It’s another one of those weeks when I think I’ve been swept into an alternate universe, one in which a few key events went awry, leaving Captain Picard as a busboy in Louisiana, rather than forging peace and exploring bold new worlds. And also, Tom Cruise isn’t just a couch-jumping, generationally impaired (my term for individuals who can’t stay with partners closer to their own generation) loony, he’s an authority. An authority on psychiatry.
It isn’t just that he’s gone on the attack against anyone who might have benefited from medical assistance for a mental illness. He actually blasted a new mom brave enough to share her struggle with post partum depression. He must have a complete genius for a publicity manager. (â€Hey, Mr. Cruise, I was thinking today why don’t you attack the woman who was on every teen boy’s wall wearing her calvins a few years back. I hear she just had a baby, and no one likes babies.â€)
On top of that, the American Psychiatric Association felt compelled to release a statement responding to his rants. As though being a Scientologist and reading their propaganda makes him a legitimate resource for psychiatric information.
Then my mom comes to tell me that she saw the follow up show on the Today Show and they explained that they don’t really know how the brain works, there might not be chemical imbalances. Indeed. The cat’s out of the bag now. Chemical imbalance may just be an oversimplification to explain the little we do know about how the brain works to people who don’t study subjects like neurochemistry. Such an explanation, while certainly abused by evil pharmaceutical companies (another rant on its own) has helped to reduce stigma of mental illnesses and encouraged people to get the treatment they need instead of merely surviving in despair.
Way to go, media, APA and especially Tom Cruise- hugs to you champ. Wish all of us could cure our problems by spending however much time we want exercising and taking vitamins.