Tom Cruise & Psychiatry

[NeilThrun]

I'm against prescribing drugs for mental, social, whatever conditions. Unless the patiant specificly wants it. In no situation should any doctor be telling a patiant that their brain isn't functioning normally. Who's to say any of our brains are functioning normally. That said if anyone wants to change the way their brain works, more power to them. We should all have the basic right to determine how we want our brain running, and if you want to "normalize" your brain with anti-depressants go for it, if you dont thats cool. If you want to fuck yourself up with spray paint and painkillers, the same is true. It just needs to be your choice, not some doctor telling you that your brain has a chemical inbalance and needs to be fixed, and definatly not some cop telling you that you can't be popping pills.

The right of a patient wih a mental illness to not take drugs prescribed to them is one thing - so long as that patient has also considered the rights of their friends and family and colleagues - all whose lives may become quite fucked up by having to deal with somebody with a treatable mental illness who refuses to take the medication which will manage it.

What's so wrong about a psychiatrist telling someone their brain isn't functioning correctly? Do you have a problem with an endocrinologist telling someone their pancreas isn't functioning correctly, and prescribing them insulin to manage the condition? Don't get carried away with the brain - it's just another big organ that needs certain chemicals to function.

And speaking of functioning big organs....

Brains and pancreases(pancrei?) are different. A pancreas cannot think about itself. I guess its not so much the doctors who I disagree with, but their science. Science of the brain can be too black and white, sure we can give people drugs up the wazzoo and their brain will be like ours. But is our "normal" brain state actually better? Sure its the majority, and it might be easiest for a person, and there loved ones, if their brain is like the majority. But I really do not think majority equals better in the case of brain function.

[Caravan Ray]

I'm against prescribing drugs for mental, social, whatever conditions. Unless the patiant specificly wants it. In no situation should any doctor be telling a patiant that their brain isn't functioning normally. Who's to say any of our brains are functioning normally. That said if anyone wants to change the way their brain works, more power to them. We should all have the basic right to determine how we want our brain running, and if you want to "normalize" your brain with anti-depressants go for it, if you dont thats cool. If you want to fuck yourself up with spray paint and painkillers, the same is true. It just needs to be your choice, not some doctor telling you that your brain has a chemical inbalance and needs to be fixed, and definatly not some cop telling you that you can't be popping pills.

The right of a patient wih a mental illness to not take drugs prescribed to them is one thing - so long as that patient has also considered the rights of their friends and family and colleagues - all whose lives may become quite fucked up by having to deal with somebody with a treatable mental illness who refuses to take the medication which will manage it.

What's so wrong about a psychiatrist telling someone their brain isn't functioning correctly? Do you have a problem with an endocrinologist telling someone their pancreas isn't functioning correctly, and prescribing them insulin to manage the condition? Don't get carried away with the brain - it's just another big organ that needs certain chemicals to function.

And speaking of functioning big organs....

Brains and pancreases(pancrei?) are different. A pancreas cannot think about itself. I guess its not so much the doctors who I disagree with, but their science. Science of the brain can be too black and white, sure we can give people drugs up the wazzoo and their brain will be like ours. But is our "normal" brain state actually better? Sure its the majority, and it might be easiest for a person, and there loved ones, if their brain is like the majority. But I really do not think majority equals better in the case of brain function.

I see the point you are making - and yes, I'm sure you are right, there would be many cases where people may be mis-diagnosed and mistreated.

Don't loose sight of the fact though that many mental illnesses when correctly diagnosed can be treated - and with medication the illness can be managed just as an asthmatic or a diabetic may manage their illnesses with medication. And of the people I have met who suffer from mental illnesses - I feel fairly certain that all would argue that the "normal" brain state achieved from treatment is much better that the "abnormal" brain state that prompted them to seek treatment in the first place.

_____________

(BTW: This may be one of the strangest things ever seen on these boards - Caravan Ray and Neil Thrun discussing sanity! )

[erik]

I'm against prescribing drugs for mental, social, whatever conditions. Unless the patiant specificly wants it. In no situation should any doctor be telling a patiant that their brain isn't functioning normally. Who's to say any of our brains are functioning normally. That said if anyone wants to change the way their brain works, more power to them. We should all have the basic right to determine how we want our brain running, and if you want to "normalize" your brain with anti-depressants go for it, if you dont thats cool. If you want to fuck yourself up with spray paint and painkillers, the same is true. It just needs to be your choice, not some doctor telling you that your brain has a chemical inbalance and needs to be fixed, and definatly not some cop telling you that you can't be popping pills.

