“I’ve never agreed with psychiatry, ever.”

“And I know that psychiatry is a pseudo science.”

“There is no such thing as a chemical imbalance.”

If any of those quotes sound familiar to you, you probably watched (or later read about) Matt Lauer’s awkward interview of Tom Cruise on The Today Show back in 2005. That interview was just the cherry on a cake baked with so many ingredients explaining why I’m not a fan of Tom Cruise; specifically related to this subject, the whole “Brooke Shields shouldn’t be taking antidepressants for postpartum depression” thing. I don’t care if Shields got to have her say, and I don’t care if Cruise later apologized to her; I’m still carrying baggage.

Judging from this morning’s interview, however, it seems that Lauer and Cruise have made up. Cruise stated that looking back at the earlier interview, he saw that he “came across arrogant,” it was not what he “intended,” and he could have “handled it better.”

During the interview, Lauer asked Cruise how he emotionally dealt with all the blows the media started delivering to him a few years ago, and Cruise admitted he “took responsibility for it” and “learned a lesson” about the proper “time and place” to talk about his humanitarian issues. Well, that’s good.

Cruise clearly still prescribes to Scientology’s stance on psychiatry, and that’s totally fine by me. I’ll be the first to defend that we’re all entitled to our own beliefs.

I’ll also even defend another Cruise quote from the earlier interview: “The ideal scene is someone not having to take antipsychotic drugs.”

That is the ideal scene, isn’t it? Many people would probably rather manage their various mental health problems (and physical health problems, for that matter) without having to reach for the prescription bottle. But, in this day an age, I think it’s a bit arrogant (and ignorant) to scoff at the successes at managing mental illness so many people have with a combination of medication and lifestyle changes.

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