Ryan's dad and Tom Cruise have a lot in common...they both have driven hot motorcycles, looked great in leather jackets and designer sunglasses, been in the Navy (or played a role where they were in the Navy), failed to be supportive of antidepressants for PPD or any other type of depression, and, sadly, both have been divorced twice now...hmmmmmmm.

Good tough post.

Tom cruise is severly ignorant!!! How can he or his scientology peers not having had ppd, say that exercise & vitamins help. I have had ppd & nursed my daughter. Only would I take what was safe for her while I was nursing. There are no documents (that I know of) that state what amounts of vitamins a nursing mother can take safely, nor has Tom Cruise shown us what his actual plan for us is to take them/what vitamins. My PPD is back again unfortunatley & I welcome his vitamins/exercise plan. I'd put it to the test Tommie!!!! PPd is a very scary & serious illness; it's not to be taken lightly!!!

I'd like to know where Tom got his degree in psychology, or his MD, and where he did his residency. What exactly are his credentials. If they are I'm an actor & this is my faith... they aren't good enough. I agree that antidepressants, just as antibiotics have been over prescribed, but he says antidepressants shouldn't be prescribed. He obviously has NEVER treated a client who is experiencing a severe depressive episode. You MUST get the depression to a controllable level for therapy sessions to have a chance at working. Yes exercise can help, but again, you MUST have the depression controllable for the client to follow through on exercise. I would venture to say that Tom Cruise has not taken college level courses, or worked with seriously depressed individuals,(mild depression is VERY different & responds more quickly & easily). The saddest thing is this is exactly why so many people who need help don't get it. They are afraid that people are going to think them weak, defective, or many other things. One star like Brooke Shields speaking out & saying it is okay to admit this problem & get help, can bring hundreds of sufferers in for help. I would hate to think someone who needed help wouldn't seek it out because of what Mr. Cruise has said.

I wrote a novel about my experience with PPD. It is due out June 2006 through Whiskey Creek Press. http://www.whiskeycreekpress.com/comingsoon.shtml

There was a point when I was going through PPD that I thought my son was the Chucky doll trying to kill me. I wrote my book like Brooke did, to bring it more into the open. My book is told in first person, and takes the reader along on the devastating slide into malaise.

Back in the late 1800's, Charlotte Perkins Gillman wrote The Yellow Wallpaper about her experience with PPD, and what was called the "rest cure." New mothers who had severe baby blues or PPD were put on bed rest, isolated, and as you can imagine, with no mental or physical stimulation, many got worse instead of better. Charlot Gillman went back to work, and soon felt better, but when she tried to get her short story The Yellow Wallpaper published, the publishers balked at it, said it would drive people insane! These publishers of course, were men. She did finally get the story published, and its publication did help other women in similar situations. http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/history/lavender/whyyw.html

Today, the pendulum has swung the other direction... here we have Tom Cruise prescribing vitamins and excersize as a cure for PPD. What is wrong with this picture? Tom Cruise is not a doctor, he is not a scientist, and he is not a woman. His wife never even gave birth. He has absolutely no experience with PPD, and yet, he considers himself qualified enough to speak out about it?

I was wholly offended by Cruise's "glib" attitude. It is that same attitude of men that for years told us that PMS was all in our heads, that we did not expeierence hot flashes when we go through menapause. For years women were too embarrassed to discuss it. Now these things are finally coming to light, women are seeking treatment and learning that they are not crazy or alone, but Neanderthals like Tom Cruise and his Scientologists would set progress back to the turn of the century. Let your voices be heard, Ladies, and if anyone is looking for PPD support, please join my support group: http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/morningstarppd/

I think Cruise is wholly off-base on the merits; however, I think it's also a mistake to suggest that one must speak from personal experience or with the backing of a Ph.D. to express one's opinion. Surely, male medical researchers who are supportive of pharmacological intervention for post partum depression need not have suffered through it to be taken seriously. And someone well informed on the underlying research should not be marginalized simply becuase his or her signature isn't followed by particular degree abbreviations. While each of those things may add legitimacy to an opinion on the subject, they also may not. They're neither necessary nor sufficient to knowledgeably engage in a discussion on the subject.

I wish there'd be less time spent trumpeting Cruise's lack of a uterus and more time spent focusing on the (lack of) merit of his argument (which, by the way, seems pretty easy, given the overwhelming medical authority to the contrary).

For a related take on this, check out Julie Hilden's insightful essay on Findlaw from a couple of weeks ago. (http://writ.news.findlaw.com/hilden/20050706.html)

I am so disgusted and angry with Tom Cruise right now and support Brooke Shields wholeheartedly. I know this is different from ppd but i suffer from a severe depression and take antidepressants. From what Tom has been saying it makes me feel like i'm a bad person because i take them. I need to take them to get through every day of my life. Without them it is for me to get through every day. I just wanted to write to say that Tom needs to think before he says things or have professional advice to back him up, and that I support Brooke Shields.

Tom Cruise is right. Psychiatry is a pseudoscience. There is no such thing as a chemical imbalance in the brain. And psychiatric drugs are very harmful. The proof is easy to come by.

The fact that he’s getting slammed by the press and talk show hosts also proves something. It proves that the multibillion-dollar brainwashing campaign put forth by the drug companies and the APA (American Psychiatric Association) has been successful.
I’m sure you’ve seen the cute little Zoloft cartoons. A sad circle takes Zoloft and turns into a happy circle. How wonderfully simple it all is. But let’s take a look at what the commercial is actually saying: “No one knows what causes depression. One theory is that there’s a chemical imbalance in your brain. Zoloft works to correct this imbalance.”

