- Protecting the pregnant mind, By Harvey Black, September 13, 2010, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: “At least one in 13 pregnant women suffers from mental health problems, and that rate jumps to one in three if women have a history of mental health issues, according to a University of Wisconsin-Madison study that researchers say is the first to systematically examine the issue on a national scale. ‘Poor mental health during pregnancy can lead to problems during pregnancy and beyond, like having low birth weight babies or postpartum depression. So we want to try and prevent women from developing mental health problems during pregnancy,’ said Whitney Witt, lead author of the study and assistant professor of population health sciences at UW-Madison. The study was published online in the July issue of the Archives of Women’s Mental Health. The research is important because the treatment window for many women can be small, says Myrna Weissman, professor of epidemiology and psychiatry at Columbia University…”
- A mother’s education has a huge effect on a child’s health, By David Brown, September 16, 2010, Washington Post: “It turns out that pencils and books for mothers may be as important as vaccines and drugs for babies in reducing child mortality in the developing world. That’s because a mother’s education level has a huge, if indirect, effect on the health of her children. That relationship, observed in many small studies in rich countries, turns out to be true everywhere on the globe, according to a new study. Half the reduction in child mortality over the past 40 years can be attributed to the better education of women, according to the analysis published in the journal Lancet. For every one-year increase in the average education of reproductive-age women, a country experienced a 9.5 percent decrease in the child deaths…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty