How'd you manage to overlook that prime case of clebrehab? I thought that case (which was rehab number three or four for him, and the umpteenth Kennedy rehab, right?) was the ultimate of archetype of, "Hey, I'd love to answer the D.C. police department's questions, but unfortunately I am in rehab right now. See you next Novemeber."

I only have a layman's knowledge of psychiatry, plus two very futile experiences with shrinks; one at about age 17, including a short stay in a hospital, and another at age 30. I found both frustrating because the doctors involved could have pointed me in some direction towards discovering my problems, but preferred to milk the bank accounts of my parents, and later my own, with trying to make me feel "comfortable" as I recounted the pointless crap of my previous week.

I think less of psychiatrists than of counselors or therepists, who are willing to offer advice and suggest possible therepies to folks with standard emotional problems.

But the tendency of celebrities to use psychiatric treatment and rehab clinics as a "beard" is an old one. Peter Lawford, peripheral member of the Rat Pack and relative to the Kennedys, once went to a desert rehab center. He would take long walks out in the desert at night...where he'd meet up with a helicopter with a delivery of fresh drugs and booze. Nobody seemed to have minded it, apparently not even the clinic's staff.

If I thought psychiatry provided effective and practical solutions to emotional problems, I'd be tempted to raise money to buy therepy for that gay black guy who posted a violent screed a post or two before this one. Instead, I would probably send him a couple of good self-help books and tapes. I'm neither black nor gay, but my life has been full of undeserved ass-whuppings and contempt. And I've managed to get beyond it and live a life largely free of self-destructive hatred.

Because when someone calls me a name, I take matters into my own hands instead of whining third-hand to the letters to the editors. Boo fucking hoo, someone called you a name. As a teen I got called a series of racist and homophobic names by another teen. I gave him the first-hand opportunity to learn to pick up his teeth with broken fingers. As an adult I got reamed by a boss who couldn't limit his vocabulary to work-related terms and had to bring my race and sexuality into it. He forgot that I was privy to his "creative accounting practices" so when he gave me the boot I dropped a dime to the IRS. I'm enjoying sunshine and he's someone's prison bitch.

If you don't like what someone else calls you, then do something about it. Be violent, be clever, be creative, but do something besides WHINE, because all that does is encourage the racists and the homophobes. You Christians can practice turning the other cheek.

Some valid points, tom, although in my experience competent therapy can be remarkably effective in helping people improve their lives, and needing help isn’t so much about being guilty as about individuals struggling to adjust to pathological environments.

The APA doesn’t benefit so much from treatment per se, but from the medical (or “disease”) model of psychological distress which establishes a power and monetary monopoly around prescription of psychopharmacological agents. That’s trivial compared to the APA’s main prerogative of constructing who in this culture is “sick” and who is mentally healthy, as embodied in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM). Example: until a few years ago homosexuality was included as a psychiatric disorder, while homophobia has yet to be recognized as such.

But back to celebs and the big business of treatment: Lohan had been in AA for some time and Gibson, like thousands of others each week, was mandated to 12-step treatment, a feature of almost every addiction program in this country, and one we know to be at best ineffective and likely countertherapeutic.

But follow the money and ideology. Many clients love 12-step because it provides escape from the discomfort of facing issues underlying addictive behavior and it enables them to substitute replacement addictive behaviors (e.g. nicotine, food, advice-giving) for another (typically alcohol) while claiming to be effectively treated. System loves the protective mask of “faith-based”. And the business of treatment loves to hire indoctrinated and uneducated ex-addicts as treatment staff, for pennies.

Yes, it’s a scam, and yes the losers are those sincerely seeking change, no doubt including some celebs.

Quoting Washington as saying "faggot" while using the annoyingly euphemistic term "n-word" to describe Michael Richard's repeated use of the word "nigger" is a glaring double standard in an otherwise amusing and entertaining piece.

No, tomreedtoon, psychiatry and rehab are not frauds. They do plenty of good when they are done in a professional manner for the purpose of therapy. This isn't part of the mental health field. It's part of the PR biz, so any medical effects are purely accidental.

I'm sure that the people who posted before me, all probably fans of Pat O'Brien and Kato, his little blonde gay troll on "The Insider," are still tittering and giggling over the fate of these celebrities. The real point has passed them at Mach 2 over their tiny little heads.

Which is that psychiatry and rehabilitation are pretentious, phony institutions that allow the guilty - at least the wealthy guilty - to get off scot free. Now, psychiatry CAN help if the person wants to reform, and so can rehab under the same circumstances. But the entire process must take place within the person, and that person must admit that he or she has a problem they want to correct.

The only problem these folks admit is that they got caught. I can't imagine a man as powerful as Gibson, who can get all the free sex he wants with a bat of his eye, ever feeling real regret for his contemptuous behavior towards women. And Isaiah Washington's prejudice against gays is far too common, even in "sophisticated" Hollywood, for anyone except gays to complain about. The people protesting him are probably just as homophobic, but they had the common sense not to speak their prejudices in public.

These celebrities killed the albatross, and they hired expensive, babble-talking help to try to cover up the dead bird around their necks with some bling, and maybe a sensitivity slogan t-shirt. And I'm not even angry at them for this. I'm angry that, to people who DO need help and might possibly afford to get it, this will make all psychiatric help seem like a lie to them.

If the American Psychiatric Association was truly moral, they'd decry this business. But then, they're the ones who are making the big bucks off these phony consultations, aren't they?