Top Nut - Tom Cruise on Psychiatry?
It seems you can't swing a dead cat these days without hitting some pithy little blurb churned out by the Tom half of Hollywood power-couple TomKat. He's everywhere. Jumping off couches! Lecturing pranksters on the dangers of squirt guns! Jumping off more couches! And finally, ragging on psychiatry! Huh?Dr. Tom, MD - who isn't a doctor, but apparently longs to play one on TV - pitched a powerful anti-psychiatry tantrum in a recent interview with Today show nice-guy Matt Lauer. The haggard looking Cruise launched into the rant after Lauer asked him about actress Brooke Shields' choice of Paxil as part of her treatment for her debilitating postpartum depression.
"Here is a woman I care about because I think she is an incredibly talented," Cruise said about the famously bushy-browed Brooke. "These drugs are dangerous. When you talk about postpartum, you can take people today, women, and what you do is you use vitamins. There is a hormonal thing that is going on, scientifically, you can prove that. But when you talk about emotional, chemical imbalances in people, there is no science behind that. You can use vitamins to help a woman through those things," the egotistically self-assured Cruise pontificated.
Shields later took a much-deserved swipe back at Cruise's Scientology beliefs, by saying she wouldn't take advice from someone who devotes his life to creatures from outer space. She fumed, "His comments are dangerous. He should stick to saving the world from aliens."
Two thumbs up from me Brooke.
While Tom claims to speak from "experience" and "knowledge" - and I suppose embarking on your third marriage and requiring a Scientologist minder to watch your fiance is grounds for experience with psychiatric problems - I'll take a guess that I may have more.
I am the grandson, son and brother of schizophrenics and I've spent the better part of my 50 years battling depression with varying degrees of success. Tom, let me level with you. If you feel like jumping off a building, I'm thinking vitamins aren't going to stop you. If you lose arguments with people who aren't there, a quick trip to WaldenBooks for a copy of Dianetics isn't going to make the voices go away - although they may start sounding more like aliens. In short, mental and emotional illnesses are real, unlike the world where you live.
Tom, some advice.
SHUT THE HELL UP! When we need expertise about something you do know about - Invisaline braces perhaps - we'll ask you. Otherwise, do a little more reading about L. Ron Hubbard. Maybe it will help chill you out.
Truth Told by Omnipotent Poobah, Friday, July 01, 2005
