Posted on 10/12/2021 10:52:23 AM PDT by redguyinabluestate
Untreated depression in pregnant people is strongly linked to low birth weight and preterm birth, with Black pregnant people suffering worse outcomes than their white peers, according to a new meta-analysis led by Shannon Simonovich, assistant professor at DePaul University's School of Nursing.
In a forthcoming articleâ from the journal Health Affairs, Simonovich and her coauthors analyze 1,907 studies to track trends in adverse birth outcomes in the U.S. from 2010-2020. In this Q&A, Simonovich discusses the top findings as well as policy solutions. Simonovich is founder of the Maternal Child Health Initiative and was recently named a "40 under 40 Emerging Nurse Leader" by the Illinois Nurses Foundation.
Why did you and your colleagues seek to examine trends in maternal mental health?
Rates of depression and anxiety are worsening, especially in the wake of the pandemic. In the U.S. we don't look often enough at maternal morbidity â diseases and conditions having an impact on pregnant people â and the way it affects childbearing people and their children.
From a life-course perspective, birth outcomes have a major impact on outcomes in adults. A baby who is born early or small is more likely to have cardiovascular disease and chronic illnesses, such as Type 2 diabetes, as an adult. By addressing depression, we not only are able to improve the health of childbearing people, but also we keep a lens on the health of our future population.
Even though our data is focused on depression during pregnancy, depression doesn't end with the birth of the baby. It's often an arc that follows childbearing people through their early years as parents.
What did the meta-analysis show regarding depression and maternal mental health?
Our analysis shows untreated depression during pregnancy leads to both short- and long-term implications for population health. It leads to babies who are born too small, which includes low birthweight, as well as babies that are born early.
Our team includes experts in nursing, epidemiology, social work and medicine. We used our different perspectives to inform a collective understanding of depression during pregnancy. This study is a follow-up to an earlier analysis that went up to 2010. Our results show the issue of depression and poor outcomes is persistent. Previous research, however, did not examine the issue through the social construct lens of race.
We found these are even bigger issues for Black pregnant people. Black childbearing people with untreated depression were twice as likely to give birth early and nearly two and a half times more likely to deliver a low-birthweight infant.
A lot of previous research does not account for race. When it comes to examining contemporary health outcomes of childbearing people and their children, scientists and clinicians need to include social determinants of health and need to make examining disparities among race and ethnicity a priority.
What are some of the policy recommendations you and the team make in response to these findings?
The first is screening. Depression during pregnancy is a highly treatable condition we can screen for accurately and easily. We call for universal screening for depression during pregnancy, using a validated instrument.
Next is measuring what works. How do we capture what's helping to mitigate those factors leading to poor outcomes and accurately report all of the data? Ensuring better study design and reporting allows teams like ours to disentangle the experience of depression during pregnancy and different outcomes dependent on the person's race or ethnicity. It's really only by understanding those nuances that we can create tailored interventions to really help.
Finally, we call on policymakers to support programs that help new parents and their children. The American Rescue Plan gives states the option to extend Medicaid postpartum coverage from 60 days to 12 months, and these safety net programs give families more support. â
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Source: Shannon Simonovich s.d.simonovich@depaul.edu
Media contact: Kristin Mathews kristin.mathews@depaul.edu 312-362-7735
WTF, is Captain Obvious on vacation or something?
I hope the writer of this article means “pregnant women,” because there is no such thing as “pregnant people.”
Does this study only include pregnant people with vaginas?
That is depressingly discriminatory
If a bunch of race grievance hustlers spent their whole lives trying to keep me angrier, unhappier and less content than I’d be without them proverbially crapping in my breakfast cereal day after day I think depression might be a real problem … unless of course I absolutely rejected their ideology, which is the only way to not drink the poison they offer blacks and woke people in general.
Ah. Another underdeveloped source of victims for pharmapsychiatry. Let’s get pregnant women and their babies hooked on psych drugs. The babies will have to be kept on the drugs after birth or severe withdrawal reactions will occur.
Brilliant. Get them hooked before they are even born.
DePaul University can't figure out that "pregnant people" are Women and they have to shout it out?
Certainly their woke degrees are useful for toilet paper.
Pregnant people, childbearing people.
They bend over backwards to avoid saying “women”, in reference to pregnancy.
An excellent curriculum, I suspect not found at DePaul.
Hey women! The left is trying to erase you.
Then again, maybe he did.
NOTE this only covers pregnant people with ovaries.
If your a woman with a p*nis you’ll be OK.
Curiously, 100% of the deaths occurred with pregnant women. All the pregnant men avoided the scourge.
For whatever reason that happens more often with black women than white women. The solution ain't another study. It ain't another middle school course on blame-the-whitey. It ain't more money from the government. The solution is teaching young blacks to identify more as Christians than as blacks. Instead of acting "authentically black" as in worldly, we ought to encourage acting more like Christ.
Pregnant People, eh?
I wonder how many males took part in the Pregnant People study?
I’m guessing none. I’m guessing this is/was a waste of time and money.
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BTW. Welcome.
Re: Pregnant People
????????????!
Wrong—They’re the least likely to have a successful birth outcome!
pregnant “people” — shouldn’t it say pregnant “women”?
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