Postpartum depression is an acute mental condition that occurs in new mothers in the third trimester or directly after giving birth. Like other forms of depression, it causes feelings of sadness, worthlessness, thoughts of harming oneself, and can be fatal. It’s also very common, affecting one in ten women who give birth in the United States.

Despite being a serious public health concern, up until this point there was only one medication for postpartum depression, brexanolone. Brexanolone is an IV injection which takes 60 hours to administer and must be taken at a hospital. It costs $34,000 and only about 1,000 patients have received it. Besides brexanolone and non-medication based therapies like talk therapy, there was nothing else. Traditional antidepressant medications generally take multiple weeks to start working, which is not fast enough to treat a rapid onset condition like postpartum. 

But this month the FDA is rolling out a new oral medication for postpartum called Zurzuvae (zuranolone) which improves symptoms of depression in as little as three days. The pill is taken once a day in the evening for two weeks and reduces symptoms for as long as a month (possibly longer, its long term effects have not been studied). Doctors are hoping this will greatly reduce the suffering caused by postpartum, as well as drawing attention to the seriousness of the condition. They’re also hoping that patients who are resistant to taking traditional antidepressants will find Zurzuvae’s two week time span more approachable.

Not everyone with postpartum will be a good candidate for Zurzuvae, if the symptoms are mild then talk therapy and other non-medication based therapies are sufficient. But this new pill is very promising, as it has the potential to save lives.

Although our practice doesn’t take cases for postpartum, we do many birth injury cases, which you can learn more about here.