All right, let’s examine these statements. “No one knows what causes depression.” I can live with that. Line two: “One theory is that there’s a chemical imbalance in the brain.” No problem. It’s a theory. Line three: “Zoloft works to correct this imbalance.” What! In three lines we went from, “No one knows…,” to “One theory is…,” to Zoloft cures it! Cures what? A theory?

And the average person watching this overt lie doesn’t get it. They’re also not told that Zoloft and all the other psychiatric drugs can cause depression, suicide and mania, to mention just a few side effects. (Many psychiatric patients experience these things when taking the drugs. The doctors tell them that they always had these mental disorders and that the drug is just bringing them out. Another lie.)

Out of the millions of people who have been told by their doctors that they have a chemical imbalance in their brain, not one of them can show you their lab test report.
Why? Because there are no lab tests for chemical imbalances in the brain. In fact, no one knows exactly what the chemical balance of the brain should be. What we do know for sure is that drugs cause a chemical imbalance in the body. The diagnosis, like all psychiatric diagnosis is completely subjective. “But,” you say, “They are the experts in the field of the mind. Surely, if they say I’m crazy I must be crazy!”

Well, exactly how expert are they? In her book, Whores of the Court, Dr. Margaret Hagen points out that child psychological professionals are worse than chance at determining when kids are lying. That in almost two out of three cases psych professionals incorrectly predict which criminals will repeat their offenses. And that therapy for convicted sex offenders and batterers doesn’t work.

The magazine, Psychology Today, had an article a few years back showing that mental health experts had more suicides, more drug abuse problems and more divorces than any other profession. Would you take your car to a mechanic who couldn’t fix his own car?
Is psychiatry a pseudoscience?

Psychology and psychiatry went wrong 100 years ago when they decided to use a medical model for mental and spiritual problems. Claiming that man was nothing more than a stimulus-response animal with no soul, all mental problems became medical problems with the brain. This meant they were forced to look for physical solutions to all mental and spiritual problems (drugs, lobotomies, shock treatment).

No matter how hard mental practitioners try to prove mental illness is physical, their studies are always disproved. All scientists go through a process where they develop a theory then do experiments to prove or disprove the theory. Once they have success they write it up in their journals so other scientists can independently test the theory to see if they get the same results. Only after it’s been proven this way does it get broadly published to the public as a new discovery.

Psychs, on the other hand, develop a theory, do some experiments, then write a book and go on talk shows. The public hears these “studies” and assumes they’re scientific. The public never hears that the theory was disproved—even by other psychs! So the flawed theory gets into the public mind as fact.

A while ago I was watching a congressional hearing on the over-drugging of children. The first psychiatrist, an APA man, had very impressive full color charts showing how kids with ADHD had a ten percent shrinkage in their brains. Very impressive. Physical proof that ADHD exists. Until another psychiatrist showed that it was actually Ritalin that caused the brain shrinkage.

Another fact the public isn’t privy to, ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) was voted into existence. There is no physical proof for ADHD or any of the other almost 400 so-called mental disorders. (See “Making Us Crazy—DSM: The Psychiatric Bible and the Creation of Mental Disorders,” by Herb Kutchins and Stuart Kirk.)

You might be reading this and thinking, “But I know a kid who was totally uncontrollable until he took Ritalin. There must be truth in what the doctors say.” Sorry, what you’re looking at is a kid with a problem. It could be any number of things: bored out of his mind, allergies, too much sugar, discipline or study related problems. But a problem is not a disease. Taking Ritalin, or Prozac or whatever, does not cure anything. It just shuts you up. If you take an aspirin you haven’t cured your headache. The aspirin just desensitized your nervous system so you couldn’t feel the headache. But the headache is still there. And what’s causing the headache is still there.

The psychs claim taking Prozac is comparable to a diabetic taking insulin. But diabetes is not a problem. It’s a physical thing that can be seen in a lab. Depression is not.
The psych drugs don’t cure anything. They just desensitize your emotions. Good and bad ones. And when the drug wears off the problem is still there.

It takes courage to put your career on the line and say something that goes against the majority belief. The powers-that-be are trying to crucify Tom and divert our attention from finding the truth. And the truth is: the new religion of the day is psychiatry. Try to criticize them and you’ve got a mental disorder. Sound crazy? Then you never heard of Non Compliance With Treatment disorder. No, I’m not making this up. Disagree with your doctor and you’ve got a mental disorder! Talk about a Catch-22.

So is psychiatry a pseudoscience? Chances are your grandmother was more effective in handling life than your shrink.

On the off chance anyone is taking the prior post seriously, I just want to make clear that he's sloppily peddling rumors and assorted BS as fact, surely in service to his Scientology masters. E.g., http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/10/021009080635.htm ("A 10-year study by National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) scientists has found that brains of children and adolescents with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) are 3-4 percent smaller than those of children who don't have the disorder – and that medication treatment is not the cause. Indeed, in this first major study to scan previously never-medicated patients, they found 'strikingly smaller' white matter volumes in children who had not taken stimulant drugs.").

As disgusting as Tom Cruise's comments are, and as bad as I feel for Katie (or, as my husband likes to point out every chance he gets that "the young lady likes to be known as Kate now"), I am even more disturbed by Tom Cruise's supporters. They are Leah Remini, the star of King of Queens, and Kelly Preston, the actress I never heard of before. These are women, and unfortunately, women can be cruel to other women. If Tom Cruise's lunatic ravings can be dismissed as those of an ignorant guy, Remini and Preston are both mothers. Clearly, they haven't experienced PPD, or else they'd sing another tune, but to be this catty about another woman's plight is unkind. My personal hope is that Tom Cruise will develop hemorrhoids and suffer because he refuses to take medication.