Dan - you make a good point about the over-medication of our society.  But Tom Cruise takes it to the other extreme.  He does not think that anyone should ever be given drugs to treat any kind of mental illness.  He does not believe in chemical imbalances.  He also spreads untruths like methadone originally being named Adolophine after Hitler. 

Slightly off topic, but why did Lauer decide to play grand inquisitor to Tom? People in government or business whose malfeasance actually affects millions of people get the kid gloves, but celebrities are skewered and raked over the coals like a kabob?
Whatever, that said, Cruise does seem to be losing it. Actually reminds of the Cuba Gooding Jr. line from Jerry Maguire about Jerry hanging on by a very thin thread. 

I have got to start Tivo'ing all his TV appearances.

Actually, considering that red carpet squirtage, maybe all his appearances.

"Whatever, that said, Cruise does seem to be losing it."

I'm told he's been quite crazy for years, but then again one doesn't get to the upper echelons of government, corporate America, Hollywood, Wall Street, or any of our other fine institutions by playing nice, or being wholly sane. The demands of the top positions in our society are just too great, and the sleeplessness, abusiveness (this applies to you Mr. Bolton), temper tantrums (Bill Clinton's were legendary), swearing and throwing objects at walls/windows/people are all par for the course. Of course going on national television to bizarrely denounce psychotropic drugs and Brook Shields is to be sure an unusual variation on this theme, but having once snarked about Brook Shield's unibrow in high school who am I to criticize?

This guy is nuttier and nuttier.

Goddamn it, Matt Yglesias, you are always in the ballpark of being right but never actually, you know, right.

Look, the problem is not that this celebrity made this particularly moronic remark.  No.

The problem is that we pay too damn much attention to celebrities and we take them seriously when they talk out they ass (eg, always). 

Who the fuck listens to celebrities? What sense does that make? Whose big ideas was it to trust some drug addled, fascist-loving, sex-harrassing BODYBUILDER/ACTOR with the 6th largest economy in the world?  (That's "Gubernator" to you, pipsqueak.)

America is so fucked.  No amount of chin-tugging from clever bloggers will save us from President Pitt and VP Courtney Cox. 

Tom went from sleeping with Mimi Rogers to sleeping with Nicole Kidman to sleeping with Peneope Cruz to sleeping with Katie Holmes. How crazy can he be? Or, maybe the Scientologist brand of crazy gets all the hot chicks. Maybe "Dianetics" is just a dust jacket over "How To Pick Up Girls." Maybe saying "I'm a clear!" at a cocktail party turns you into a babe magnet. Of course, I was born an atheist, sentenced to a life of common sense and skeptical empiricism. Damn you, Xemu, damn you to hell. Or, wherever.

I read a translated Der Spiegel interview with Spielberg and Cruise, the interview done last week. I feel for Steven, because Tom was getting a lot of harsh questions from the interviewer about Scientology (Germany had classified it, at some point, as a commercial enterprise, not a religion, so there's a grudge, there). Wait, Steven went from Amy Irving to Kate Capshaw, so I don't feel for Steven that much. But word must be out that you can bring up Scientology (Matt Lauer doesn't yet know that Germany has reunified, but a staffer probably Googled the DS interview and cobbled together the question list) and it's like poking a bear with a sharp stick. Or a dull one. Just keep the camera running and infotainment will be committed.

The problem with that line of thinking, neruda boy, is that it is not particularly germane to what Cruise says about psych. drugs.

Antidepressants work.  No one theory explains that decisively presently, but that does not change the fact that anti-depressents work.

There have been many, many clinical trials:  double-blind statistical studies that show that antidepressants work.  More than that, anti-depressants are actually some of the most effective medicines you can buy.  They are generally more effective (around 70%) at treating their respective disease than most medicines for "physical" ailments (as if mental health problem aren't physical, but you know what I mean).

So yeah, Cruise is bat-shit crazy when he goes off on anti-depressents as evil and wrong.  If you read up a bit on Scientology, you'll find that for L. Ron Hubbard psychiatrist/psychologists fill the same roll as Jews did for Hitler: the secret cabal of conspirators that are responsible for all the world's ills.  Hubbard was a sociopath and a pathological liar:  his religion reflects that pathology.

Cruise's actions can and will scare legitimately sick people away from drugs that can help them, because of his bat-shit crazy rantings.

