Tom Cruise Hits Back At Mental Health Claims 6/12/08

Tom Cruise's lawyer has hit back at a TV doctor who questioned the star's mental heath - calling Celebrity Rehab's Dr. Drew Pinsky "unprofessional" and "unqualified".

Pinsky, who is a regular on the U.S. reality show, has written an article for Playboy magazine suggesting Cruise might be mentally ill for getting involved with the Church of Scientology.

The medical expert also claims the Top Gun star may have suffered some kind of childhood trauma. He writes: "Why would somebody be drawn into a cultish kind of environment like Scientology?

To me, that's a function of a very deep emptiness and suggests serious neglect in childhood - maybe some abuse, but mostly neglect." But Cruise's attorney, Bert Fields, has slammed the article - insisting Pinsky's analysis is absurd.

He tells the New York Post's gossip column PageSix, "This unqualified television performer who is obviously just looking for notoriety is so grotesquely unprofessional as to pretend to diagnose Tom and others without ever meeting them.

"He seems to be spewing the absurdity that all Scientologists are mentally ill. The last time we heard garbage like this was from (Nazi propaganda chief) Joseph Goebbels."