In my daily new reading I across a BBC article that stated that the American Psychiatric Association (APA) had found issue with a comment made by Tom Cruse during his tour promoting the upcoming movie War of the Worlds. From the article:
On Friday, the actor entered a heated discussion with Today host Matt Lauer, when he suggested some people could benefit from drugs such as Ritalin, which is prescribed to children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).
“You’re glib. You don’t even know what Ritalin is,” Cruise told Lauer on Friday night’s show.
“Psychiatry is a pseudo science,” he said. “You don’t know the history of psychiatry – I do,” he added.
The APA argue that this type of public statement from a high profile figure like Mr. Cruse might discourage people in need of mental health assistance from seeking the care that they need. They site the fact that the field is established and peer reviews as justification for its validity.
For myself I would agree with the APA. Though I would say that Ritalin has been over prescribed for children that is no reason to ridicule the whole field. It’s always amusing to me when celebrities take up the pulpit when their credentials are not known. In this case I find it hilarious that a self-proclaimed scientologiest is calling an established, time tested branch of medicine a pseudo-science. For myself I’m long considered Scientology to be a psuedo-religion. Then again maybe both are just adolescent philosophies, siblings having a little fit.
