This Thursday, October 5, is the 2006 National Depression Screening Day, marked by nonprofit organizations and healthcare providers large and small with on-site and "virtual" (i.e. web-based) screenings that are quick and accessible.

National Depression Screening Day began 15 years ago as the first nationwide, community-based mental health screening program. It's now the largest provider of mental health screening services in the country, through a partnership with thousands of community-based, college and primary care screening sites. NDSD has expanded in recent years to offer both in-person and online screening for four of the most common and frequently co-occurring disorders: depression, bipolar disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder.

To find a National Depression Screening Day event near you, click here.

If your community organization or healthcare practice would like to host a screening, click here.

Posted by Sarah M. at 08:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm very pleased to announce that this Wednesday, October 4 from 9 to 10 a.m., one of my nonprofit clients here in Washington, the National Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition (HMHB), will spotlight perinatal mental healthcare as one of the three most pressing issues facing healthcare providers, policymakers, advocates, women, and families today.

In a Capitol Hill briefing, HMHB will mark its 25th anniversary with special guest speakers on perinatal mental health, child passenger safety, and advances in immunization against infectious disease. Addressing perinatal mental health will be Cynthia Wainscott, Immediate Past Chair of the Board of Directors, National Mental Health Association who has also worked closely with the Campaign for Mental Health Reform and the World Federation for Mental Health.

In addition to sharing educational materials with the most current evidence-based information available on perinatal mental health, HMHB will also use the briefing to issue a call to action that legislative aids and others who work on the Hill can take back to their Congressional offices. The mandate we hope to send them away with: Turn out the vote in both House and Senate to pass The MOTHERS Act {The Mom's Opportunity to Access Help, Education, Research, & Support for Postpartum Depression). For more on this bill, including its incorporation of elements of The Melanie Stokes Bill, click here.

The briefing is open to professionals in the healthcare and women's/children's advocacy fields, as well as to policymakers, members of the media, and the public. It will be held in the Rayburn Building, room B354. To RSVP that you will attend, please email your name and affiliation to: info (at) hmhb (dot) org by Tuesday, October 3. For more details about Wednesday's briefing, click here.

Posted by Sarah M. at 07:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A new-to-me resource for women (and their partners and families) who have lost a baby - whether during pregnancy or during/after birth: HAND (Helping After Neonatal Death).

HAND is based out of California but has support groups throughout the U.S. They also offer helpful online information and resources for parents, friends and family of the bereaved who want to help, and professionals in the field.

Posted by Sarah M. at 03:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Some CBS News affiliates are airing a story on an important but little-understood topic: The problem of depression that can affect new moms after adopting a child.

Some experts in the maternal-child health field say post-adoptive depression is more common than you might think, and often goes undiagnosed and untreated.

For the print version of the CBS Philadelphia affiliate's recent story on post-adoption depression in mothers, click here.

Posted by Sarah M. at 01:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

An interesting "Parent to Parent" advice column published in the Charlotte Observer deals with the subject of stress, coping, and emotional support for parents and siblings of a child who has a disability or chronic illness. Here's an excerpt:

"Disabilities, illness, and mental-health issues in children affect the lives of all family members, and family-based intervention eases the lifelong journey, research shows. 'There's a real stress associated with having a child with a disability,' says [Debra] Lobato, of the Bradley Hasbro Children's Research Center in Providence, R.I.'"It's physically demanding day-in and day-out, and is associated with a higher rate of depression, especially among mothers.'

"Typically, developing siblings are affected, too. They are more likely than their peers to have adjustment problems, says Lobato. They get a double whammy if their parents are depressed and not communicative."

Two good family resources featured in this column:
SibLink promotes healthy adjustment among siblings of children with chronic illness or developmental disabilities.
And the Seattle, Washington-based Sibling Support Project seeks to "nurture siblings as they grow up."

Posted by Sarah M. at 01:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

A small pilot study published in the August '06 issue of the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry found that something as simple as 6 sessions of telephone counseling can ease women's symptoms of depression after a miscarriage.

In this study, phone counseling was offered to women who had suffered a miscarriage and were experiencing "subsyndromal" depression - i.e., less severe than major clinical depression, but responsible for significant symptoms like trouble sleeping, chronic low energy, overeating or lack of appetite, and "blue" feelings of hopelessness.

What's so great about findings that phone-based counseling benefits some women is that this method of delivering mental health care overcomes some of the biggest challenges to getting help - such as reluctance to meet with a therapist face-to-face or trouble scheduling appointments during regular office hours.

