I have been astonished by the media’s bashing of Tom Cruise for daring to express his opinion that non-drug options are preferable to psychiatric drugs.
July 9, 2005 (Press Release) --
9 July, 2005 -- Plenty of Americans, like Cruise, don’t want a chemically altered brain. And they think it is prudent to avoid that scenario if at all possible.
As the founder of the world’s largest nonprofit web site for non-drug mental health education, this is something I know a little about. The FDA does too, as they issued a warning on July 1 that modern anti-depressants should include a suicide warning for adults. (These drugs already have a black box suicide warning for children.)
Mr. Cruise said that “vitamins, exercise, and other things” are viable alternative mental health treatments. He’s dead right. Medical and psychiatric journals are filled with studies showing that fish oil and other nutrients are as effective as or better than drugs in treating depression, bipolar disorder, and other mental problems. Duke University and other research centers have proven conclusively that exercise is as effective as or better than drugs in treating depression. And numerous “other things,” such as herbs, acupuncture, hormonal treatments, diet changes, allergy remedies, etc. have been used to successfully treat serious mental health issues. A few years ago Harvard hosted a conference on “Natural Treatments in Psychiatry.”
Our website lists over 300 practitioners who treat mental disorders with minimal or no drugs and there are thousands of other alternative physicians, acupuncturists, holistic psychiatrists, nutritional psychologists, nutritionists, chiropractors, herbalists, and other healers in the U.S. and elsewhere who do the same. You can find them in any Yellow Pages. Yet the major media would have us believe that these people - and their successfully-treated patients - don’t exist.
Instead we hear the views of the mega-funded AMA and American Psychiatric Association and their friends from the pharmaceutical cartels, who use their big bucks to continually shove their message that drugs and more drugs are the solution to all our problems.
While psychiatric drugs can certainly be helpful to alleviate acute suffering, it is common knowledge that they are handed out like candy by American physicians. And they are not all that effective. A 2003 review in King County, Washington - home of Seattle - found that of the 9100 patients in the mental health system, where drugs are the primary treatment, only five recovered. Yes, five.
My organization hears from people all the time who have recovered or improved from serious mental disorders without drugs. Or they could not stand the effects of the drugs they were on and found alternative treatments to replace them. I have spoken to countless poor souls who have been told by psychiatrists that they will never get any better without drugs, yet on their own, they struggled successfully to do so. Yet the psychiatric experts we are hearing from in the media insist this is all impossible. Who are the ignorant ones here?
It’s nice to see one standing up for those who don’t want a medicated mind and for daring to propose the old-fashioned notion that the road to mental health is not necessarily paved with drugs.
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As the founder of the world’s largest nonprofit web site for non-drug mental health education, this is something I know a little about. The FDA does too, as they issued a warning on July 1 that modern anti-depressants should include a suicide warning for adults. (These drugs already have a black box suicide warning for children.)
Mr. Cruise said that “vitamins, exercise, and other things” are viable alternative mental health treatments. He’s dead right. Medical and psychiatric journals are filled with studies showing that fish oil and other nutrients are as effective as or better than drugs in treating depression, bipolar disorder, and other mental problems. Duke University and other research centers have proven conclusively that exercise is as effective as or better than drugs in treating depression. And numerous “other things,” such as herbs, acupuncture, hormonal treatments, diet changes, allergy remedies, etc. have been used to successfully treat serious mental health issues. A few years ago Harvard hosted a conference on “Natural Treatments in Psychiatry.”
Our website lists over 300 practitioners who treat mental disorders with minimal or no drugs and there are thousands of other alternative physicians, acupuncturists, holistic psychiatrists, nutritional psychologists, nutritionists, chiropractors, herbalists, and other healers in the U.S. and elsewhere who do the same. You can find them in any Yellow Pages. Yet the major media would have us believe that these people - and their successfully-treated patients - don’t exist.
Instead we hear the views of the mega-funded AMA and American Psychiatric Association and their friends from the pharmaceutical cartels, who use their big bucks to continually shove their message that drugs and more drugs are the solution to all our problems.
While psychiatric drugs can certainly be helpful to alleviate acute suffering, it is common knowledge that they are handed out like candy by American physicians. And they are not all that effective. A 2003 review in King County, Washington - home of Seattle - found that of the 9100 patients in the mental health system, where drugs are the primary treatment, only five recovered. Yes, five.
My organization hears from people all the time who have recovered or improved from serious mental disorders without drugs. Or they could not stand the effects of the drugs they were on and found alternative treatments to replace them. I have spoken to countless poor souls who have been told by psychiatrists that they will never get any better without drugs, yet on their own, they struggled successfully to do so. Yet the psychiatric experts we are hearing from in the media insist this is all impossible. Who are the ignorant ones here?
It’s nice to see one standing up for those who don’t want a medicated mind and for daring to propose the old-fashioned notion that the road to mental health is not necessarily paved with drugs.
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