You wrote ... "I know two children under the age of ten who hear voices without medication. I know a surprising number of autistic children. I know several young adults who would not be succeeding in college without medication. I know a Down's child born to a healthy, non-drug-using, young woman. Perhaps a more worthy direction for your self-righteousness might be to find out why these ailments are showing up in increasing numbers, rather than blaming those who choose to use medications to alleviate them."

So do I. I am not saying that we need a zero-drug society (except where illigal drugs are concerned). I do think we need to question the widespread use of drugs, especially with respect to children. We also need to examine what other factors in our society/environment may be causing kids to have all the symptoms that spawn such a preponderance of drug use among primary school age kids. I can't believe that there has been such an increase in the need in just a few decades, although I do allow that today's societal/environmental degradation may have inflicted who-knows-what on our kids. Perhaps watching too much TV causes brain changes in very young children that result in learning disorders, or hyperacivity. Perhaps it's to much food additives, or too much fat, or whatever. Perhaps it's breathing automobile or diesel exhaust year after year in minute doses. I don't know the answers. I do know that in the past 30 years or so the whole population has been conditioned to expecxt relief from medication, and that big business interests make billions of dollars by keeping us feeling that way. In many cases, the medication helps. In many cases, I think it is overused. In many cases, I think it is used to mask deeper problems that we as a society have to face. In many cases, I think it does harm. So, I don't begrudge those who receive genuine relief from their medications. I just don't believe that all the medications that are being prescribed are needed, not by a long shot. We need to look at the whole problem of drug use and find some answers. My gosh, they are even experimenting with medicine vending machines for 24/7 drive-by service in my area! And, this doesn't even touch on the whole subject of illegal drugs and the crime subculture that type of use finances, and the untold worldwide misery that an underground drug culture supports.

The problem is that we pay too damn much attention to celebrities and we take them seriously when they talk out they ass (eg, always).

You couldn't be more wrong on this issue.  While Americans do have an unhealthy respect for the opinions of celebrities, it often takes a well-known celeb to speak out about their experience of mental illness (or other health crisis) for the public to begin reckoning with it.  Knowing that someone like Mike Wallace had been battling clinical depression for years certainly made my own father more willing to accept that it wasn't a character flaw or a problem for "menal midgets."  Patty Duke's memoir about her bipolar disorder is a pretty standard introduction to living with the disorder, while the more recent admissions of people like Jane Pauley or Carrie Fisher helps people with the disorder acknowledge it in a society where saying someone is "of his meds" is considered biting and trenchant wit.  And thank god, or Xenu, for Brooke Shields, if she helps mothers suffering from post-partum depression seek help instead of becoming isolated in denial and shame, fearing the stigma of Andrea Yates. 

I can't explain why seeing a celebrity suffer from something like this makes it allowable to take action, but this is one area where celebrities have been more than a pox on American life.  It makes all the sense in the world to say as rational people we should be able to understand this on our own, but that just doesn't happen.

?

Not to open a can of worms.. but i would hazard a guess that most of the "drug problem" in the US has been manufactured by making it illegal.

It doesn't seem logical to me that i "war on drugs" is seriously going to help. So far it's just helped the drug dealers raise their rates and it has, to be admitted, given local law enforcement something to do, but as far as actually helping society it's been a bust.  

You are probably correct ... the war on drugs is unwinnable, since it is not supported by much of the population.

The reason that we have a problem with illegal drugs in this country is that we have drug users. If there were no drug users (i.e., people who support the drug industry with their dollars), there would be no drug dealers, no drug cartels, no drug-financed murder, rape, child exploitation, exploitation of third-world governments by drug money, corrupting of local governments in this country, and a whole host of denegrating and dehumanizing things ... and then there would be no need for a war on drugs.

As an old hippy, I remember the drug culture well. It allowed us to get high and think that no one was being harmed. When we finally came out of the haze of the 60s, we saw just what a monster had been unleashed on the nation and the world by our harmless recreation. We saw that every time we lit up, or snorted, or shot up, or whatever, we were contributing to the most dehumanizing system imaginable ... words are not capable of describing the tragedy and loss.

Until our drug users realize that they are financing the worst expressions of humankind, we will need a war on drugs to keep the evil at bay.

Anon @ 0.49- I agree that anti-depressants work well, and therefore they may be said to help. But there's sometimes a difference between what helps an ailment and what cures it. A friend of mine recently had to come off anti-depressants because she had been on them too long; and then she was all over the place. To me, being happy simply because some drug is making you happy is a pretty sad state of affairs, at least if it's a long-term, continuous thing.

