On Shields, Cruise, Psychiatry, and Prescriptions

As a pastor, I've known several women who have suffered from postpartum depression at various levels.

This phenomenon is triggered by the rapid reduction of estrogen and progesterone levels that occurs in women after they have delivered their children. Postpartum depression doesn't happen in every woman and some are more effected by it than others, but it does happen.

In spite of that well-known expert on the history of psychiatry, Tom Cruise, many women, their husbands, and their friends and family will testify also that certain drugs, usually accompanied by counseling, have been appropriate treatment regimens for counteracting postpartum depression.

In today's New York Times, Brooke Shields, whose experience of postpartum depression and subsequent recovery occasioned actor Cruise's pronouncements on psychiatry, drugs, vitamin, and the alleged glibness of Matt Lauer, talks about her experience and the controversy created by Cruise:

While Mr. Cruise says that Mr. Lauer and I do not "understand the history of psychiatry," I'm going to take a wild guess and say that Mr. Cruise has never suffered from postpartum depression...

...comments like those made by Tom Cruise are a disservice to mothers everywhere. To suggest that I was wrong to take drugs to deal with my depression, and that instead I should have taken vitamins and exercised shows an utter lack of understanding about postpartum depression and childbirth in general...

...In a strange way, it was comforting to me when my obstetrician told me that my feelings of extreme despair and my suicidal thoughts were directly tied to a biochemical shift in my body. Once we admit that postpartum is a serious medical condition, then the treatment becomes more available and socially acceptable. With a doctor's care, I have since tapered off the medication, but without it, I wouldn't have become the loving parent I am today.

As a friend who provides alcohol and drug treatment counseling pointed out to me recently, it's probably true that too many drugs are being prescribed by physicians for various psychological and emotional issues without the benefit of consultation with psychotherapists. To the extent that Tom Cruise's rants on this subject alert us to this reality, he's rendered a public servic.

It's probably also true that there is good reason to be critical of some schools of psychiatry for being as prescription-happy as some physicians are surgery-happy.

But Cruise really has no reason to be dismissive of an entire discipline of science, one that has proven helpful to many people.

From a Christian perspective, I have observed in people I have referred to competent counselors, some of whom have been helped by the prescription of medications for problems ranging from depression to chemical imbalances, that the disciplines of psychiatry and psychology are among the good gifts God grants to bring healing and wholeness to people's lives.

I'm glad that Brooke Shields is pointing this out to us.