My Soapbox
The following are inspired by letters to the editor I have written over the years about mental illness. I have added a lot to them since their submission.
Dear Editor,
I have had it with Tom Cruise's ignorant, one-sided, and misinformed attack on psychiatry, and I am worried that some people may take him at his word. I have bipolar disorder, and it is nothing to be ashamed of. No one, least of all someone who is rumored not to have finished high school or read newspapers, let alone scientific journals, such as Tom Cruise, is in any position to tell me that my disorder does not exist, and that further, some fake "religion," such as Scientology, has the answers to a condition he does not understand.
Mr. Cruise seems to be on a crusade to convince people like me that our disorders do not exist, that "there is no such thing as a chemical imbalance" (Matt Lauer interview). If I go off my medication, I will be dead in a week, entirely because I have a chemical imbalance. Mr. Cruise clearly has the luxury of remaining ignorant because he does not suffer from such a disorder. But it is unacceptable to perpetuate this existence on a large scale. Scientologists even make a practice of protesting outside meetings of psychiatric associations. It makes me wonder exactly why they feel so threatened by psychiatry, as opposed to sexual assault, for example, which is much more rampant and commonplace than mental illness is.
Since he rejects all notions of psychological assistance, in any form, Cruise would have no way of knowing that "negating" the experience of millions of mental illness sufferers in the form of publicly denying their existence is almost as damaging as the illnesses themselves. No silly "stress meter" or list of questions could put a dent into the overwhelmingly powerful symptoms of bipolar disorder, among others. If it could, then the person suffering, by definition, did not have a mental illness to start with.
Current research at Stanford and other institutions finds that approximately 1% of the population suffer from Bipolar I disorder, while 3-4% suffer from Bipolar II disorder. I challenge Mr. Cruise to refute the research of hundreds of scientists, all of whom have graduate degrees he could probably not pronounce.
Mr. Cruise, there are more people--patients, doctors, family members, friends, and others--who believe in psychiatry than there are those who believe that your relationship with Katie Holmes is genuine. Why don't you switch soapboxes? Seek to eradicate child pornography, for example? You'd leave a much better legacy--one not forged out of ignorance and closed-mindedness.
Dear Editor,
I have had it with Tom Cruise's ignorant, one-sided, and misinformed attack on psychiatry, and I am worried that some people may take him at his word. I have bipolar disorder, and it is nothing to be ashamed of. No one, least of all someone who is rumored not to have finished high school or read newspapers, let alone scientific journals, such as Tom Cruise, is in any position to tell me that my disorder does not exist, and that further, some fake "religion," such as Scientology, has the answers to a condition he does not understand.
Mr. Cruise seems to be on a crusade to convince people like me that our disorders do not exist, that "there is no such thing as a chemical imbalance" (Matt Lauer interview). If I go off my medication, I will be dead in a week, entirely because I have a chemical imbalance. Mr. Cruise clearly has the luxury of remaining ignorant because he does not suffer from such a disorder. But it is unacceptable to perpetuate this existence on a large scale. Scientologists even make a practice of protesting outside meetings of psychiatric associations. It makes me wonder exactly why they feel so threatened by psychiatry, as opposed to sexual assault, for example, which is much more rampant and commonplace than mental illness is.
Since he rejects all notions of psychological assistance, in any form, Cruise would have no way of knowing that "negating" the experience of millions of mental illness sufferers in the form of publicly denying their existence is almost as damaging as the illnesses themselves. No silly "stress meter" or list of questions could put a dent into the overwhelmingly powerful symptoms of bipolar disorder, among others. If it could, then the person suffering, by definition, did not have a mental illness to start with.
Current research at Stanford and other institutions finds that approximately 1% of the population suffer from Bipolar I disorder, while 3-4% suffer from Bipolar II disorder. I challenge Mr. Cruise to refute the research of hundreds of scientists, all of whom have graduate degrees he could probably not pronounce.
Mr. Cruise, there are more people--patients, doctors, family members, friends, and others--who believe in psychiatry than there are those who believe that your relationship with Katie Holmes is genuine. Why don't you switch soapboxes? Seek to eradicate child pornography, for example? You'd leave a much better legacy--one not forged out of ignorance and closed-mindedness.
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