Bullshit. Also, bullshit. We all have the right to not be treated for stuff, but it's a doctor's obligation to tell us what they think is wrong with us. The brain is an organ, and there is shit that it's supposed to do, and sometimes it doesn't.

A good friend of mine in college had a brother who was was served up a big dose schizophrenia with side order of OCD sometime around high school, and he was a mess when he wasn't on his meds. To the point where his family couldn't recognize him anymore. Speaking words that no one else can understand, hearing voices, speaking with your hand over your mouth all the time, never looking people in the eyes, making your sister drive you to a specific convenience store to play a specific game if you mess up some morning ritual, and an extreme distrust and paranoia with regards to everyone (especially family members) is not normal brain function. His brain was broken, it needed to be fixed, and a doctor needed to tell him that.

[stueym]

<Big deep breath>

Speaking as some one who trained and practiced in mental health for 10 years, there is some truth in some thing that every one has said so far. (also explains why little stewie in the straight jacket is so appropriate as an avatar )

1. Tom Cruise is a self opinionated idiot with the egocentric self belief that being a " A-list movie star gives you. Also don't get me started on his quasi religious belief system and how he projects that as a basis for why everyone around should follow his particular little light. Tolerance belief system based on lack of tolerance ...hmmm.

2. I watched this interview live and can tell you I sat slack jawed for most of it then ranted about the polarity of views the idiot was expounding. His total lack of ability to articulate beyond his angry belief statements was outstanding for someone who states so solidly that he "has studied psychiatry". Dumbass who looked exactly that.

3. Now on to psychiatry and drugs....In medical history we have been able to study at a system, fucntion and cellular level most body parts. We know more or less what they do, and we know how (when they are screwed up) they participate in health problems and in some cases what we can do about it.

4. It is absolutely apparent that in many mental illnesses there is some organic differences in our brain that occur and psychiatrists, psychologists and metabolic scientists have measured these over time, distinguished them as being different from the general public and identified clear associations between these imbalances and underlying sets of symptoms and problems clustered into various categories known as various types of mental illness.

5. The brain however is not the mind. Accordingly no-one invovled in mental health has been able to categorically prove that it is the chemical imbalances or physical disruptions to the brains functioning that then creates the actual mental illness...cause and effect is inconclusive otherwise we'd have had this shit cracked decades ago.

6. Most physical intervention (treatment) is symptom control/masking/supression. Drugs can and do work. I have seen it too many times to not believe it. When the person stops taking the drugs? ..surprise! The "problems" come back (most times!!).

I personally hate and despise things like ECT (Electro-convulsive therapy/Electro-shock-treatment). Stupid thing is I have seen this shit work on deeply depressed patients...don't ask me how or why but the jump-start/reboot the brain theory has actually worked on patients I have cared for over an extensive period. I find it an extreme and distasteful intervention that was seriously abused during the 50-70's (shit even today in some parts of the world). That does not disprove that it works (sometimes...and not consistently.... so therefore we are back to we don't know how and why).

7. Mental health/illness has a societal/cultural element as well as a phsyiological/genetic element. Firstly some mental health problems do not manifest themselves in certain parts of the world....weird huh?. Certain mentall health problems are more prevalent in certain races a and cultural groups than others. African originated people (across the globe) are more inclined to develop psychoses with paranoia which then manifest themselves differently depending on the cultural background they have (african, afro caribean, african american).

I have seen too many depressed suicidal catholics of all races to not believe that the individual expression of their mental disruption is then wrapped up in religious self persecution, societal conditioning and learned self loathing. Big topic just in that one statement and please dont be offended if you are of that particular faith, its just and example.

8. Drugs as said before are used mostly for symptom/behaviour control. They allow many of these patients to achieve a level of day to day functioning that the rest of us in society/families consider to be more "normal". This makes them acceptable and we will then let them rejoin society to function alongside us. We don't like 'abnormal' so we have to make them more like us...wow how many science fiction books is that a theme too. The drugs at effective levels however are powerful poisons and we end up giving other drugs to counteract the unfortunate side effects and so the doctors end up balancing and juggling til they get the cocktail right.

I trained at the hospital in England where the Anti Psychiatry movement was founded in the 1960's. Go read about David Cooper and RD Lang and their times at Shenley Hospital. Extremely interesting stuff when you are considering this debate as a certain LR Hubbard shared a number of their views and they were considered contemporaries...go figure!

