Was Tom Cruise Right About Antidepressants?

A clip of Tom Cruise discussing antidepressants with former television news personality Matt Lauer resurfaced on Twitter this week.

#BasedTomCruise pic.twitter.com/eMfgJTWoon

— Brett R. Smith (@BrettRSmith76) July 21, 2022

The video was originally posted by Brett R. Smith and then shared by Michael Knowles, host of The Michael Knowles Show.

“This interview has aged like a fine wine,” Knowles tweeted.

The clip was taken from a 2005 interview promoting War of the Worlds. In the interview, Lauer and Cruise discuss different topics but ended up butting heads on the issue of psychiatry and antidepressants.

The topic of psychiatry came up when the two discussed Brooke Shields’ use of antidepressants to deal with postpartum depression.

“I think [Shields] is a wonderful and talented woman, and I want to see her do well,” Cruise commented on the actress. “And I know that psychiatry is a pseudoscience.”

Lauer then went on to defend the use of antidepressants based on whether or not they work for some people. Cruise countered with the history of psychiatry, stating that the practice has allowed for “electroshocking people” and “drugging children.”

“You don’t know the history of psychiatry. I do,” the action star said.

“All it does is mask the problem,” Cruise said in reference to the use of antidepressants. “That’s what it does. That’s all it does. You’re not getting to the reason why. There is no such thing as a chemical imbalance.”

Therein lies the rub: the statement that there is no such thing as a chemical imbalance.

In 2005, Cruise was raked over the coals for making that statement.

”Okay, should we address him as Dr. Tom Cruise from now on? Or will the Rev. Dr. Cruise suffice?” asked Richard Lei in an article for the Washington Post.

”We want to shine a light on the reckless comments actor Tom Cruise has recently made that psychiatry is a ‘quack’ field and his belief that postpartum depression cannot be treated pharmacologically. We can only hope that his influence as a celebrity does not hold back those in need of psychiatric treatment,” said Ushma S. Neill, Executive Editor of the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

Except, uh-oh. Now there seems to be “no clear evidence” that depression is caused by low serotonin levels, The Guardian reported.

How did Tom Cruise know this in 2005? How did a movie star—a guy whose job it is to look good on camera—know more about psychiatry than the entire medical/media establishment 17 years before this meta-analysis debunked the prevailing theory of depression?https://t.co/1emXGz8SlX

— Michael Knowles (@michaeljknowles) July 22, 2022

“It is always difficult to prove a negative, but I think we can safely say that after a vast amount of research conducted over several decades, there is no convincing evidence that depression is caused by serotonin abnormalities, particularly by lower levels or reduced activity of serotonin,” stated Joanna Moncrieff, professor of psychiatry at University College London and consultant psychiatrist at North East London NHS trust, according to The Guardian.

So Tom Cruise was right, and he certainly has had a good year. He was right about waiting to make Top Gun: Maverick. He was right about depression not being caused by a chemical imbalance 17 years ago. What else is he right about? Was Matt Lauer indeed glib?