses of action. According to available reports, he was urgently advised from several sides, from relatives as well as members of his ex-community, to undergo medical-therapeutic treatment, which, however, he did not realize. The police received an anonymous letter citing concerns about his mental instability and his newly developed enthusiasm for weapons; however, this resulted only in a routine check without consequences.
- From a psychiatric point of view, the act of the psychologically disturbed perpetrator, a mentally ill person who would have been in urgent need of treatment, must be assumed. Every psychiatrist knows that such a terrible rampage could have taken place in a Christian church, a mosque, a synagogue or any other religious community.
- From the psychiatric point of view, the long known dilemma of concerned relatives of mentally ill persons is also found here, who consider therapeutic contacts of the affected person to be urgent, but do not find professional contact points that know how to deal sensitively with the situation, especially in case of unwillingness to treat. *Here* there is a need for action.
Dealing with mentally ill people who do not see themselves as ill and therefore do not seek medical help is an ethical challenge, especially for relatives and also for society. Here, the freedom of the individual must be weighed against the need for protection of the community. The creation of low-threshold psychiatric help offers and the reduction of the stigmatization of mental illnesses can increase the willingness and possibility of seeking psychiatric help.
- In the view of the signatories from the "Psychiatry and Religion" working group, the clichéd and stigmatizing reporting on the religious community of Jehovah's Witnesses is also worthy of criticism. The frequently used term "sect" alone falls short of the recommendations of the Enquete Commission of the German Bundestag of 1998, according to which the term "sect" should no longer be used for all religious and ideological communities because of its "negative connotation. The final report of the Enquete Commission came to a sober conclusion: so-called sects pose no danger to the state or society. The fact that Jehovah's Witnesses, like people of other religious communities, were among those persecuted and murdered by the Nazi regime because they resisted Nazi terror (as well as Stalinist terror) still guides far too little action
- Religious communities are often able to support and empower people in crisis situations. In a performance- and success-oriented society, it is helpful to provide spaces of encounter and togetherness where people can stabilize themselves in situations of stress and crisis.
In this context, it is of great importance that pastors and other responsible persons in the churches, faith communities, etc. know who they can turn to when they receive indications of the existence of serious psychological problems among those seeking help. Better and low-threshold networking of denominational help facilities with professional psychiatric help services is necessary.
Promoting this is also one of the objectives of our "AK Religion & Psychiatry".