A Blog Called Nowhere

Father of the Corn is part of a group of Psychiatrists who have an on line disscussion group. Heres a note he forwarded from one of his chat buddies about Tom Cruise. I couldn't really care less about T.C. but take much pleasure in watching him act like a jackass as he's been doing a lot lately.

Folks,

I believe this is in the realm of psychopharm. Does no one else think that Tom Cruise has become grossly hypomanic? I have been following this for a couple of weeks, because of all the talk of personality change. He has become very extroveted, perhaps hypersexual, somewhat irritable at times, his judgment seems worse, of late, but his conviction in his ideas is very high, he is more hyperactive and impulsive and his friends same he is like a different person.
What fascinating is how all his celeb friends and the Entertainment commentators say, oh that what love does, and no one seems to think it is an unnatural change. I have, teenage kids at home, so I get to see these things on TV. He was on a show that Barbara Walters has with three other women, "View" or something, and he leapt **over** the sofa three or four times. It reminds me of a teenage family friend helping my wife in her studio on a ladder. We knew he had bad ADHD, but when he casually jumped off the fifth rung of the ladder, it was just inappropriate enough to register something puzzling to me, and a week later he was hospitalized for florid mania.
This I think is the more interesting story here, and because of it, I don't think that Tom is making converts to his position, because he gets to hyper to be believable when he starts discussing it.
I cannot remember any other time we have been able to watch someone get manic (although I think he is probably BiPolar II). I think if it is true, and eventually is obvious and revealed, it will be good psychoeducation for the public who are loath to label thinks psychiatric unless, unfortunately there is violence. The lesson here to me is that for Katey Holmes, sure, he is fun because he is high, but falling in love with someone actively manic can do exactly what is happening to her, where she is just giving up her career and her opinions, and mind, to his beliefs. But so many of my seriously depressed famale patients come in a say that their husbands and occasionally family of origin are trying to get them off meds, because it is lack of will power, laziness, everyone gets depressed or some other common idea which is unexamined rubbish. Because it can't be psychiatric, and if a doctor says it, he is just part of the medical industrial complex.

Anonymous, MD
Braintree, MA