Also, doctor's overwork, the frequently reductive nature of their training and the power of pharmaceutical companies maybe combine to make prescriptions far more frequently than would be the case in an ideal situation. 

I know far too little about Scientology to comment on their beliefs..  

If you are happy with thge American drug culture, so be it. I'm still glad that I'm not part of it. So, we are both happy, fine.

I'm fortunmate not to need any prescription drugs, but I am not free of dealing with the drug abuse that is being foisted on the American public, especially on our youngest and oldest citizens.

Several years ago I combined my 90-year-old parents household with my household so that I could keep an eye on them, while still allowing them to have freedom in familar surroundings. My step-father had suffered a stroke that left him confined to a walker, and my mom was suffering under the load of being primary caregiver. I assumed that function and it has worked fairly well so far.

The first thing that changed about my life was that I was driving one or both of them to the doctor about twice a week, most often for routine care procedures to monitor the affects of their prescription drugs (e.g., to check on my step-dad's blood thinning medication). Just as often, I was going to a pharmacy. Between the two of them, my parents were on 12 medicines. The cost was about $650 per month.

Over the past three years, I have been questioning their doctors about the need for all of those drugs. In some cases, the drugs were started and then just continued, even though there was no evidence they were being effective. The thing that startled me was just how hard it was to get consideration for stopping a drug once it was started. The doctors seemed to be afraid to consider such a course, perhaps fearing that they would leave themselves open to the charge that they were not doing everything possible.
At any rate, I have persisted with the doctors. One by one we ran trials and elimanated drug after drug by showing that we could measure no change in my parent's indicators, whether the drug was being taken or not. They are now down to 4 drugs taken regularly, and the cost has dropped to less than $200 per month (I think that alone is responsible for my step-dad's blood pressure going back to normal).

Needless to say, we don't get those elaborate Christmas cards from the drug manufacturers any more, but my folks are doing well and both seem to feel better than when they were taking all of those drugs. I can't prove it, but I have a suspicion that our family's circumstances are not unusual.

My conclusion: There is every incentive to start people on drugs of different kinds, but there seems to be very little incentive to ever evaluate whether the drugs are doing what they claim, and almost no incentive to stop a drug once it has been prescribed.
 
I know some people's lives are made liveable by certain drugs (we've had such testimony here), but I also think that we have let a legal drug culture become part of our national existence, and I have a feeling it happened mostly for the profit of big business, not for the improved health of our population. I'm not alleging a conspiracy or anything (allowing for the fact that there will always be unscrupulous people in any endeavor), but I think we just let market forces take over and the whole prescription drug thing has gotten out of hand.

Absolutely right. <br /><br />An interesting issue though is why should an actor with no scientific background and dubious levels of knowledge be prosletyzing to us about all this?

Hey Dan W., you old hippy, you are going a little nuts here:

When we finally came out of the haze of the 60s, we saw just what a monster had been unleashed on the nation and the world by our harmless recreation.

Uh, what exactly happened to you, friend? The 60s didn't invent drugs, you know.

And then this:

If there were no drug users (i.e., people who support the drug industry with their dollars), there would be no drug dealers, no drug cartels, no

While I agree that there are other (some more useful) ways of dealing with depression than popping pills, you seem to have missed the part where Dan decided that all of the children who go to the nurse's office for prescription medication are doing so for antidepressants/Ritalin, and Dan's insistence that all prescriptions are for happy pills. He happily cites a statistic about the number of adults taking prescription drugs, and then claims we're all imbibing "artificial cheer." Apparently blood pressure medication, insulin, and thyroid hormone replacement have somehow become happy pills while I wasn't looking.

Dan seems to be impervious to all suggestions that a) not all prescription drugs are for mental illness, b) not all mental illness can be treated with anything other than medication (those kids I know who hear voices telling them to kill their brothers won't get rid of those voices by "doing emotional work"), and c) sometimes medication is necessary even when you are "doing emotional work." For someone who claims repeatedly that "non-centrists" need to watch their every word so as not to create rifts within the party, Dan is awfully imprecise when he's flogging one of his own horses.

And let's definitely not talk about the way that health insurance companies encourage people to take pills (rather than "do emotional work") by paying a far greater fraction of the cost of the pills than the cost of the therapy.

It's pretty amazing.  And worst case?  People who reverence celebrities for some reason, who are depressed and suicidal, will now not seek help, or if now in treatment will stop taking their medications and stop going to see their doctors.  They'll trust Tom of "Top Gun."  Some will die. 

And there is something deliciously Darwinian about that.  This may be a good thing.

