Exercise plays a vital role in achieving and maintaining good health.  Along with numerous other health benefits, recent studies have shown that exercise alleviates symptoms of depression and may be useful in treating mild to moderate major depressive disorder (MDD).  A study by Dunn and colleagues (2005) examined the efficacy of exercise as a treatment [...]

Despite efforts over the last decade to increase awareness regarding the negative effects of alcohol and other drug use during pregnancy, substance abuse among pregnant women continues to be a significant problem in the United States.  The 2003 National Household Survey on Drug Use and Health indicated that 9.3% of pregnant women used alcohol and [...]

Given recent discussions within our group and with our colleague, Lewis Holmes, MD, chief of the Genetics and Teratology Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital for Children and director of the North American AED (Antiepileptic Drug) Pregnancy Registry, I wanted to expand upon a previous blog post.  In the initial post, I wrote that women who [...]

Last Wednesday, the UNC Medical Center opened an outpatient clinic for women with postpartum depression, and on November 3rd opened an inpatient unit for women with postpartum depression.  The inpatient unit is called “the first of its kind” in the United States, and is a progressive example of specialized health care initiatives for improved screening, [...]

A new study reported in Human Reproduction supports what many other studies have found, that untreated depression during pregnancy increases the likelihood of delivering before 37 weeks gestation. In this prospective cohort study from by De-Kun Li and colleagues at the Kaiser Foundation Research Institute, women were screened for depression during the first trimester, at [...]