I Can't Help but Smile
Thank you Tom Cruise - I have thoroughly enjoyed watching all the hoopla surrounding your stand against psychiatry. People are talking. They are thinking. It's very exciting.
I take back saying that I wish you'd be quiet about it. I hope you never shut up about it.
Salon went all twitchy in today's edition. It is quite a hatchet job that is heavy on invective (the scientology anti-drug program is described as having "infiltrated" the area schools) and short on actual discussion. For example, they claim that scientology has opportunistically jumped on the anti-Ritalin bandwagon, but they don't address the fact that many people who would never dream of joining an alternate religion legitimately feel that Ritalin is seriously over prescribed. In other words, you don't have to be a scientologist to be deeply suspicious of psychiatry.
Brooke Shields came out with a response in the New York Times today too. She wrote:
In a strange way, it was comforting to me when my obstetrician told me that my feelings of extreme despair and my suicidal thoughts were directly tied to a biochemical shift in my body.
Brooke - the cause of post partum depression and psychosis has not been proved no matter what your shrink told you. Under the heading "Causes, incidence, and risk factors" of postpartum depression the National Library of Medicine lists the following:
You have a higher chance of post-partum depression if:
- You had mood or anxiety disorders prior to pregnancy, including depression with a previous pregnancy
- You have a close family member who has had depression or anxiety
- Anything particularly stressful happened to you during the pregnancy, including illness, death or illness of a loved one, a difficult or emergency delivery, premature delivery, or illness or abnormality in the baby
- You are in your teens or over age 30
- The pregnancy is unwanted or unplanned
- You currently abuse alcohol, take illegal substances, or smoke -- these are also serious medical health risks for the baby
posted by Christine at Friday, July 01, 2005
2 Comments:
I must agree with lpmiller. Modern psychiatry has hurt many people, but it has also helped many people. Psychiatry is not evil, nor is TOm Cruise educated on the subject. Psychiatry can be used in evil ways, just like almost anything.
Scientologists of high profile are very sheltered by the organization; they are kept from really knowing anything about the things to which the organization is opposed. So while TOm Cruise thinks he knows "the history of psychiatry", it's very unlikely that he actually does.
Scientology is just as destructive as is a bad psychiatrist, as the deaths and misery they have caused demonstrate. Their stance is not an educated one, but one formed from the hysteria of a criminal and mentally unstable founder. I came here linked from the AP article, and am very much opposed to lobotomy or any surgery used to treat mental illnesses or mood disorders. But seeing you champion Scientology's POV just makes me doubt your own reason and whether or not your particular organization is one that I want to support.
00goddess, considering my posts mentioning Tom Cruise have gotten the most responses of any, I think you can see why I'd appreciate his bringing any attention at all to an issue that people don't usually think about.
If saying one nice thing about him costs me your support then perhaps it was kinda shaky to being with ...
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