Not so long ago, the actor Tom Cruise made a few pointed criticisms of psychiatry on the Today Show and was widely attacked for doing so. It seems that anyone who speaks out publicly risks drawing the ire of the defenders of psychiatry. Hardly surprising. A great many families in the US and Canada have members who are receiving psychiatric treatment, even if it happens to be one of the kids on a daily dose of Ritalin.

People who engage in criticism of the profession are often accused of seeking revenge for negative experiences they have had when under psychiatric care. Their opinion is viewed as partisan and lacking in objectivity. So I should probably state at the outset, that I have never had any dealings with psychiatry personally ... never been on any psychiatric drugs ... and have nobody in my immediate family who has been in psychiatric care. The criticisms laid out in this article are based on research and stem from a personal conviction that psychiatry as it is currently practiced, especially in relation to drug use, has inherent dangers that should absolutely be addressed.

Psychiatry is big business.The profession is hand-in-glove with the pharmaceutical industry and there are a great many connections, financial and professional, that link the two bodies. Their combined lobbying power and influence is enormous. They aren't likely to undertake substantive change in response to criticism when increasing numbers of citizens are being funneled into their facilities and drug regimens, feeding the ever-expanding cash cow that the industry and its subsidiaries has become.

Over six million children in the US are on drugs that control the symptoms of so-called Attention Deficit Disorder - ADD. There are millions of kids on anti-depressant and anti-psychotic drugs. Despite the clinical hype surrounding these drugs, the actual clinical methods employed for diagnosis are bogus to non-existent. For the most part the average psychiatrist bases his/her clinical assessments on guidelines that support the preconceptions and prejudices of the profession.

There is absolutely no basis for describing ADD or ADHD as "a disease", because psychiatry cannot establish any clinical data that offers a clear biological cause for this behavior across-the- board. Clinical jargon to justify their efforts to render non-conformist behavior "pathological", is a long way from proving ADD is a disease.

In order to establish a scientific basis for labeling a behavioral trait "a disease", you have to first observe the identical set of symptoms in others. Empirical research is then conducted in a controlled setting in order to seek the cause - be it a toxin, virus or other pathogen. The remedy found doesn't merely mask the condition, but provides a cure.

Psychiatric diagnostics not only fail to meet scientific standards of inquiry, but the psychiatric drugs that have deluged our society offer no cure. They merely mask symptoms and control people who have been labeled as "schizophrenic", "psychotic" or "hyper".

It is unethical to mass label children as ADD or ADHD afflicted, and then proceed to drug these children into passive compliance ... in some cases into a vegetative state. Such "troublesome" kids were once called brats or rascals, and were often admired by their peers. Their highly individualistic behavior in times past wasn't viewed as a psychiatric condition, but rather behavior that could potentially be channeled into prowess; enable them to show heroism on the battlefield or scale a high mountain.

If you look back at the childhood histories of a lot of the great action figures of history, you will find that as kids they often exhibited traits that got them into trouble. If these people had been drugged when they were children, made compliant and passive-receptive, it is extremely doubtful that they would have ever made their mark on history.

The truth behind this psychiatric labeling of children, is that our very humanity and distinctiveness as individuals has become the target of a profession that tries to pathologize every quirk and peculiarity, so as to come up with a label they can then front as a new syndrome or disease. Needless to say new syndromes will create the need for even more drugs and add to the growing wealth of the psych/pharma conglomerate.

The APA's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, presents itself as scientific, when nothing could be further from the truth. It basically compiles a list of conditions that they try to typify as a lapse from some hypothetical mental health norm, and so potentially a psychiatric condition worthy of a new label.

The SMD has included "conditions" such as ... feeling angry, difficulty with reading, bad handwriting, inability to do math, fear of flying, coffee phobia ... in the list of potential disorders. They attempt to attach symptoms to these conditions, with the aim of coming up with yet more labels.

