On Twitter today I asked, or rather tweeted,whether the $5 billion in research grants to the NIH just announced by President Obama included any money for mental health or perintal mood and anxiety disorders. Wouldn't you know it, Psych Central came to the rescue with the answer: $207 million of the $5 billion goes to mental health.
Of that, there are afew grants that are related to perinatal mood and anxiety disorders, totalling less than one hundreth of one percent of the $5 billion. I guess it's better than nothing.
One is to research the effect of stress on adolescent pregnancies and perinatal outcomes at Columbia University ($854k).
I could probably already tell you what the affect of stress will be on adolescent pregnancies. You could probably tell me, too. I'm not expecting any surprises on that one, but whatever.
Another, awarded to the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine in New York, is for "Preparation and Patient Education To Reduce Postpartum Depressive Symptoms" ($841k). I'll be interested to see what comes out of that. There's also "Maternal Depression & Early Head Start" ($85k) at Boston University, thoughI think that's outside of the perinatal period, and "Detection & Care for Depression in the Peripartum" at the University of Pennsylvania ($52k).
So there you have it.
