We do see a lot of illnesses now that we didn’t see back in the hunter gatherer days, such as cancer, HIV/aids and many chronic illnesses like MS. Perhaps those illnesses are crap and they should just get over it too?

If you spent your day hunting food and defending your tribe you wouldn’t have time to be depressed.

Rampant depression and obesity are just side effects of the post-industrial revolution way of life.

Think about it… for a few million years humans were hunter gatherers. Only in relatively recent history do we have so much free time that we don’t know what to do with ourselves, and we fill it by shouting at the TV because “uh oh!” John Travolta said something. The modern American way of life is so full of conveniences that you seldom realize the extent to which you depend on others, and therefore care less about others, resulting in loss of community, feelings of being alone (even in the middle of a city), etc.

I think all this depression crap is just a symptom of us coming to terms with our new and ever-more-convenient way of life.

Plus couple that with the fact that we are on a daily basis exposed to images (ads, TV, etc.) of how people are “supposed to be.” And if we don’t match up, we get bummed out.

Natural way to fight depression: instead of spending free time watching TV and worrying about what John Travolta says, volunteer at your church or youth center or something. Fill the free time with productive activities and I bet you’ll feel better.

-just a guy

E. Marsalla – I am sceptical of most drugs for a wide variety of illnesses, including antidepressants. ALL drugs have side effects and many seem to do more harm than good. With that said, I know that I personally cannot manage my depression without the aid of an antidepressant. I work hard to eat right and exercise, which helps greatly, but it’s not enough. Although I would like to see safer, more effective drugs for depression, I don’t know if I would survive to see that happen if I weren’t taking what is currently available.

BamaGal – I totally agree that being famous and in the limelight holds you to a higher responsibility than others. I worry about their influence over the depressed individual that goes off his medication because some movie star publicly disagreed with it, or over society in general that may start to discriminate even more than they currently do in regards to depression and all mental illnesses.

Turloch O’Tierney – I’ve read that L. Ron Hubbard once said that the best way to become rich was to form an organized religion. It looks like he was right. From what I understand they do pay lots of money for all their courses. I personally think scientology is a dangerous cult that deprives many of it’s followers from receiving proper medical care and attention, especially for mental illnesses. I think it further perpetuates the stigma of mental illness, while also marginalizing those that are mentally handicapped. I worry about what could happen if too many people take to heart what scientology teaches about those with mental illness. There is a great (but biased) web site about scientology called “Operation Clambake” at http://www.xenu.net/, it has a lot of great information.

Lastly, I’d love to see the scientologist celebrity crew target a different illness and see what type of response they get from the public. Perhaps they would like to speak out about how weak-minded a person must be to suffer from diabetes, autism or cancer? Would the public be so accepting of that?

Regards,
Turloch

http://tinyurl.com/a9lk5

That having been said, I think that Tom Cruise and John Travolta are right when they criticize psychiatric drugs. There are legitimate, scientific reasons why we should be very skeptical of the safety and efficacy of these drugs.

See, for example, the following two articles. Note that Robert Whitaker has not connection to Scietology, either.

http://www.thestreetspirit.org/August2005/interview.htm

http://psychrights.org/Articles/EHPPPsychDrugEpidemic(Whitaker).pdf

Don’t get me wrong: I’m all in favor of having safe, effective drugs for mental illnesses. Sadly, such drugs have not (yet?) been discovered.