It seems last week Tom Cruise went on NBC’s Today show and made some rather unusual remarks. The interview started out fairly normally, but about halfway through…

“You don’t know the history of psychiatry. I do,” Cruise told Matt Lauer. Cruise went on to criticize actress Brooke Shields for taking antidepressant drugs. “There is no such thing as a chemical imbalance.”

I’m saying that drugs aren’t the answer, these drugs are very dangerous. They’re mind-altering, antipsychotic drugs. And there are ways of doing it without that so that we don’t end up in a brave new world. The thing that I’m saying about Brooke is that there’s misinformation, okay. And she doesn’t understand the history of psychiatry. She doesn’t understand in the same way that you don’t understand it, Matt. — Tom Cruise

Shields shot back in a New York Times op-ed piece Friday, saying, “I’m going to take a wild guess and say that Mr. Cruise has never suffered from postpartum depression.”

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. — Brooke Shields

Aw, aren’t they cute?

Cruise practices Scientology, which bills itself as a church but is widely regarded as a cult. Scientology prohibits the use of mind-altering drugs, though Cruise claims to have held these opinions before joining Scientology.