Author Joins Scientologist Cruise in Criticizing Psychiatric Profession
by Jim Brown and Jenni Parker
July 5, 2005
(AgapePress) - A retired adult and child neurology specialist claims film star Tom Cruise is not getting a fair shake from the press and members of Congress regarding his controversial comments on psychiatry. The medical expert says the actor is right on with his criticisms of the field.In a heated debate with anchorman Matt Lauer on NBC's Today Show, Cruise called psychiatry a "pseudo-science" and stated there is no such thing as a chemical imbalance of the brain. The Hollywood celebrity also lamented the fact that children are being prescribed psychiatric drugs such as Ritalin and Aderol.
Last week, the Congressional Mental Health Caucus condemned Cruise for his remarks. But Dr. Fred Baughman, a fellow of the American Academy of Neurology, says he agrees 100 percent with the actor's criticisms. And, like Cruise, the doctor suspects that "Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder" or ADHD, as represented by U.S. psychiatry, may be the biggest health care fraud in America to date.
If psychiatric professionals are "lying to us in every instance, saying [ADHD] is a brain disease, a chemical imbalance of the brain, when in fact it isn't," Baughman says, "we have been totally violated. Our right to informed consent has been abrogated, and we all then would become involuntary conscripts for medical treatment. And that's what happening."
Cruise is a member of the Church of Scientology, which has been characterized by some critics as a cult or a pseudo-religion. Adherents of this belief system, described as an "applied religious philosophy" by founder L. Ron Hubbard, claim Scientology is dedicated to encouraging development of the human spirit. Providing counseling and rehabilitation programs of its own, the Church of Scientology offers its principles as an alternative to psychiatry, which followers consider a barbaric and corrupt profession.
As a Scientologist, Cruise believes psychiatry has led to the unnecessary drugging of countless children. Though not a scientologist, Baughman agrees. He insists that youngsters should not be given the highly addictive Schedule II drugs -- that is, those substances defined in the Controlled Substances Act as having some approved medical uses, but also having high potential for abuse with severe liability to cause psychic or physical dependence.
"We have somewhere around nine to ten million school-age children in the United States said to have -- most of them, maybe six million -- so-called ADHD," Baughman says. However, he contends, "There is no proof that ADHD is a disease. More importantly, on the flipside, there is no proof that these are other than normal children -- and yet they are lied to in every physician-patient encounter, virtually."
Baughman is the co-author of a forthcoming book called The ADHD Fraud: How Psychiatry Makes 'Patients' of Normal Children (Common Courage Press, 2004). He shares authorship with Craig Hovey, a writer whose interest in the topic was sparked when school personnel told him his son suffered from ADHD.
