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A new study published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry looked at maternal prenatal body mass index (BMI) and human fetal brain development. “Given knowledge that the physical well-being of a mother during pregnancy is important for the long-term brain health of her child, we sought to discover whether and how maternal body mass index may relate brain development in the womb,” senior study author, Dr. Moriah E. Thomason told us. [More]

A new study published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry looked at maternal prenatal body mass index (BMI) and human fetal brain development. “Given knowledge that the physical well-being of a mother during pregnancy is important for the long-term brain health of her child, we sought to discover whether and how maternal BMI may relate brain development in the womb,” study author Moriah E. Thomason told us. [More]

According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, there can be devastating consequences for the unborn baby if a pregnant woman who is dependent on opioids is not properly treated. The function of the placenta can be comprised and the unborn baby can experience severe episodes of withdrawal. A new study published in the Annals of Family Medicine looked at maternity care and buprenorphine prescribing in new family physicians. [More]

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, or ADHD, as it's commonly known, is on the rise. But why? Is it just that we’re becoming more aware and accepting of the disorder or is something else causing the increase? “It was already known that children with ADHD have higher omega-6 to omega-3 ratios,” researcher Monica Lopez told us, “so we wanted to test whether these higher omega-6 to omega-3 ratios were involved in the origin of the symptoms.” [More]

A new U.S. online survey conducted between April 4th and 8th, 2019, by the Harris Poll on behalf of MediaSource has found that 40 per cent of over 1200 women surveyed felt overwhelmed, depressed, or anxious following labor and that more than 25 per cent did not have a health care plan in place to cope with the "fourth trimester". [More]

A new study published in the JAMA Psychiatry examined whether maternal use of cannabis during pregnancy is associated with psychosis liability in offspring. “We expected that cannabis use would be associated with increased psychosis proneness in offspring,” study author Ryan Bogdan told us. “However, we also expected that some of this relationship might be accounted for by other potentially related factors (e.g., other substance use during pregnancy, maternal education, family history of psychopathology, maternal prenatal vitamin use, child substance use, etc.).” [More]

A certain amount of fear and anxious thoughts around pregnancy and childbirth is normal. But for some women, such fear can be more serious, and impact everyday life. These women have tokophobia. [More]

Although this is a study with mice, researchers believe that it does have relevance to human pregnancy because placental endocrine dysfunction could contribute to a mood disorder and the researchers have already published that a gene in the same family is abnormally expressed in the placenta of women with depression in pregnancy. [More]

Due to increasing legalization, researchers are becoming increasingly interested in learning about the birth outcomes of children of pregnant and postpartum women who use marijuana, as well as the effects on the mother herself. [More]

Does antidepressant use during pregnancy cause autism, as a recently published study suggests? Using Family Systems Theory to answer this question will lead to a more nuanced answer than a traditional cause and effect conceptualization. [More]