Are Depression and Anxiety Meds OK During Pregnancy?

SOURCES:

Mary Kimmel, MD, assistant professor and medical director of the Perinatal Psychiatry Inpatient Unit at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC.

American College of Obstetrics and Gynecologists: “Postpartum Depression.”

National Library of Medicine: “Generalized anxiety disorder: course and risk factors in pregnancy,” “Detecting Patterns of Prescription Drug Use During Pregnancy and Lactation with Visualization Techniques.”

Shoshana Bennett, PhD, perinatal psychologist and author of Beyond the Blues: Understanding and Treating Prenatal and Postpartum Depression and Anxiety.

JAMA Network: “Benzodiazepines and the Z-Drugs in Pregnancy—Reasonably Reassuring for Neurodevelopment But Should We Really Be Using Them?”

Anick Berard, PhD, professor, and perinatal pharmacology researcher at the University of Montreal, Montreal, Quebec.

Berard, et al., “Association between incident exposure to benzodiazepines in early pregnancy and risk of spontaneous abortion,” “Antidepressant use during pregnancy and the risk of major congenital malformations,” “Impact of antidepressant use, discontinuation, and dosage modification on maternal depression during pregnancy.”

Berard, et al. BMJ Open. January 2017.

Harrington, et al., “Prenatal SSRI Use and Offspring With Autism Spectrum Disorder or Developmental Delay,” Pediatrics, May 2014.

Berard, et al., June 24, 2019. European Neuropsychopharmacology.

Markus, Miller et al., “The other side of the risk equation: exploring risks of untreated depression and anxiety in pregnancy.”

Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 2009.

The BMJ: “Specific SSRIs and birth defects: bayesian analysis to interpret new data in the context of previous reports.”