If Scientology is around for 100 years or so like, for example, Christian Science will its beliefs then be take seriously?

I'm seeing a lot of these kinds of comments, and getting increasingly irritated by them.  It you're an atheist, fine: go be an atheist (try to do it quietly).  Just don't bring your false-equivalence bullshit here. I'm no fan of Christian Science, but it is at least not an intentionally deceitful ploy.

Most religious people go about their faith in a diligent and sincere manner.  Religion is a positive influence in their lives.  You might think they're stupid and brainwashed, but their faith will generally not leave them bankrupt, alone, mentally disturbed or dead.

Scientology is a malevolent and dangerous scam invented by a sinister hack writer.  It is in a class apart from mainstream religions by the sheer amount of money, time, and isolation from non-believers that it demands.  Until you actually know something about it, please don't go about comparing it to relatively benign mainstream belief systems.  I'm all for moving toward reality-based discourse.  But putting Scientology on the same level as conventional religions is not a safe way to go about it.

tjl --
Whatever your "conventional religion" is, know this: it's a scam.

There is a lot of resistance against going off meds in the psychiatric community - I know people personally who have been told outright by their docs that they would have to take depression/bipolar meds for the rest of their lives, and had to ditch their doctor to wean themselves off the meds.  They're doing fine.

I just wanted to point out, in case anyone reading this is unaware of the fact, that one should NOT "ditch their doctor" [sic] to "wean themselves off the meds" [sic] without first going under the supervision of another doctor.  If you want to stop taking medicine and your doctor won't entertain the idea, then yes, you should find another doctor who is more respectful of your values, desires, and goals (prehaps you'd have more luck with an Osteopath?).  But you should not just stop taking medication if you're not under the supervision of some kind of doctor with expertise in prescribing such medicine. 

I'm glad to hear, Dan Wingfoot, that your friends are fine, but going off anti-depressants or other medication can have dramatic effects that, because of how those effects play out or the underlying condition, an individual may not be able to recognize, and that may endanger that individual.  That's one reason why anyone taking medication for mental illness needs a good doctor who has expertise in this area, not just your regular PCP. 

Also, while emotional work has many, many, many benefits, there are plenty of biological/physical factors it can't change, nor can it do much good when the patient is in such a condition, due to the biological/physical factors, that he/she can't benefit from or participate effectively in emotional work. 

jutplur, your comment reminded me of something I read a while back.

In this passage, Louis Menand is discussing the relationship between William James’s philosophy (go pragmatism!) and his own health, both physical and mental:

Commentators prefer to assume that James was despondent in the years after his graduation from medical school because of some problem—a family problem, a sexual problem, a career problem, an identity problem, a philosophical problem. But depression is not a problem; it’s a weather pattern. Under its cloud, everything else is a problem. When the weather changes, these problems disappear, or become ”opportunities,“ or ”challenges“—until dark skies return.

—from “William James and the Case of the Epileptic Patient,” in American Studies, 25; original emphasis.

PSA: There is a Users' Help Forum.

Some comments play with fire.There are persons here that tell us
that is not right to treat our mental illnesses.Illnesses that of
course are the most painful in the universe.They critisize us because we simply treat our illnesses!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.Okay guys,throw your medicines for diabetes,throw your medicines for asthma,throw your medicines for cancer,throw your invalid's wheelchair cripple bastards all of you with these misunderstood fucking physical "problems" and the fucking medicines for your fucking cancer,you
fucking cripple,gimp,fucking blind persons.Do you like this kind
of language?This language you use EXACTLY for the mentally ill.Hereafter we(mentaly ill)that we represent 30% of society we will use this language for the physical illness.Of course we are not immune from these illnesses,but you also not immune from psychiatric illnesses something you want to forget.Let's believe
we are immune from physical illnesses...So...Cripple bastards
why you can't walk?Why you are invalid?Why you take medicines for
your heart?Your fucking heart why can't beat alone?So weak?Wacko.No one from us(mentally ill) make blood donation
anymore.We have a war.These people don't understand with nice and diplomatic ways.Offend them!

The wrestler Mikael Ljungberg who takes gold medal in the Olympic Games of Sydney 2000,suffered from chronic depression and he
commit suicide in the psychiatric hospital of Mölndal in November
of 2004,because was ashamed of the reaction of the public,if had taken antidepressant medication.And you ,Tom Cruise,have fast internet and you can go to http://www.tv4.se/player/categories.aspx?treeId=2004& pid=9278&more=1
to see your crime.