I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this, but after Tom Cruise’s interview with Matt Lauer on the NBC show Today, 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 Cruise says that Lauer and I do not “understand the history of psychiatry”, I’m going to take a wild guess and say that Cruise has never suffered from postpartum depression.

Postpartum depression is caused by the hormonal shifts that occur after childbirth. During pregnancy a woman’s level of oestrogen and progesterone greatly increases; then, in the first 24 hours after childbirth, the amount of these hormones rapidly drops to normal, non-pregnant levels. This change in hormone levels can lead to reactions that range from restlessness and irritability to feelings of sadness and hopelessness.

I never thought that I would have postpartum depression. After two years of trying to conceive and several attempts at in vitro fertilisation, I thought that 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 when 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 of 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 anti-depressant 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 back seat. But the drugs, along with weekly therapy sessions, are what saved me — and my family.

Since writing about my experiences, 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 suffers, 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.

Comments like those made by 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 Cruise’s ridiculous rant, let’s hope that it gives much-needed attention to a serious condition. Perhaps now is the time to call on doctors, particularly obstetricians and paediatricians, to screen for postpartum depression. After all, during the first three months after childbirth you see a paediatrician at least three times.

While paediatricians are trained to take care of children, it would make sense for them to talk to 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 that I am today.

So there you have it. It’s not the history of psychiatry but it is my history, personal and real.

Brooke Shields is starring in the musical Chicago in London and is author of Down Came the Rain: My Journey Through Postpartum Depression. This article first appeared in The New York Times