"Extreme Bias" as an Illness

This story ("Psyciatry Ponders Whether Extreme Bias Can Be an Illness") ran in the Washington Post a few days ago, and caught my eye.  In my view, red flags do and should go up when it proposed that we identify "pathological bias" as an "official psychiatric diagnosis."  (Well, actually, I suppose "pathological" bias is not the issue; the harder questions are (i) what counts as "bias" and what counts as "pathological.").

Here is a blurb:

Opponents say making pathological bias a diagnosis raises the specter of social engineering -- brainwashing individuals who do not fit society's norms. But Dunbar and others say patients with disabling levels of prejudice should be treated for the same reason as are patients with any other disorder: They would feel, live and function better.

"They are delusional," said Alvin F. Poussaint, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, who has long advocated such a diagnosis. "They imagine people are going to do all kinds of bad things and hurt them, and feel they have to do something to protect themselves.

"When they reach that stage, they are very impaired," he said. "They can't work and function; they can't hold a job. They would benefit from treatment of some type, particularly medication."

Doctors who treat inmates at the California State Prison outside Sacramento concur: They have diagnosed some forms of racist hatred among inmates and administered antipsychotic drugs.

"We treat racism and homophobia as delusional disorders," said Shama Chaiken, who later became a divisional chief psychologist for the California Department of Corrections, at a meeting of the American Psychiatric Association. "Treatment with antipsychotics does work to reduce these prejudices."

Putting aside, for now, questions about racism and extreme anti-gay prejudices, I wonder what the thinking underlying the move to label these prejudices as delusions that are the product of illnesses might mean for our thinking about religious faith -- in particular, about strikingly pious or intense forms of devotion?