Transcript
Announcer:
You’re listening to Advances in Women’s Health on ReachMD. On this episode, Dr. Katrina Furey will discuss recent developments and areas of interest in postpartum depression care. She’s a board-certified psychiatrist specializing in reproductive psychiatry and the Founder of Sound Psychiatry and Repro Psych Academy. Here’s Dr. Furey now.
Dr. Furey:
There are some really exciting developments in treatments designed specifically for postpartum depression. Zuranolone was FDA-approved in 2023; it is the first oral medication specifically approved for postpartum depression, and you only have to take it for fourteen days, The clinical trial showed rapid improvement starting around day three of the treatment, and that persisted after the medication was stopped. It is now widely available across the US. You do have to prescribe it to a specialty pharmacy.
Another fascinating area is psychedelic research. Luvesilocin, formerly called RE104, is a short-acting serotonergic psychedelic being studied specifically for postpartum depression, with promising phase two results after a single dose and further clinical development underway.
There's also increasing interest in exploring connections between postpartum depression and perimenopausal depression. There's a lot of startup and venture capital interest in the women's mental health space in general, and there's a lot of active public policy research and advancements around the country aimed at increasing access to high-quality perinatal mental health care.
So for me, it's a really exciting time, and it's really exciting and encouraging to see us moving away from treating pregnancy and postpartum as an afterthought in psychiatry and toward understanding these reproductive transitions as unique biological windows that deserve treatments designed specifically for them.
Announcer:
That was Dr. Katrina Furey talking about current and emerging advances in postpartum depression care. To access this and other episodes in our series, visit Advances in Women’s Health on ReachMD.com, where you can Be Part of the Knowledge. Thanks for listening!
