wednes | Mea Culpa, sudrin

I was talking to

sudrin about this Tom Cruise psychiatry business the other day. Specifically, I was defending his statement that psychiatry is a "pseudo science" in that they utilize best guesses and reasonable theories rather than actual scientific fact. After all, the human mind is still far too complex and stunning for the average human's mind to wrap it's wee little noggin around...if that is circular enough for ya!

There used to be an assertion in psychiatry that if you follow doctors orders, you will get "well" and mental illness would no longer afflict you. Of course following docs orders could mean anything from remouncing homosexuality, to taking intense medications, submitting to horriffic things like OTC (eletro-shock) or hypnosis and the like. And "well" meant something closer to "no longer poses a threat to society".

Today though, the assertion seems to be that most people can be helped to varying degrees through a combination of talk therapy, behavior modification, and drugs. Not the fun kind of drugs, mind you, but ones that you have to stay on all the time. They may impair or increase your ability to sleep, to wake up properly, to have sex, to deal with work or other human beings. They may give you acne, nausea, dizzyness, wieght gain or loss, and any number of other annoying things.

And really, what is "better"? I hammer to the foot is better than a hammer to the head. But who the hell wants that? Sometimes the best you can hope for is not to hurt anyone and to be kind of happy sometimes. So anything with the ultimate goal of making a crazy person kind of happy sometimes, is probably not a hard science. That is a reasonable conclusion to draw, notwithstanding the fact that Crusie's religion was invented by a Sci Fi writer. Maybe he'll join MY religion once I start one.

That said, I only found out recently that Tom also said there is "no such thing as a chemical imbalance". And THAT, my friends, is pure poppycock!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Wayul, I'll have to agree with you about the majority of psychiatry falling into the category of 'pseudo-science'. Psychopharmacology, as you bring up, however, is an increasingly precise field of therapy. And when crossed with neuropsychology, it gets better.

But, yeah, Tom, as a Scientologist, is talking out of his ass. Good ol' L. Ron must be laughing in his grave.

I'm aware that they have a pretty solid idea of what drugs react with what chemicals in the body. It just seems like they aren't really sure how those chemicals, in turn, affect mood swings and other symptoms.

Having taken a wide variety of different prescribed medication, I get the distinct impression that they are only taking educated guesses. I'm playing along, because I'd love to find something that works for me. But it may be that I'm just a moody, borderline person.

And that's the root of the problem, really. The brain is arguably our most complex organ, and really the one that is most unique across the species as a whole. Livers and kidneys and hearts are pretty simple, they follow a very set path of development, and don't really get altered until as adults, we start monkeying with them. Brains... each person's development from infancy on is different, and can be whacked 'out of line' at any time. We still don't understand how things like memories are stored in the network, or how some emotions are triggered one way but not in another, or how it is that a dozen different folks can have a dozen different ways of doing the same thing.

That, and clinical drug trials return information on the majority of patients' responses. They aren't designed to make the drug work for every single patient the exact same way. It's entirely possible that "the drug that's right for you" (in whatever sense you take it) hasn't been made yet. For example, I come from a family of redheads--ordinary painkillers are not as effective for me as for most (the amount of codeine I need...), and some don't work at all (oxycodone being a well-rememebered example). Or the fact that people of asian (korean, chinese, japanese, vietnamese, thai) descent don't respond to the broad-spectrum anti-depressants very well, if at all (i.e. Prozac does nothing at all for most of them).

So, yeah, some parts of the field have come a very, very long way. And other parts have a very, very long way to go.

Or, you can just be comfortable and accepting of the fact that you're a Cranky McCrankpants. I, for one, am increasingly becoming Mr. Mopey Curmudgeon, so maybe it's something we grow into, or out of. ;-)

That's an important point about just accepting the quirkyness of one's own brain. Meds do a good job of getting rid of voices and hallucinations and the like. But for us mildly unhappy types it's a much more delicate situation.

But I think we can all agree that Tom Cruise needs to relax. And that the choice to take meds is between a patient and thier doctor and maybe thier family. Action stars need not get involved.

That said, I only found out recently that Tom also said there is "no such thing as a chemical imbalance".

Tsk tsk! You must not be reading your capnwacky.com!

Oh man...that was funny.

I hang my head in shame for not seeing it sooner. But Star Wars month had me all laughed out.

Tom Cruise is in love. The biggest chemical imbalance of all.

Ha!

Well, all science to a degree is "Pseudo". The reality is that after 10 billion years we still don't understand the world around us. Maybe we can't understand and that is the great frustration of humanity. But I support scientific study and theories and all that nonsense. What I don't support is crazy people deciding they can write a religon and somehow pretend its science (As Lewis Black said Scientology has SCIENCE IN THE NAME so it must be science). So while I don't pretend to know the real way to "fix" people who are broken (me amongst them) I also don't pretend to think that L. Ron Hubbard knew the way because he made some shit up about THETAS and ancient gods that came to earth.

Of course not. Now that Dave Koresh is dead, NO ONE has the asnwers.

;-]

"After all, the human mind is still far too complex and stunning for the average human's mind to wrap it's wee little noggin around..."

Perfectly said!!

Ah, thank you.

I do fancy myself to be quite the wordsmith!

Electro-convulsive therapy gets a bad rap. Just wanted to put that out there.

Mea Culpa, sudrin

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