Women with premenstrual symptoms (PMS) and premenstrual dysphoric disorder experience symptoms during the premenstrual phase of their cycles. Because levels of estrogen and progesterone do not differ significantly between women with PMS and those without, it has long been hypothesized that PMS/PMDD represents an abnormal response to normal hormonal fluctuations (Schmidt et al, 1998).
In a recent study comparing hot flashes in 934 cancer survivors (90% of whom had breast cancer) and 155 age-matched control subjects who never had cancer, researches observed that cancer survivors reported more frequent, severe, and troubling hot flashes.
Many studies have assessed the risk of depression in the mothers of infants, but fewer studies have focused on the risk of depression in the mothers with older children.
Having a newborn child to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) is stressful to parents. It would be easy to imagine that in this environment, women may be more vulnerable to postpartum depression (PPD). A recent study assessed the incidence of PPD in a total of 131 mothers with infant admitted to the NICU.
This is a very nice article published by the College of Psychiatric and Neurologic Pharmacists discussing the limitations of the current FDA pregnancy category labeling system.
