Operation Sanity

Posted on April 24, 2006 in Bipolar Disorder Celebrity Psycho-bunk

Scientologists are aiming their “teachings” at people with mental health problems, some of the most vulnerable in society.
The Guardian

Tom Cruise is at it again. (You know what he is saying: psychiatrists are out to rob you, but we Scientologists are out to save you. Don’t worry about the secrecy and the lack of competent peer reviewed studies.) After an article quoting him at length as an authority on mental health despite his utter lack of education on the subject. a Guardian writer went undercover to see what the Scientologists were up to:

I was asked to sit down and take hold of two metal tubes, while a dial on screen in front of me flickered madly. Sharon, the woman who’d enticed me in, asked me questions.

I told her I was feeling low and she told me I was suffering from depression and that it was likely to be caused by someone near to me, possibly a friend or member of my family. Alarm bells were now ringing full volume. Fear not, I was assured by the wide-eyed, smiling Sharon, Scientology could help.

The Guardian article goes on to describe Britain’s suicide rate and how Cruise and his cronies shame the depressed out of seeking psychiatric help.

Rather than help those of us who suffer from mental illness, Scientology and similar clubhouse style pop psychology organizations make our disease worse. The aim of Scientology propaganda is to divorce us from faith in treatments which actually do alleve our symptoms. Their declarations that our symptoms are merely due to “suppression” and mysterious forces described in largely uncomprehensible language serve to mystify rather than inform. The clear intention is to create a kind of psychobabble “Latin”, except the sacred texts are arcane and — according to second hand reports — unintelligible. There is little opportunity for outsiders to scrutinize them.

In age where bipolars are shot on the runways of airports after being searched and cleared by airport security, what we who suffer from mental illness don’t need is more stigma. In the minds of others, I have seen my perceived IQ lowered by 50 or more points when the knowledge of my disorder is revealed. It is true that psychiatrists overprescribe medications: I am a victim of the SSRIs and the SNRIs which were given to me in the days before the FDA realized that you don’t give bipolars these varieties of antidepressants. It made my bipolar worse.

Scientologists condemn the likes of me for having mental illness and seeking holistic treatment (including medications) for it. Among their ploys is the likening of using medications to addiction. It’s also the argument used by New Age marijuana connoiseurs and other self medicators: psychiatry addicts you, so I am going to use what is safe and natural. In the case of Scientology, what is natural and good is a buzzing philosophy given to us to fix our enneagrams by benevolent aliens.

You should, by now, see the catch: If you’re taking meds, the trick is to get you to stop. First, you’ll feel just fine. Those nasty side effects will disappear. You’ll go on for several weeks feeling OK and the Scientologists will say that it is due to them. Then you will crash, showing that you are making progress. They will take more of your money because you are desperate to get rid of this horrid vehemence on the part of your brain (which doesn’t do anything except process enneagrams, apparently, and therefore can do no wrong) to make you feel terrible. Chances are, if you are a bipolar, you’ll come out of it. Then you will go into a mania, which will get you labeled as a Clear and you’ll feel you’ve got Religion! You may get promoted into the higher echelons of Scientology. And as you cycle, you’ll keep bouncing into depressions and manias just like you did before you were self-medicated. The main difference is that you will think you are handling it using Scientology which, in medical terminology, is what we call a delusion.

The only thing bringing the FDA down on the Scientologists for malpractice is that L. Ron Hubbard couched his scheme as a religion. Scientology enjoys the same protections that faith healers, Chistian Sciences practitioners, and demon exorcists enjoy: they can set up a storefront wherever it pleases them, sure that whatever happens to their patients, they will remain beyond the reach of the law.

But it is not beyond the reach of education on the part of mental health providers and consumers. Though interpreters of the Constitution may protect the likes of Scientologists and Pat Roberton’s Pass the Loot Club, it also protects us as free critics. It is for us to tell our stories, to express our concern about the disinformation being spread about psychiatry and mental illness. It was because of us that many harmful practices of the past were detected and ended: I, for example, was harmed by the practice of giving antidepressants to bipolars without sufficient screening for that syndrome. As a result, my bipolar got worse. Scientologists scream that this makes psychiatry all bad, but at least psychiatry practices in the open. Scientific method, not religious indoctrination, determines treatment.

Scientologists have openly proclaimed that they want to rule the world. Their dream is to control the minds of every human being on the planet to be the One Religion. It’s just another Western religion out for control. Why must it attack the mentally ill first? Perhaps because when we bipolars are in our manias, our religiosity will serve them. We’ll proclaim miracles — demons exorcised, diseases cured, enneagrams stabilized all without pills or compassion! The mentally ill can make a great tool: we are, as the Guardian writer observed, vulnerable when we are not managing our illness. And that means, like so many others, Scientologists add to the classic images of the mentally ill person as stubborn moron or manipulable thrall. They need us greatly, but they will do little for us.

Operation Sanity must begin with each of us.