Clearly Tom cruise has never been to a state hospital where there are schizophrenics and other severly mentally ill people that are helped by psychiatrists.
I totally agree that people look for quick fixes.. adults too.. "hey doc whats that pill you can give me that will make it all go away" I see that so much working with kids. Sometimes it drives you batty because parents ignore the fact that they need to work with the child too.
ADHD meds are over done too but i must say on occasion i have seen situations where the results are fairly dramatic..
ONe rule I have learned. Never give a kid more meds than the age they are. Its an interesting rule and definitely makes one think when prescribing meds. (esp. when faced with young kids who are on 6 or 7 meds. )

Tom Cruise is a whackjob.

Yes, that is my professional opinion. ;)

He threw Nicole Kidman out. He must be a whackjob.

I'm still peeved about his comments about PPD & Brooke Shields. How in the world can someone with NO EXPERIENCE in the area of chemical imbalances & treatments (let alone childbirth) be such an authority?

Tom Cruise he is the crazy one. He needs to be heavily medicated and wrapped in a wet sheet. And restrained face down on a hospital bed. And disciplined with a shiny black leather belt for hour after hour after hour after hour.

Paula - That is precisely what my husband calls him.

Rhonda - I've asked for some details in the main post...hope you don't mind. I am curious about that.

Archer - You have a disturbing mind...I like it!

I actually watched the interview on Access Hollywood with my jaw hanging open. I can't believe he's such an idiot. I can't find a transcript for it. This is as close as I could get (at 11:13 pm with a screaming infant LOL)

http://www.hollywood.com/news/detail/article/2440860

Tom Cruise speaks out of arrogance and ignorance, like 99% of Hollywood.

Of course, Cruise would never conveniently "fall in love" with a woman 20 years his junior, or make outrageous claims on a topic he knows nothing about for purposes of selling a new movie called "War of the Worlds."

No, he'd never do that.

I totally agree that he is so arrogance and ignorance. He keeps saying that he has done his research, what research? let's see it!! reading one article doesn't make you an expert about the subject he "pretends" to know. after all, he is an actor, a pretender. nut case, medicate him!

As an honours psychology student, I totally agree that Tom should go into therapy to find the root of his arrogance, ignorance, etc. etc. Wait a minute, he doesn't believe that psychology gets to the root of any problem. If he really studied psychology like he says he has, he would know that new therapies and techniques strive to find the cause and meaning of people's problems, not just mask the symptoms. His incomplete history readings of psychology seem to have only included the very first articles and research. Do we punish other sciences just becasue we do not believe in the very first entries in their existence? Should we disregard geography becasue we found that the world is not flat? Or say that chemistry is a pseudo science because we found we could split the atom after years of believing otherwise?
NO I don't believe in everything Freud or Jung taught, but YES I do believe that psychology and ,yes, psychological drugs have their place in society. Drugs are prescribed too often and abused but in many cases are prescribed by general practitioners who have a limited knowledge of who these drugs should be perscribed (that is not psychology's fault, in fact, they would like to see only psychologists prescibing these drugs).
Another thing that bothers me is that Tom said that he does not discuss anything that he doesn't know about-->well he obviously missed the memo on the fact that chemical imbalances DO exist. He also has not had a child, but is telling women how to live their lives. I used to like him, but now I CAN'T stand him!!

In the recent interview with Matt Lauer this is the point that Tom Cruise didn’t make.

Do you know how much prescription drugs are worth to Big Pharma? On a world wide basis about a trillion + dollars. How far do you think they would go to protect this income? How much do you suppose the pharmaceutical companies spend advertising drugs on TV, Radio, Magazines and News media? How much do they spend lobbying Congress to look the other way? How much do they pay (Grants) universities such as Harvard and Columbia to agree that drugging children is scientifically valid? Right now Ritalin is being dispensed in schools under the guise of treating over active children. Ritalin is a form of amphetamine and of course as time goes by and it doesn’t “work” the school psychologist then prescribes a higher dosage and then amphetamines and the end product is the teenager becomes a drug addict and a lifetime client. Please don’t believe me but take the time to research it, Google is a great tool for this. Keywords are Prozac, Ritalin, School shootings, and Suicide. Regards Michael Hammond

Dear Michael,

I have a degree in psychology. The other writer here, KidDoc, is s child psychiatry fellow (read, physician) after also doing graduate work in the field of neuroscience. I think we are both intimately familiar with pharmacology. In addition, not only have both of us read numerous peer reviewed studies, we’ve actually RUN some of them, or at the very least contributed to them.

That said, I will tell you that both KidDoc and myself believe that some drugs are over-prescribed. But, I am going to tell you that we are both more intimately familiar with how parents can RUN that show. Trust me, there are plenty of physicians out there who refuse to prescribe these drugs, but parents go to other docs until they find the ones who will. So, while you’re eager to place blame on drug companies, physicians, and psychologists, you might also want to take a look at the patients themselves AND their legal guardian.

I want to point out something very obvious. There is such a disorder as ADHD. It does exist. I believe it is over diagnosed. But, it can be easy to determine by the use of Ritalin. You see, Ritalin is a central nervous system stimulant (while it acts like an amphetamine, and is chemically related, it is NOT an amphetamine). The only people that Ritalin will work on are those with an organic brain dysfunction (namely the inability of Norepinephrine and Dopamine to do their job appropriately}. Does that make sense? I mean, really, think about it. Anyone who takes a stimulant should get all hopped up. Isn’t it a bit weird, even to the inexperienced, that someone would calm down and become more focused on something that revs up the majority of the population?

Additionally, school psychologists, or any other kind of psychologist, CANNOT prescribe drugs. Only a physician can prescribe drugs. For the more serious dysfunctions, there is almost always a psychiatrist involved. But, family practice physicians can prescribe any of these drugs as well.

Finally, I can’t speak for politicians looking the other way after being swayed by lobbyists, but I can speak for scientists who do these experiments and it’s just damned insulting for you to insinuate that research is fudged in favor of money. Hey, if you don’t like the miracles of modern medicine discovered by scientists, that’s fine…don’t take them. But don’t tell me that they don’t work and have a mechanism of function after going through multiple studies to be brought to the public. I mean, really, do you know what it takes to have one of these drugs approved? And I’m not just talking about psychiatric drugs. I’m talking about something as simple as aspirin. You HAVE taken aspirin before, haven’t you? Do you believe that works? Well, that went through the same number of studies anything else out there did.

Please, please, please think about some of this. I know it’s upsetting to see so many kids being treated with inappropriate drugs when they shouldn’t be. Some of the professional community is just as upset about this. But please don’t advocate taking all of this off the market or say that it’s just a ploy by drug companies to keep their employers driving Mercedes. Some people have psychiatric problems just as others have diabetes. The brain is a living, human organ and occasionally has problems just like any other organ.

In closing, I have to add that reading articles and reading peer reviewed journals are two different animals. Articles are geared toward entertaining a particular audience. Peer reviewed journals are based on many peers reviewing the work you have done in a study…a scientific study. You can find these at the library. They are usually not readily available online. But, if you’re REALLY interested, those are the articles you should be reading.

Man that was a fast 13 comments. Now if we could just pair the trolls up with Tom Cruise and ship them all off for therapy.....

Dear Michael - I forgot what I was going to say. Too many drugs..........