What's Inside:
Study Shows Mental Illness Often Begins in Youth, Treatment Delays Worsen Issues

Advocacy Improves Grim Earlier Federal Outlook

NMHA Hosts Meetings on New Medicare Part D Benefit

First Person Perspective: What’s the Mission of the Mental Health System?

Journalists Attend NMHA Teleconference on Children’s Mental Health

Cruise’s “War of the Words” Fuels Stigma, Misinformation

NMHA’s 2005 Meeting Promotes Justice, System Changes

Research Notes

NMHA Tools You Can Use

Actor Tom Cruise’s recent comments attacking the mental health care field and criticizing actress Brook Shields for seeking treatment for post-partum depression, “could have very damaging consequences for Americans who have mental health disorders,” said NMHA President and CEO Michael Faenza.

Cruise called psychiatry a “pseudo-science” and said that people who seek professional mental health care, such as Shields, are being duped. In response, Shields wrote in an opinion article in The New York Times that“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.”

Comments such as Cruise’s are “dangerous,” Faenza said. He noted that such remarks can lead people who have mental health treatment needs to go without care by increasing stigma and shame. As a celebrity, Cruise has a platform to“share [his] talents and [his] viewpoints,” Faenza said.“However, this opportunity comes hand-in-hand with responsibility to not mislead the American public with unfounded rhetoric.”

NMHA joined with the American Psychiatric Association and the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill in issuing a statement, noting that “it is irresponsible for Mr. Cruise to use his movie publicity tour to promote his own ideological views and deter people with mental illness from getting the care they need.”