War of Words
I WAS hoping it wouldn't come to this, but after Tom Cruise's interview with Matt Lauer on the NBC show "Today" last week, I feel compelled to speak not just for myself but also for the hundreds of thousands of women who have suffered from postpartum depression. While Mr. Cruise says that Mr. Lauer and I do not "understand the history of psychiatry," I'm going to take a wild guess and say that Mr. Cruise has never suffered from postpartum depression.
I never thought I would have postpartum depression. After two years of trying to conceive and several attempts at in vitro fertilization, I thought I would be overjoyed when my daughter, Rowan Francis, was born in the spring of 2003. But instead I felt completely overwhelmed. This baby was a stranger to me. I didn't know what to do with her. I didn't feel at all joyful. I attributed feelings of doom to simple fatigue and figured that they would eventually go away. But they didn't; in fact, they got worse.
I couldn't bear the sound of Rowan crying, and I dreaded the moments my husband would bring her to me. I wanted her to disappear. I wanted to disappear. At my lowest points, I thought of swallowing a bottle of pills or jumping out the window of my apartment.
I couldn't believe it when my doctor told me that I was suffering from postpartum depression and gave me a prescription for the antidepressant Paxil. I wasn't thrilled to be taking drugs. In fact, I prematurely stopped taking them and had a relapse that almost led me to drive my car into a wall with Rowan in the backseat. But the drugs, along with weekly therapy sessions, are what saved me - and my family.
Since writing about my experiences with the disease, I have been approached by many women who have told me their stories and thanked me for opening up about a topic that is often not discussed because of fear, shame or lack of support and information. Experts estimate that one in 10 women suffer, usually in silence, with this treatable disease. We are living in an era of so-called family values, yet because almost all of the postnatal focus is on the baby, mothers are overlooked and left behind to endure what can be very dark times.
And comments like those made by Tom Cruise are a disservice to mothers everywhere. To suggest that I was wrong to take drugs to deal with my depression, and that instead I should have taken vitamins and exercised shows an utter lack of understanding about postpartum depression and childbirth in general.
If any good can come of Mr. Cruise's ridiculous rant, let's hope that it gives much-needed attention to a serious disease. Perhaps now is the time to call on doctors, particularly obstetricians and pediatricians, to screen for postpartum depression. After all, during the first three months after childbirth, you see a pediatrician at least three times. While pediatricians are trained to take care of children, it would make sense for them to talk with new mothers, ask questions and inform them of the symptoms and treatment should they show signs of postpartum depression.
In a strange way, it was comforting to me when my obstetrician told me that my feelings of extreme despair and my suicidal thoughts were directly tied to a biochemical shift in my body. Once we admit that postpartum is a serious medical condition, then the treatment becomes more available and socially acceptable. With a doctor's care, I have since tapered off the medication, but without it, I wouldn't have become the loving parent I am today.
So, there you have it. It's not the history of psychiatry, but it is my history, personal and real.
Tom Cruise apologized to Brooke Shields (update: video)
There’s a lot you can say about Tom Cruise, but he does seem like a geniunely nice guy, albeit completely batshit crazy and often lying through his teeth. He has wacked out beliefs and is so deep in the closet there are hanger marks on his face (I stole that from commetor Clarimonde on a Robbie Williams post), but people praise his down-to-earth demeanor as he engages them on a level only a cult member can manage. It’s called “love bombing” and is a common tactic of cults to get people to feel so accepted and warmly welcomed that they’re sucked into the black hole of endless re-education and seizure of all their worldly assets.
Cruise is pretty good at that “love bombing” and he turned on the charm on behalf of his flailing career to apologize to Brooke Shields for criticizing her last year for using antidepressants:
“He came over to my house, and he gave me a heartfelt apology,” Shields said Friday during an appearance on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.”"And he apologized for bringing me into the whole thing and for everything that happened.
“And through it all, I was so impressed with how heartfelt it was. And I didn’t feel at any time that I had to defend myself, nor did I feel that he was trying to convince me of anything other than the fact that he was deeply sorry. And I accepted it.”
Cruise’s spokesman confirmed the celebrities made up.
“It is true that his friendship with Ms. Shields has been mended,” spokesman Arnold Robinson said in a statement. “He has not changed his position about antidepressants, which as evidenced by the black label warnings issued by the FDA on these types of drugs, are unhealthy.”
How coincidental that Cruise apologized to Shields right after he was dropped from Paramount for his “recent conduct.” While less than amazing box-office performance is more likely to blame, it is said that the wife of Paramount head Sumner Redstone was completely enraged by Cruise’s comments blasting Shields for using drugs to overcome postpartum depression and told her husband that Cruise would lose his female fan base.“And through it all, I was so impressed with how heartfelt it was. And I didn’t feel at any time that I had to defend myself, nor did I feel that he was trying to convince me of anything other than the fact that he was deeply sorry. And I accepted it.”
Cruise’s spokesman confirmed the celebrities made up.
