Leo and Lacasse published their essay in the December issue of the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Medicine. The Public Library of Science is a privately funded, nonprofit group that publishes scientific and medical research and makes it freely available on its web site.
Leo says he hopes the paper will make the public aware that there is legitimate scientific debate about whether depression is caused by chemical imbalance.
"Professionals have researched and debated this issue for years. It is not just a public spat between two movie stars," he says.
He is referring to actor Tom Cruise's highly publicized criticism of actress Brooke Shields, who wrote earlier this year that SSRIs helped her recover from postpartum depression after the birth of her first child.
In a June appearance on NBC's Today Show, Cruise called antidepressants "very dangerous" and claimed there was no proof that chemical imbalances in the brain drive depression.
Shields responded in a New York Times op-ed piece, calling Cruise's assertions a "ridiculous rant."
God bless Tom Cruise if he is the reason this debate is FINALLY being waged in the public airwaves AND in the medical community and press...
Jenny Hatch
What's the matter? Couldn't they get anyone from Mrs Stevens' Medical School And Storm Door Company?
Tom Cruise is a mouthpiece for an organized crime outfit that wants to promote the idea that the answer to all mental illness involves forking over all your money to said organization, and then devoting your life to sucking other people into it. Psychoactive pharmaceuticals and the doctors who prescribe them are competition, which said organization will not hesitate to use ruthless measures to try to stamp out, regardless of whether or not the competition is right.
The issue of rapidly growing use of psychoactive pharmaceuticals is well worth scientific and intellectual examination, but not from a conspiracy theory point of view. A major factor IMO, which has received little serious attention, is that relatively low physical activity levels are associated with both depression and ADD -- the conditions most widely medicated. Humans evolved, like most mammals, to spend many hours every day in energetic physical activity. But in the modern, knowledge-based economy, manual labor is at the bottom of the economic ladder, with most worthwhile jobs involving endless hours at a desk, and many years of educational preparation done at a desk, and that's not going to change. It may turn out that routine use of psychoactive pharmaceuticals IS the best answer to this dilemma (though hopefully, newer and better ones will be developed to replaced the current favorites). Anyone who isn't open to that possibility is, like Tom Cruise, irrationally attached to a belief system that has nothing to do with reality.
ping for later!
Are you going to post the same story day after day?