Many women with PMS and PMDD ask about herbal remedies for the treatment of their symptoms. WebMD recently reviewed this topic. The supplements most commonly mentioned for the treatment of PMS include chasteberry, evening primrose oil, Gingko biloba, St. John’s wort, and dandelion leaf. Some important things to remember:
While postpartum depression can affect all women, there are certain populations which appear to be at particularly high risk, including women of lower socioeconomic status. These women have limited access to resources and have multiple stressors including housing problems, financial strain, and being a single parent. Researchers recently piloted an intervention randomized controlled trial involving 540 participants at an inner-city hospital in East Harlem, New York. The primary goal of this psychoeducational intervention was to reduce the risk of postpartum depression among black and Latina mothers.
It is common for women experiencing infertility and undergoing fertility treatment to experience significant emotional distress. Many women, reasoning that their emotional health influences their physical functioning, worry that the stress and anxiety they experience in this context may hinder their ability to become pregnant.
In this study, half of women aged 45 to 60 years reported experiencing menopausal symptoms. 69% of these women reported that their symptoms have negatively  affected their lives. Among the women who endorsed menopausal symptoms, 72% had not received any treatment for their symptoms and 77% reported that they had not discussed treatment options with their healthcare providers.
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) occurs in approximately 10% of all women at some point in their lifetime. PTSD tends to occur more commonly in women during their childbearing years, yet we have only recently begun to look more closely at the incidence of PTSD associated with childbirth.Â
One of the goals of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is to improve women’s access to health care. In the past, women could be denied insurance coverage because they were women or could be charged more for insurance than their male counterparts.
Women with bipolar disorder or history of postpartum psychosis are at high risk for postpartum psychosis; appropriate interventions significantly decrease this risk.
Given the prevalence of postpartum OCD and obsessive symptoms in women with postpartum depression, we should devote more time to this topic. This is an informative and well-written article by Alice Wolton on postpartum OCD in Forbes. In this piece, she mentions a recent study from Timpano and colleagues at the University of Miami where cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) was used to prevent postpartum OCD.Â
Wouldn’t it be nice if we could identify women who were at risk for postpartum depression (PPD)? Maybe if we could do that, we could actually prevent the depression from occurring. Or at least, we could intervene in some way so that the depression would not significantly affect the mother and her family.Â
