NEW YORK —  Brooke Shields (search) took aim at Tom Cruise's (search) "Today" show diatribe against antidepressants, saying the drugs helped her survive feelings of hopelessness after the birth of her firstchild.

"I'm going to take a wild guess and say that Mr. Cruise has never suffered from postpartum depression (search)," she wrote in an op-ed piece published Friday in The New York Times.

Cruise had criticized the actress for taking the drugs, and became particularly passionate about the issue in an interview on "Today" last week.

"You don't know the history of psychiatry. I do," Cruise told Matt Lauer.

He went on to say there was no such thing as chemical imbalances that need to be corrected with drugs, and that depression could be treated with exercise and vitamins. Shields called those remarks "a disservice to mothers everywhere."

Shields said she considered swallowing a bottle of pills or jumping out the window at the lowest point of her depression following the birth of her daughter, Rowan Francis, in 2003. A doctor later attributed her feelings to a plunge in her estrogen and progesterone levels and prescribed the antidepressant Paxil (search).

"If any good can come of Mr. Cruise's ridiculous rant, let's hope that it gives much-needed attention to a serious disease," she wrote.

Shields described her post-childbirth experiences in "Down Came the Rain: My Journey Through Postpartum Depression." (search)

Cruise is a follower of Scientology (search), a religion that teaches that psychiatry is a destructive pseudo-science.