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Women who experience depression during pregnancy or in the year after giving birth have a greater risk of suicide and attempted suicide — risks that persist for years, two new studies report. A research team analyzed records of nearly a million women in Sweden’s national medical registries from 2001 through 2017, comparing 86,551 women who had perinatal depression with 865,510 women who did not. The groups were matched by age and year they gave birth. (Belluck, 1/10)

The first pill for postpartum depression approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is now available, but experts worry that minority and low-income women, who are disproportionately affected by the condition, won’t have easy access to the new medication. About 1 in 8 women experience symptoms of postpartum depression, federal data shows. Suicide and drug overdoses are among the leading causes of pregnancy-related death, defined as death during pregnancy, labor or within the first year of childbirth. (Hassanein, 1/11)

Barry Greene, chief executive of Sage Therapeutics, one of two Cambridge drug companies behind the new pill, called Zurzuvae, said he won’t have the number of prescriptions written until his company’s quarterly earnings report in mid-February. ... “I believe that Zurzuvae is the key that unlocks the blockbuster potential of postpartum depression,” Greene said in an interview at the 42nd Annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, the largest business meeting for the biotechnology industry of the year. (Saltzman, 1/11)

During the peak of Covid-19 lockdown restrictions, Kendra Berger delivered her second child in the hospital. The experience was traumatic for Berger, a 35-year-old former nurse who lives in Holland, New York. She pushed when she wasn’t ready and her baby got stuck in the birthing canal. In the recovery room after birth, Berger started hemorrhaging and wound up needing a blood transfusion. And two weeks after birth, during her visit to the pediatrician with her newborn, she learned her baby’s clavicle had been broken during the delivery. (Nayak, 1/12)

Health care workers are taking a stand against the closure of midwifery services at a hospital in Inwood, Manhattan. ... "We're vital. We're vital to the community," said Yvonne Torres, who has been a midwife at NewYork-Presbyterian Allen Hospital for 35 years. "I can walk along Broadway and see women that I delivered and also taken care of the children that I've delivered." It came as a shock when the Allen Hospital announced the closure of its midwifery program with no explanation. (Duddridge, 1/11)

First Lady Jill Biden was in Chicago on Thursday to talk about the importance of women's health research. She made a stop at the University of Illinois Chicago to highlight the importance of more research on menopause and women's health. It's part of a White House initiative on women's health research that launched back in November. Biden said the initiative, "will make sure that women are not just an afterthought, but a first thought." (Bizzle and Gray, 1/11)

Heba Usrof, a young woman in Gaza, is running out of options to deal with her menstrual cycle. Pads have disappeared from pharmacies and stores. It's been this way since the war that began in October, and it's a situation that mirrors how nearly every basic requirement — from food to medical aid — has become harder to find in Gaza over the past three months. "We go around and around, searching in all the pharmacies for pads, but we can't find any," Usrof says. (Batrawy and Bakr Bashir, 1/11)