Two Cents on Tom

Let me say for the record, I don't care about Tom Cruise and his love life, or the love lives of anyone in Hollywood. But it is a problem for me that Cruise is using all the attention being focused on him right now to attack the entire practice of psychiatry and psychology as well as make medical determinations as to what is the right course of action for people struggling with mental conditions — case in point, his tirade against Brooke Shields.

Now, we are all entitled to form opinions, and we all have the right to express those opinions. And of course, we all have the right to ignore someone else's opinion. What is disturbing about this whole thing, is that anytime a public figure comes out with such a strong opinion, it gains attention, and unfortunately, credibility.

My problem with Tom Cruise is not his opinion, per se, but his constant claiming of having done intensive research, yet he fails to ever cite a single source. He harps on the use of drugs, both misrepresenting what certain drugs actually are and who has the ability to prescribe them. (Most psychologists cannot prescribe drugs) He presents the beliefs of Scientology as if they were universally accepted precepts instead of religious tenets. And, when pressed for details, he talks around in circles instead of giving concrete answers. He never acknowledges that there are many, many other therapeutic tools at the psychiatrist's disposal that don't involve prescription medications, and he seems to believe that the brain is incapable of having diagnosable organic disorders just because conclusive blood tests cannot confirm them. As a person diagnosed with fibromyalgia, a diagnosis of exclusion (no test results) I know firsthand the difficulty of dealing with those who feel the only real diseases and disorders are those that we have concrete tests for. Shame on Tom Cruise for setting medical science back 100 years.

Eventually, the furor will die down, and we will have another media darling to contend with. In the meantime, I sincerely hope that no one will take his tirades seriously enough to stop therapy, discontinue medicine or ignore symptoms.

Transcript of Tom Cruise's recent interview on the Today Show
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8343367/