Cults and Missionaries Can Have a Terrible Effect on You and Your Family

Cults are close-knit groups that center around a self-appointed leader, who claims to have special knowledge and who dictates control over its members' lives.

There are thousands of groups that mislead and victimize those who are seeking to include religion in their lives. Missionary groups aim to convert members of a particular religion by mis-representation of that religion's core beliefs.

Destructive cults can be religious or political, push a new age philosophy, or practice aberrant forms of therapy. But they all engage in some form of control and exploit their members financially, physically, and psychologically. Members experience loss of free will, a return to childlike behavior, an inability to form friendships outside the group, and even abuse.

Cults prey on everyone. Those who may be most vulnerable include:

• teenagers, who are moving from parental supervision to autonomy;
• emigres, who are struggling to establish themselves in a new culture;
• young adults who work in the stressful corporate world;
• college-age youth, who are at a transitional point in their lives;
• the elderly who are coping with profound losses in their lives.

If you become involved with a group, or even an individual, who you feel is "taking much more of YOU than at first was discussed," the experience can become cultlike.