John Travolta, like Tom Cruise, is a devotee of Scientology, the system of Dianetics developed by L. Ron Hubbard. Mr. Travolta doesn’t believe that psychiatric medications are useful or warranted. In a recent article he said, “The problem with Columbine wasn’t gun control. It was psychotropic medications”.
I agree with Mr. Travolta that everyone is entitled to an opinion, and he has a right to his. However, there is a difference between an informed and an uninformed opinion.
I work directly with people who are persistently mentally ill. My education and experience include working with psychiatric medications. While I am not a doctor with prescribing privileges, I have to monitor medication intake, effects, and relay symptoms to doctors to help them properly diagnose and prescribe medications.
I wish Mr. Travolta could see some of my clients with and without medications. Without them, a good number would not be able to live independently and would require hospitalization at taxpayer expense, often for a lifetime. With medications I have clients who are continuing with college and graduate school, working jobs, paying taxes, and generally being ‘productive members of society’. One of my clients has a Master’s degree, another is working on hers, a former client is now a clinical social worker, one is working on a degree in engineering, another has been holding down the same job for two and a half years while going to school…on and on, the medications along with psychotherapy and case management help these people to lead much more stable lives.
An issue that Mr. Travolta alludes to is that of the abuse of diagnosis and prescription. A good example of this is the diagnosis of ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) with an accompanying prescription for an amphetamine-like medication such as Ritalin. In youth with ADHD such medications have what is called a paradoxical effect; that is, in ‘normal’ people the medication would speed up their bodies and brains, but with ADHD it has the opposite effect, slowing things down. This helps youth with ADHD to focus better.
In theory only one to two percent of all children would be diagnosed with ADHD. For many years, in practice upwards of twelve percent of children in certain school districts have been on Ritalin. This means that the diagnosis was overused and Ritalin prescribed unnecessarily. In fact, it is fair to say that the medication was used to curb the active behavior of children, and it is natural for children to be more active than adults. The overuse of Ritalin is akin to what they call ‘chemical restraint’ in psychiatric hospitals, the use of medications to dope a patient up so that he or she doesn’t cause problems. This is an abuse of medication (note: there is a proper legal, medical and psychiatric level of chemical restraint that is used appropriately. It, like Ritalin, can be abused).
The issue is further complicated by the fact that pharmaceutical companies have a strong lobby. As it stands, American children take four times more psychiatric medications than all the rest of the children in the world combined. Further, it was stated by pharmaceutical companies (who naturally ‘wrote’ the legislation concerning their regulation) that it is their goal within thirty years to have fifty percent of children on psychiatric meds. With brains that aren’t finished developing until age 26 on average, if you get youth started on psychiatric meds their brains will not develop fully and thus a lifelong dependence on meds is created, guaranteeing income for the pharmaceuticals. Negatively altering human physiology in order to guarantee profits should be a prosecuted as a criminal goal and act.
L. Ron Hubbard developed Scientology fifty to seventy years ago, when we didn’t know near as much about brain and body chemistry. Scientologists take medications for physical problems; perhaps they should come up to date on psychiatric meds.
The events of Columbine are regrettable for our society, and there are any number of theories as to what really happened. But even if adults used medications to chemically curb adolescent behavior that is pretty normal, that whole situation would fit into the ‘abuse’ column of psychiatric meds. For Mr. Travolta to judge all psychiatric meds on the basis of this aberrance is to throw the baby out with the bathwater. There is a legitimate use for psychotropics, and more families than any reader realizes is thankful that their sons and daughters are able to function more normally because of them.
