Is Tom Cruise Bipolar?

Like to many people across the country I too am peeved with Tom Cruise and his anti-psychiatry spiels. On the Today Show this past week he told Matt Lauer that he knew the real history of Psychiatry. OK, Tom do you plan on telling the rest of us? Or do we need to spend all of our money and become Scientologists first? Instead of just telling us all how smart you are and that you know the real deal about Psychiatry why don't you actually tell us what it is?

I find it ironic that Tom Cruise is so obsessed about telling the world to stay away from prescriptions medications which help people with Attention Deficit Disorder and Depression. His behavior over the past month or so seems like he is either totally high on some illegal drug himself or he is severely Bipolar and having a real manic episode.

Comments

[Bill]

I was thinking that myself. He was really acting weird on the Oprah show, jumping up and down on the sofa. Now with the Today show thing. I like how he claims to know everything about ADD and depression. He said he studied up on it. Where? Must be a different place than the doctors study.

[Michael]

I think it's very irresponsible the way he's behaved over the last few days. He's entitled to his (frankly baseless) opinions, but he must realise that he commands a position of power, and because of that he has a responsibility to be careful of the comments he makes in public.

The way I see it, if through these comments he's convinced just ONE person who needs it to not get proper help then he's done something very wrong...but he's not thinking about that. All he's thinking about is his own over-inflated ego and creating enough controversy to publicise himself and his new film. Doing that at the expense of others - especially people who have respect for him is really wrong. I hope this ends his career, because his behaviour about this and the water incident the other day have been seriously out of line.

[Jen]

Makes ya wonder, doesn't it?

[gabbi]

He doesn't seem manic doesn't he?

[GhostWriter]

The man just gets more & more strange.

[Scott]

And what's with the whole Katie Holmes thing? I mean, does *anyone* actually believe that they are really in love?

[Tara - ADD Coach]

I for one have had enough of him. He may be doing damage to people who need medication to acutally function in society.

[sk]

Talk about "alienating" (pun intended) yourself from your public.

He used to be my HERO...now he pisses me off.

[Amanda Howard]

I don't see why you all should be so critical of Tom Cruise. And if he is bipolar, all the better. He seems to be in a state of bliss, so let him be. He is right to be weary of psychiatry and the dispension of drugs. I have heard a fair share of stories on teachers who advise parents to put children on ritalin because they act up in class. I have friends who have been put on medications for ADHD when young and were not conscious of the emotional harm it was doing to them years later after they had gone a sufficient degree of maturation to realize said problem. Doctors prescribe these types of medications to children like candy and they do have serious consequences. Am I disproving of the entire field of clinical psychology? No, I'm not. Nor am I a practicing scientologist. I am, however, bipolar and have suffered some of the consequences of psychiatric medications. I also have been aided by others. There are positive and negative outcomes of such medications and bipolarity can be a blessing. (What would be have been of the great geniuses-- Van Gogh, Mozart, Virginia Woolf-- if not for their bipolarity?) Cruise's message, which has been vastly overlooked by a superficial and reactionary audience is to challenge the public on their conceptions of what is a right and a wrong way to think. Although I am not entirely against psychiatry, like I said before, it is a form of mind control. Although necessary, at times, to adhere to a life that is conducive with the structure of society-- real progress will only come when we can challenge our own notions of why for instance the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) has added 300+ entries over the past thirty years. Is this progress?