The other exciting suggestion from this (admittedly small, and therefore limited) study: Most of the participants were Hispanic and many were on Medicaid. The findings that these women were helped by phone counseling suggest that this approach may be an effective way to reach out to women who have been traditionally under-served.

Past research has shown that women who suffer a miscarriage are at risk not only of major depression, but of the considerably more common subsyndromal depression, as well - So this is a need yet to be fully addressed by the healthcare system and by advocates interested in women's and family health.

The abstract of this study is not available online to non-subscribers, but Reuters Health did a story summarizing the methodology, findings, and implications for follow-up. Click here to read it.

Posted by Sarah M. at 12:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (61) | TrackBacks (2)

I recently blogged about mother, journalist, and author Tracy Thompson and her new book, The Ghost in the House. USA Today just published a brief Q&A with Thompson on maternal depression. To check it out, click here.

Personally, I appreciated Thompson's ability to define "maternal depression" concisely for a general audience of readers:

It's depression that is seen in the context of motherhood. It's depression that's created or exacerbated by the stresses of being a mother these days. And it can be transmitted from mother to child, either by genes, environment or learned behavior or, most probably, some combination of those three if the depression is untreated and chronic.

And I really, really appreciated this insight. At the close of the interview, the reporter asks Thompson, "Some women suffering from depression may question whether they should have children, or more children. What do you say to that?"

A: "Would you say that to a mom with diabetes, or would you say that to a mother with multiple sclerosis or hypertension? When other women with challenges have children, we say, 'What a courageous thing that is to do.' The only reason you might not say the same thing about a woman with depression is the lingering stigma of mental illness."

Amen, sister!

Posted by Sarah M. at 02:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

Kudos toThe Houston Press, who recently did a story spotlighting the tragic story of a a local family and the use of Paxil during pregnancy, "Baby Blues: Lisa Collins took the Paxil her doctor prescribed. There was supposed to be no problem with continuing it during her pregnancy. But it turns out, there was, giving a human face to the ongoing debate over the use of SSRI antidepressants during pregnancy.

This is the kind of reporting we need on complex issues like pharmaceutical use during pregnancy - beyond the sound byte and dense enough in content to provide readers with actual take-away information!

Lisa Collins' family's suit is the first in the nation to get a trial date for a suit against Paxil manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline - set for next summer. Problems with Paxil and birth defects started to creep into the professional and public consciousness when a 2005 study published in The Teratology Society reported women who took Paxil were more likely to have infants with birth defects such as omphalocele, in which the intestines or other abdominal organs protrude from the navel, and craniosynostosis, the early closing of one or more of the sutures of an infant's head, resulting in malformation of the skull as well as mental retardation and blindness. A subsequent study published in The New England Journal of Medicine suggested that taking Paxil after 20 weeks of pregnancy greatly increases the risk of persistent pulomonary hypertension in babies.

The Houston Press reporter writes, "These studies and several others still awaiting publication would seem to offer ample proof that SSRIs and pregnancy should not mix. But many doctors remain unconvinced," going on to quote the research-physicians who worked on these studies, who point out that much of the data we have is limited, and the findings inconclusive, on the broader issue of the safety of SSRI antidepresants during pregnancy.

Which, as I have argued many a time before, is the sad truth of where things stand. We now know that Paxil is out of bounds for pregnant women. It's no longer being prescribed to these patients. But the risk vs. benefit analysis for other SSRIs still remains an issue for informed - often anguished - decision-making between a pregnant woman with depression and the physicians treating her. (Choose your doctors very carefully, and never be afraid to make a switch when you have concerns! As for the insurance cos., don't hesitate to give 'em hell when it counts.)

Just as there may be some risks from some SSRI's during some stages of pregnancy, there are also very real and serious consequences of untreated depression that impact both baby and mother. Thousands of pregnant women with depression - including myself - have experienced health benefits from SSRI medication, finding it absolutely necessary for mental and physical health during pregnancy. But our decisions have never, ever been easy. We have worried endlessly, and we have been thankful when we gave birth to healthy, beautiful babies and were ourselves healthy enough to care for them.

Is the solution to return to tricyclic antidepressants - those developed in the 1970s and (to date, anyway) not found to cause birth defects? I don't know. None of us knows - not even our doctors, not even the FDA (whose relationships with pharmaceutical firms have greatly diminished our trust in the agency's role as a public "protector").

We need to demand more research and better research in this area! And we need to each take personal responsibility as a partner in our own care, weighing the risks and benefits of any medication very carefully, while also exploring as many non-invasive strategies for supporting emotional wellness as possible. For some of us, exercise, yoga, meditation, changes in the diet, more rest, targeted stress reduction, etc. can be a valuable therapeutic boost, should we make the decision to limit or wean off antidepressants during pregnancy.

