A while back Tom Cruise had some kind of altercation with some new reporter about depression and the "accepted" cause for it and many mental health problems.
While I did not see the airing of this interview for myself, I did note that there was a lot of hoop'la'do about it and that many mental health professionals wigged out over what he was saying.
I know first hand how mental health professionals seem to group all mental health issues into one large catagory, "chemical imbalance." While there is no real way to test for this, they often prescribe a morid of medications ranging from RIDDLIN to PROZAC.
I was prescribed such a medication for a sever bought of depression in 1999. This medication later was proven to have caused severe damage to the pancrease and liver. As a result of having taken this medication my pancrease failed and I lost a kidney. I am now plagued by diabeties, excessive weight gain, and boughts of fatigue that often last for weeks. Oh ya, and depression.
At the time I had no idea just how bad things would get or that the people I trusted to help me were little more than witch doctors using me for experimintation. While I was precluded from seeking major damages, one cannot sue an HMO, I was given some help best described as squat.
So when Tom Cruise went off on what has now been characterized as a rambling incomprehendable rant about the Psychiatrist profession and their habitual bad habbits of prescribing medications to just about any one who makes the mistake of walking through their door, it made me think a bit. So I did some research and what I found scared the utter hell out of me. One must be very, very careful now and seriously weigh the pros and cons of taking any medication prescribed by a psychiatrist. I think the best thing would be to say "use at own risk" and if it helps you great, but what is it really doing to you?
I think Tom might be right, it just might all be a huge scam designed to hook us all on pills that none of us really need.
(For extreme depression, some anti-depressent do help keep you from acting upon impulses, so don't count them all out. If your in a bad way, better to be alive then not. Take the pills but becareful.)
More Info Be advised that this also a scientology link... So take the info with a degree of skeptisim. (Not all of what they say is BS, judge for yourself at this point.)