9. On exactly their point....For many behavioural/ non-psychosis illnesses Jungian/Freudian interventions can work after extended therapy on certain socio-economic/cultural background patients. Some psychotic patients once they have reached a level of stability on conventional (drug) treatments can also come through their psychosis using these interventions. I practiced in a therapeutic community for 6 months and that stuff did work on a number of them. Funny thing was that they were mostly young white middle class....wonder if that had anything to do with the profile of the therapists treating them?!?!? Problem is that shit costs lots of money!!!! Which brings me to my final point

10. Economics and societal whim are what has guided most mental health practice and policy. Let's skip the burning them as witches part...nasty stuff!! We started out with largely community based care in small communities where the community/family sorted it out. They (the mentall ill/crazy) were protected, sheltered from many of the worst impacts of the rest of the world on them. We then industraliized and started living in bigger and bigger communities. The communies then had enough of these "crazy people to put them in smaller confined communities which were geared to protect (remove) us from them and them from us.

Then science kicks in and tries to medicalize the problem and we get the mass experimentation of chemical and physical interventions to see what works. Oh boy that shit is the stuff of horror movies! The things that worked got refined and became many of the interventions that we see today. 60's-80's we reach relative stability and see the communities function more or less efficiently on the minimum funding we as a society are prepared to pay for.

Then the bleeding hearts start up about the abuses that occasionally take place in these facilities and communities and decide nay demand we should bring these folks back into the community with support to allow them to join back with us. They get political influence and enough heallth ecconomists to say it would be cheaper to care for them in the community that government goes "Cheaper you say?....What a great idea!!!". Never mind that the persons affected and their families say "are you guys mad I dont want to go back out there, it's dangerous!!!!"

Nevertheless we dump these folks out in the community. Slash or freeze budgets and supress the wages of the care workers and professionals who choose to work in this field so that no-one in their right mind without some personal calling and inner desire would chosse to work in mental health (unless of course you are a therapist charing mondo money and working with the easiest cases in wealtthy suburban areas...doing good work I am sure but taking the easy picking...or are incompetent to work in any other field of healthcare and this is the only place you can get a job)

Summary

a. Tom Cruise is a self important dick who picked the wrong fight on a bad day to distract from the failure of his self promoting campaign involving his relationship with a very pretty young lady that he is obviously in the process of mind fucking as well as the other. Why do we bother to listen to these folks just cos they have a platform...back to the pat Robertson discussion cos they piss us off.

b. Brain is not mind (IMHO) but some of this shit occasionally works even if only to supress the wilder crazier disturbing trauma these individuals suffer from the symptoms they have.

c. Yes doctors abuse their position, many don't study the subject them selves (or at least not as well as Tom Cruise obviously has (sic)). In American medicine in particular there is a need by most physicians to dole out an instant pill response to any problem and in fact we the consumers are so obsessed with a pill for all ills that Americans in partiicular feel cheated if they don't leave a doctors office without a script.....GUYS THESE ARE POISONS THAT KILL SHITPLEASE REMEMBER THAT! We go through these cycles of abuse of certain wonder pills. And we keep repeating the same mistakes. Hence why we should only take any medication (yes even tylenol) when we really need it and stop as soon as we can.

I am in some ways glad I don't practice in that area anymore. However I am also personally sad that my skills and talents are not applied their either...there is a serious shortage of talented and caring people willing to work in that field of care. Maybe my withdrawing fronm that area is a self defence against becoming terminally depressed at how messed up it is ....reactive depression of course...I aint no crazy person....Mwahhahahahahahaha!!!! .

If anyone is offended or upset by anything I wrote here, I apologize and reccomend as a friend and mental health professional (retired) that you just take a deep breath and click next....great recipe for mental well being... I strongly reccomend it to be administred PRN (as required)

[HeuristicsInc]

whoops..sorry, I wasn't meaning to come off as "snarky"...

No, no, I didn't mean you ... I mean the dude who wrote all the snarky comments into that webpage... er, that wasn't you, was it?

Thanks for the good long message, stueym.
-bill

[NeilThrun]

I do agree pills and drugs can work sometime. But its not the answer to everything. An indeed somethings, are just fine the way they are.

[Me$$iah]

Loads and loads

Yeh but you havent studied the history of phsychology like I have



HAHAHAHAHAAHHAAHAH

[stueym]

Loads and loads

Yeh but you havent studied the history of phsychology like I have



HAHAHAHAHAAHHAAHAH

I absolutely agree...the history of phsychology has been a dark corner to me and I am happy to confirm my complete ignorance of phsychology's history and all its historical context . Though I am quite familiar with the early years of fizzy-cola-logy including the social acceptablility of gaseous burping!

Also the nature of student nurse hospital social club drinking and its effect on attendance on early shifts has, however, been revealed to me in great detail and I could write an original thesis on the matter (though I would be accused of plagirism by many many many college students).