We need to keep pushing, and pushing hard, for more transperancy and accountability from pharmaceutical makers, policymakers, and the media who covers these issues.

Posted by Sarah M. at 01:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (5)

A new study published in the September issue of the journal Pediatrics reaffirmsthat maternal depression is associated with lower mean reading, math, and general knowledge scores in their children - in addition to a significant negative impact on a child's interpersonal skills. But it also goes a step further.

Since domestic violence and maternal depression often co-exist within a family, the research team looked at what happens to children's outcomes when they live with both conditions.

They found: Among children with dual exposure to maternal depression and violence, decreases in mean scores for reading, mathematics, and general knowledge more than doubled in magnitude, compared with those among children exposed to either factor alone. In terms of behavior, children with dual exposure also had significantly lower scores for self-control.

Conclusions: "When coexistent within the same family, maternal depression and violence were associated with poorer cognitive abilities and more-concerning child behaviors than when each was present individually."

The study sample was drawn from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey, Kindergarten Cohort. The survey draws from a nationally representative sample of children who attended kindergarten in 1998 to 1999 and monitors the children through the fifth grade with regular face-to-face parent interviews, teacher surveys, and direct cognitive assessments. Depressive symptoms and exposure to violence among respondent biological mothers were assessed, as were child and family characteristics, school functioning, and child behavior. A total of
12,083 mother-child dyads participated.

For the abstract, click here.

Posted by Sarah M. at 12:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (4)

Findings from the first study to look at postpartum suicide risks, published in the September issue of the journal Pediatrics: Mothers whose babies die at birth or during infancy are at increased risk for suicide attempts. The study found that women who suffered a fetal death after 20 weeks gestation or lost their babies in infancy had a threefold increase in the risk for committing suicide.

Additional findings: Other complications, such as problems during labor and delivery or having a Cesarean section, did not appear to affect a new mother's suicide risk.

This study was funded by a grant from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and conducted by a team from the Harborview Injury Prevention and Research Center in Washington state. It was prompted by the death of Seattle wife and mother Carol Soukakos, who suffered severe postpartum depression after the birth of her son and committed suicide in 2002. Her husband has become a tireless advocate for postpartum mental health in Washington, working closely on the state's new "Speak Up When You're Down" campaign.

Among the research team's recommendations based on the data from this study: Women who experience an infant death should receive careful monitoring and mental health services in the postpartum year.

For the abstract of this study, click here.

Posted by Sarah M. at 11:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (147) | TrackBacks (6)

Well said, Katherine:

"Tom Cruise has Another Apology to Make"

Posted by Sarah M. at 10:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (2)

If you are a perinatal professional or advocate on the East Coast, you should know about this FREE day-long workshop near Baltimore:

"Beyond the Blues: Identifying and Treating Depression During and After Pregnancy" is set for Thursday, October 12 from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at Northwest Hospital Center in Randallstown, Maryland.

Lunch is included, and CEU's are available. The guest faculty is Shoshana Bennett, Ph.D., past president of Postpartum Support International (PSI) and author of Beyond the Blues.

The event is co-sponsored by PSI of Maryland and SaferMaternity, as an outreach of the Mental Health Association of Maryland, funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Maternal and Child Health Bureau. The event is being held in support of "Healthy New Moms," Maryland's statewide campaign to end depression during and after pregnancy.

Posted by Sarah M. at 03:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (2)

If you are a healthcare provider or other professional who works with pregnant women or new moms, you shoud know about this resource:

Thanks to an HRSA grant-funded program, you can call a toll-free number for a NO COST consultation on your questions related to the diagnosis and treatment of perinatal depression. The Perinatal Consultation Service provides this free helpline, staffed by consultants who are psychiatrists in the Women's Mental Health Program at the University of Illinois at Chicago - all of whom are experts in perinatal depression. All you have to do is pick up the phone and dial 1.800.573.6121.

Posted by Sarah M. at 03:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (2)

Sadly, the negativity that accompanies many women's experiences of labor, birth, and postpartum is nearly unviersal. This op-ed piece in the Belfast News-Letter, penned by a new mother in Ireland, gives a voice to the feelings and silent struggles so many of us have experienced in those early postpartum days. A brave statement about what birthing women - and their babies - need and deserve:

"New mums need a bit of support."

Posted by Sarah M. at 02:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (3)

Another twisty turn in the "Tom Cruise vs. PPD moms" and "Tom Cruise vs. psychiatry" fiasco:

From an Associated Press (AP) report, "Shields says Cruise has apologized."

Posted by Sarah M. at 01:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (5)