Tom Cruise really wasn’t the best person to make the case for
the overuse/misuse of psychiatric/psychotropic drugs. The way
he’s been behaving lately, it looks like he might be badly in
need of the aforesaid drugs himself, you know, because of the
way he’s been getting snippy with interviewers and jumping up
and down on every couch he can find. C’mon, Bud, sure your
fiancee’s hot, but calm down. You’re going to have a lifetime to
enjoy her hotness. So, cool it already.
It doesn’t help anything that Cruise is a Scientologist, a
‘religion’ that many consider extremely wacky. Scientologists,
I’ve heard, like to pretend that they’re talking to the ghost of
a dead carpenter while they’re performing cannibalism on his
corpse. Wait. That’s Christianity. Never mind.
Okay, maybe I don’t know what Scientologists believe, because
I’ve only heard bad things about them and I kind of think that
the people who’ve been saying those bad things have an agenda of
their own.Scientologists do (according to Cruise) believe that
mind control drugs like Ritalin, and antipsychotics are overused
or maybe should not be used at all. Ihave to confess that I only
saw the soundbite of the Cruise interview wherehe was telling
Matt Lauer that he – Matt – did not know the history of
psychiatry and then accused Lauer of being glib. That might not
be the adjective I would choose for this guy, but okay.
The problem is that there is indeed a very good case to be made
that psychiatry in America is misusing drugs, but the case
should be made by gray haired, middle-aged doctors and not by
the sexiest man alive. Tom may indeed be very well read and
knowledgeable on the subject, but he has zero credentials and -
I’m sorry to say – ripped abs just don’t cut it in this type of
debate.
A very good book on the subject is Toxic Psychiatry (I don’t
know the author). It’s very convincing, highly footnoted, well
researched and fascinating in a very horrifying way. It goes
into things like lobotomies, electroshock and stuff like that,
then shows how the new class of neuroleptics have successfully
replaced those other two techniques, forthe most part. But not
in a good way. Another good one is Mad in America which explore
the mental health treatment history in the United States. It was
written after the World Health Organization did a study and
found that the mental health outcomesfor patients in third world
countries was considerably better than it is presently in the
United States. (Hint. It has a lot to do with that Toxic
psychiatry stuff).
Finally, there’s an older book called Confessions of a Medical
Heretic which goes into problems with the medical establishment
in general. Those last two books I don’t know the authors for,
either.
Have those books read by Monday. I expect two typed,
double-spaced pages for each of them.