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Article published Wednesday, July 6, 2005

How about 'Cruise control'?

BROOKE Shields is right: Tom Cruise hasn't the faintest idea what he's talking about in his ramblings about postpartum depression and psychiatry. The movie star's criticism of the profession and a Hollywood peer for taking treatment for the disease shows about as much maturity as he displayed jumping up and down on a sofa on Oprah Winfrey's show in May.

Cruise's puerile remarks about Shields, depression, and treatment recall a time when it was normal to spurn psychiatry and ignore mental illness.

Shields suffered postpartum depression after the birth of her daughter two years ago, and like many women who do, she was confused about what was happening to her, surprised at the diagnosis, and leery about taking medication. Now, she credits treatment and therapy for saving her and her family.

But Tom Cruise, who practices Scientology, can't see the good in that. He dismisses women's gratitude to Shields for telling her experiences in a book, Down Came the Rain: My Journey Through Postpartum Depression.

On NBC's Today Show with Matt Lauer recently, Cruise called psychiatry "a pseudo science," said Shields doesn't understand psychiatry's history, and also said that she should have sought relief with vitamins and exercise.

This is the same 42-year-old so starry-eyed about his new fiancee, Toledoan and movie star Katie Holmes, that he behaved like a giddy adolescent when he appeared on Oprah. You can't take seriously a grown man who bounces up and down and runs around the set on national TV, leaving Ms. Winfrey bewildered and fans startled.

Shields is right. Cruise's "ridiculous rant" does not encourage women with this disease - or anyone with mental illness - to get help. Postpartum depression is very serious. Would Cruise have suggested diet, vitamins, and exercise for Andrea Yates, who killed all five of her children while suffering from severe postpartum depression?

Cruise is a fine actor, but he misuses his global celebrity when he denigrates mental illness, especially at a time when some of the old stigmas about the disease and its many forms are beginning to melt away.

He needs a little self-imposed "Cruise control."

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