“It is true that his friendship with Ms. Shields has been mended,” spokesman Arnold Robinson said in a statement. “He has not changed his position about antidepressants, which as evidenced by the black label warnings issued by the FDA on these types of drugs, are unhealthy.”
In case you forgot what Cruise said at the time, he made an impassioned argument onThe Today Show that there was “no such thing as a chemical imbalance,” and that he knew the history of drug development and psychiatry while asserting that Matt Lauer was uninformed for defending the fact that antidepressants work.
Update: here’s the video of Brooke telling the story to Jay Leno in her interview on Friday.
The Brooke Shields Debacle
Tom Cruise has a serious side, a downright sternness that took the world by surprise during a Today show interview in June 2005. Tom Cruise had recently spoken out against psychiatric drugs, as used by Brooke Shields to deal with postpartum depression, and Matt Lauer asked him about those comments. What followed was roughly five minutes of a passionate debate in which Cruise showed his opinions on the “pseudoscience” of psychiatry, his belief that there is no such thing as a chemical imbalance, his knowledge of the drugs used in those circles and his frustration with a “glib” Lauer. After the dust settled, Cruise personally apologized to Shields, and he returned for a calm interview with Lauer on the Today show three years later.
Read more: http://entertainment.time.com/2012/07/03/tom-cruise-at-50-where-does-the-controversial-star-go-from-here/slide/the-brook-shields-debacle/#ixzz2JQ9uaeb4
Brooke Shields Lashes Out at Tom Cruise
Cruise (left) and Shields
SPLASH NEWS; ASH KNOTEK/SNAPPERS/ZUMA
Brooke Shields is lashing out at Tom Cruise, who recently criticized the actress for using antidepressants and called her actions "irresponsible."
Shields, whose recent book Down Came the Rain chronicles her battle with postpartum depression following the birth of her daughter Rowan in 2003, says Cruise should mind his own business.
"Tom should stick to saving the world from aliens and let women who are experiencing postpartum depression decide what treatment options are best for them," says the former Suddenly Susan star.
Last week Cruise told Access Hollywood that is was "irresponsible" for Shields to assert that antidepressants helped cure her. "When someone says (medication) has helped them, it is to cope, it didn't cure anything. There is no science. There is nothing that can cure them whatsoever," he said.
Cruise, 41, who is an ardent advocate of Scientology, which condemns mind-altering prescriptions of any kind, instead suggests that women care for themselves with "vitamins and exercise." He then added about Shields: "I care about Brooke Shields because I think she is an incredibly talented women, (but) look at where has her career gone."
Meanwhile, amid industry speculation that Cruise's agents are seeking to rein in their star's very public advocacy of Scientology, Thursday's New York Times reports that the planned press junket for Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds, starring Cruise and opening June 29, has been scrapped in favor of "preselected interviews," according to the director's spokesman, Marvin Levy.
Regarding Cruise's recent interview comments, especially to Oprah Winfrey (on whose show Cruise jumped around and flexed his muscles to show his love for Katie Holmes), Levy said: "You can have so much attention on a particular issue that maybe the movie doesn't get as much attention as it might."
As for Cruise's new girlfriend, Katie Holmes, she has nothing but praise for her beau. "He's the most amazing man in the whole world," she said at the May 31 Tokyo premiere of Batman Begins. A source says Holmes, who is Catholic, hasn't converted to Scientology but is interested in understanding it.
Shields, whose recent book Down Came the Rain chronicles her battle with postpartum depression following the birth of her daughter Rowan in 2003, says Cruise should mind his own business.
"Tom should stick to saving the world from aliens and let women who are experiencing postpartum depression decide what treatment options are best for them," says the former Suddenly Susan star.
Last week Cruise told Access Hollywood that is was "irresponsible" for Shields to assert that antidepressants helped cure her. "When someone says (medication) has helped them, it is to cope, it didn't cure anything. There is no science. There is nothing that can cure them whatsoever," he said.
Cruise, 41, who is an ardent advocate of Scientology, which condemns mind-altering prescriptions of any kind, instead suggests that women care for themselves with "vitamins and exercise." He then added about Shields: "I care about Brooke Shields because I think she is an incredibly talented women, (but) look at where has her career gone."
Meanwhile, amid industry speculation that Cruise's agents are seeking to rein in their star's very public advocacy of Scientology, Thursday's New York Times reports that the planned press junket for Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds, starring Cruise and opening June 29, has been scrapped in favor of "preselected interviews," according to the director's spokesman, Marvin Levy.
Regarding Cruise's recent interview comments, especially to Oprah Winfrey (on whose show Cruise jumped around and flexed his muscles to show his love for Katie Holmes), Levy said: "You can have so much attention on a particular issue that maybe the movie doesn't get as much attention as it might."
As for Cruise's new girlfriend, Katie Holmes, she has nothing but praise for her beau. "He's the most amazing man in the whole world," she said at the May 31 Tokyo premiere of Batman Begins. A source says Holmes, who is Catholic, hasn't converted to Scientology but is interested in understanding it.
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