Tom Cruise really wasn't the best person to make the case for the overuse/misuse of psychiatric/psychotropic drugs. The way he's been behaving lately, it looks like he might be badly in need of the aforesaid drugs himself, you know, because of the way he's been getting snippy with interviewers and jumping up and down on every couch he can find. C'mon, Bud, sure your fiancee's hot, but calm down. You're going to have a lifetime to enjoy her hotness. So, cool it already.

It doesn't help anything that Cruise is a Scientologist, a 'religion' that many consider extremely wacky. Scientologists, I've heard, like to pretend that they're talking to the ghost of a dead carpenter while they're performing cannibalism on his corpse. Wait. That's Christianity. Never mind.

Okay, maybe I don't know what Scientologists believe, because I've only heard bad things about them and I kind of think that the people who've been saying those bad things have an agenda of their own.Scientologists do (according to Cruise) believe that mind control drugs like Ritalin, and antipsychotics are overused or maybe should not be used at all. Ihave to confess that I only saw the soundbite of the Cruise interview wherehe was telling Matt Lauer that he - Matt - did not know the history of psychiatry and then accused Lauer of being glib. That might not be the adjective I would choose for this guy, but okay.

The problem is that there is indeed a very good case to be made that psychiatry in America is misusing drugs, but the case should be made by gray haired, middle-aged doctors and not by the sexiest man alive. Tom may indeed be very well read and knowledgeable on the subject, but he has zero credentials and - I'm sorry to say - ripped abs just don't cut it in this type of debate.

A very good book on the subject is Toxic Psychiatry (I don't know the author). It's very convincing, highly footnoted, well researched and fascinating in a very horrifying way. It goes into things like lobotomies, electroshock and stuff like that, then shows how the new class of neuroleptics have successfully replaced those other two techniques, forthe most part. But not in a good way. Another good one is Mad in America which explore the mental health treatment history in the United States. It was written after the World Health Organization did a study and found that the mental health outcomesfor patients in third world countries was considerably better than it is presently in the United States. (Hint. It has a lot to do with that Toxic psychiatry stuff).

Finally, there's an older book called Confessions of a Medical Heretic which goes into problems with the medical establishment in general. Those last two books I don't know the authors for, either.

Have those books read by Monday. I expect two typed, double-spaced pages for each of them.