Human nature itself has become the stalking ground of a profession that seeks to make money by discovering pathology, where formerly there was simply an eccentric trait, a charming foible or a peculiar penchant. This isn't to suggest that more extreme forms of aberrant behavior aren't an issue, it's just that the reach of psychiatry has become rather like a huge drift net that hauls in behavioral deviations in a never-ending quest for new pathologies.

Cases can of course be made for medicating adults with severe behavioral problems who are a danger to themselves and others. However the use of powerful drugs to control children en masse is worrisome.

Health professionals have suggested that diet could well be an important factor in explaining the apparent increase in the number of hyperactive children. Nutritional deficiencies can indeed give rise to such behavior. Another factor could be the child's domestic environment - levels of anger and disruption to which the child is exposed.

Psychiatry is often a short-cut and a quick-fix that offers no real solution to the root problem. Moreover this drugging strategy will create its own set of problems in the future because once a child's developmental processes have been interfered with like this, all bets are off with respect to long term outcomes.

The APA provides a brief article that supposedly clarifies the issue of how simple anti-social behavior shades into dysfunction, and in most cases individual psychiatrists decide which labels to apply in an ad hoc fashion based on such sketchy guidelines. It has become a bit of a medical sham, and they get away with making it up as they go along because the average person lacks both time, knowledge and inclination to demand more detailed information.

The ongoing invention of ever-new disorders and accompanying labels, has more to do with money and social control, than it has with health. The APA's ever-expanding Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, has increased the scope of psychiatrists to label and drug people based on guidelines that fall short of scientific standards.

In general terms, the criteria used by psychiatry to gauge dysfunctional behavior, relates to the ways in which individual behavior diverges from majority, or communal behavior. While psychiatrists don't like to view it this way, the profession is in fact a powerful tool of social control and has often been used against people who are regarded as a threat to the status quo. Many psychiatric patients for example believe they have been "pathologized" for simply acting in a manner that is outside the norm.

The clinical misrepresentations of psychiatry are most evident in exaggerated descriptions of the efficacy of drugs and the tendency to minimize information relating to negative side-effects. For example, claims that drugs "cure" chemical imbalances is inaccurate. More often than not they create a whole host of secondary symptoms that mask the original condition. Just because a person ceases to act-out and becomes zombie-like and compliant, is not indicative of a cure.

There is also a political/financial aspect to all of this that users of psychiatry need to be aware of. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders isn't merely a user's guide to the latest dysfunction, it is also a tool that enables psychiatrists and pharmaceutical companies to line their pockets.

DMS data was used to coerce insurance companies to come up with so-called "full coverage" that lists many of the debatable mental conditions cited by psychiatry. There is no possible way you can equate a genuine disease, say diabetes, with some phobia or quirk deemed to be "an illness", and yet in the past insurance companies have been required to cough up big bucks to cover claims for all sorts of oddball conditions that according to psychiatry, require treatment.

Aside from these clinical and political considerations, the actual profession itself has in-house problems. Everything from fraudulent billing schemes to abuse of patients. It is estimated that in the US alone, some 150,000 women have been sexually exploited by psychiatrists.

Psychiatry is host to a lot of the above problems because you have practitioners vested with a great deal of power working with vulnerable and suggestible people who are easily manipulated. Even if only a minority of psychiatrists engage in overt criminal activities, the damage nonetheless has widely felt repercussions.

Organizations such as the Citizens Commission on Human Rights and the World Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry have pertinent stats and information relating to many of the issues raised in this article.

Given the record of psychiatry and the dangers it ironically poses to psychological and emotional health, it was frankly astounding that Tom Cruise was made the target of so much criticism. It is often the case that people react this way when they sense there is in fact a problem, but have no inclination to deal with it. The whistle blower in such a case will always come under attack because let's face it, given our crazy world these days, people live with the expectation that at some point they too may need those meds one day.

So Tom sssshhhhh, and don't make waves.