It's no secret that Brooke Shields suffered from post-partum depression, but recently the actress has opened up about the real depths of her suffering.

People.com reports Shield's new comments on the subject, which were given on Monday while receiving an advocacy award from the Hope for Depression Research Foundation in Manhattan:

"We think and we feel that we should just be able to handle it on our own," said the actress, who is mom to two girls, Rowan, 6, and Grier, 3. "I've always been strong enough to get through every single difficult situation in my life. I grew up in an addictive household. My mother [Teri] had acute alcoholism. It's in my blood. I was never going to be the one to succumb to it."

The 44-year-old actress had a miscarriage and seven IVF attempts, and finally gave birth to daughter Rowan in 2003 with her husband Chris Henchy. She said:

"I finally had a healthy beautiful baby girl and I couldn't look at her," she said of the depression she felt. "I couldn't hold her and I couldn't sing to her and I couldn't smile at her ... All I wanted to do was disappear and die."

And during the darkest moments of her depression she felt:

"I should not exist. The baby would be better off without me. Life was never going to get better – so I better just go."

Her extreme feeling of not wanting to exist almost took her life and her baby's:

"That was the week I almost did not resist driving my car straight into a wall on the side of the freeway," she told the crowd. "My baby was in the back seat and that even pissed me off because I thought she's even ruining this for me. I just wanted to drive into the wall and my friend stayed on the phone with me and made me safely get home."

Finally after calling a doctor and being diagnosed with a chemical imbalance she realized her thoughts and feelings were out of her control.

"I learned what was going on inside my body and what was going on inside my brain," she said. "I learned I wasn't doing anything wrong to feel that way. That it was actually out of my control."

"If I had been diagnosed with any other disease, I would have run to get help. I would have worn it like a badge ... I didn't at first – but finally I did fight. I survived."