Commentary

The FDA defines “off-label” prescribing as prescribing an FDA-approved medication for an unapproved use, such as for an unapproved clinical indication, for a higher-than-approved dose, or for a patient who is not part of the FDA-approved population (eg, children or geriatric patients).¹ Off-label prescribing is common in psychiatry; approximately 13% of psychiatry patients are prescribed off-label psychotropic medications.² The American Psychiatric Association strongly supports “the autonomous clinical decision-making authority of a physician” and “a physician’s lawful use of an FDA-approved drug product or medical device for an off-label indication when such use is based upon sound scientific evidence in conjunction with sound medical judgment.”³ Because many psychiatric diagnoses have no FDA-approved medications, off-label prescribing often may be a psychiatrist’s only pharmacologic option.

Unfortunately, off-label prescribing can increase a psychiatrist’s risk for liability when treatment falls short of patients’ expectations, or when patients allege that they were injured by the use of an off-label medication. Off-label prescribing does not automatically lead to losing a malpractice suit because the FDA states that physicians can prescribe approved medications for any scientifically supported use, including off-label.¹ Medical malpractice lawsuits alleging negligence in prescribing practices, such as off-label prescribing, typically include allegations against the psychiatrist for failure to⁴:

• adequately assess the patient
• consult the patient’s medical records
• obtain informed consent from the patient
• appropriately prescribe a medication for the clinical indication, dosage, patient’s age, etc.
• monitor for adverse effects and therapeutic effectiveness.

Steps to minimize your risk

When prescribing a medication off-label, the following approaches can help reduce your liability risk:

Conduct a comprehensive clinical assess­ment. This should include requesting and reviewing your patient’s medical records.

Explain your motivation. Explain to your patient how prescribing an off-label medication can directly benefit him/her. Make it clear that you are not conducting experimental research by prescribing off-label because some patients might perceive this as a covert form of research.

Know the medications you prescribe. Although this sounds obvious, psychiatrists should thoroughly understand how each medication they prescribe is likely to clinically affect their patient. This information is available from many sources, including the FDA’s medication information sheets and the manufacturer’s medication package inserts. If possible, make sure that your off-label prescribing is supported by reputable, peer-reviewed literature.

Obtain informed consent. Tell your patient that the medication you are recommending is being prescribed off-label. Discuss the medication’s risks, benefits, adverse effects, associated “black-box” warnings, off-label uses, and alternatives to the off-label medication.⁴ Allow time for the patient to ask questions about these treatments.

Continue to: Document all steps

Document all steps. There is an adage in medicine that “If it’s not written, it wasn’t done.” To help reduce your liability risk when prescribing off-label, be sure to document the following⁴:

• your clinical assessment
• information you gleaned from the patient’s medical records
• your review of information regarding both therapeutic and adverse effects of the medication you want to prescribe
• your discussion of informed consent, including documentation that the patient is aware that the medication is being prescribed off-label
• your clinical rationale for why the off-label medication is in the patient’s best interest.

Also, document the steps you take to monitor for adverse events and therapeutic effectiveness.⁴ Overall, the goal of documentation should be to support the adequate continuing care of our patients.

The FDA defines “off-label” prescribing as prescribing an FDA-approved medication for an unapproved use, such as for an unapproved clinical indication, for a higher-than-approved dose, or for a patient who is not part of the FDA-approved population (eg, children or geriatric patients).¹ Off-label prescribing is common in psychiatry; approximately 13% of psychiatry patients are prescribed off-label psychotropic medications.² The American Psychiatric Association strongly supports “the autonomous clinical decision-making authority of a physician” and “a physician’s lawful use of an FDA-approved drug product or medical device for an off-label indication when such use is based upon sound scientific evidence in conjunction with sound medical judgment.”³ Because many psychiatric diagnoses have no FDA-approved medications, off-label prescribing often may be a psychiatrist’s only pharmacologic option.

Unfortunately, off-label prescribing can increase a psychiatrist’s risk for liability when treatment falls short of patients’ expectations, or when patients allege that they were injured by the use of an off-label medication. Off-label prescribing does not automatically lead to losing a malpractice suit because the FDA states that physicians can prescribe approved medications for any scientifically supported use, including off-label.¹ Medical malpractice lawsuits alleging negligence in prescribing practices, such as off-label prescribing, typically include allegations against the psychiatrist for failure to⁴:

• adequately assess the patient
• consult the patient’s medical records
• obtain informed consent from the patient
• appropriately prescribe a medication for the clinical indication, dosage, patient’s age, etc.
• monitor for adverse effects and therapeutic effectiveness.

Steps to minimize your risk

When prescribing a medication off-label, the following approaches can help reduce your liability risk:

Conduct a comprehensive clinical assess­ment. This should include requesting and reviewing your patient’s medical records.

Explain your motivation. Explain to your patient how prescribing an off-label medication can directly benefit him/her. Make it clear that you are not conducting experimental research by prescribing off-label because some patients might perceive this as a covert form of research.

Know the medications you prescribe. Although this sounds obvious, psychiatrists should thoroughly understand how each medication they prescribe is likely to clinically affect their patient. This information is available from many sources, including the FDA’s medication information sheets and the manufacturer’s medication package inserts. If possible, make sure that your off-label prescribing is supported by reputable, peer-reviewed literature.

Obtain informed consent. Tell your patient that the medication you are recommending is being prescribed off-label. Discuss the medication’s risks, benefits, adverse effects, associated “black-box” warnings, off-label uses, and alternatives to the off-label medication.⁴ Allow time for the patient to ask questions about these treatments.

Continue to: Document all steps

Document all steps. There is an adage in medicine that “If it’s not written, it wasn’t done.” To help reduce your liability risk when prescribing off-label, be sure to document the following⁴:

• your clinical assessment
• information you gleaned from the patient’s medical records
• your review of information regarding both therapeutic and adverse effects of the medication you want to prescribe
• your discussion of informed consent, including documentation that the patient is aware that the medication is being prescribed off-label
• your clinical rationale for why the off-label medication is in the patient’s best interest.

Also, document the steps you take to monitor for adverse events and therapeutic effectiveness.⁴ Overall, the goal of documentation should be to support the adequate continuing care of our patients.

The FDA defines “off-label” prescribing as prescribing an FDA-approved medication for an unapproved use, such as for an unapproved clinical indication, for a higher-than-approved dose, or for a patient who is not part of the FDA-approved population (eg, children or geriatric patients).¹ Off-label prescribing is common in psychiatry; approximately 13% of psychiatry patients are prescribed off-label psychotropic medications.² The American Psychiatric Association strongly supports “the autonomous clinical decision-making authority of a physician” and “a physician’s lawful use of an FDA-approved drug product or medical device for an off-label indication when such use is based upon sound scientific evidence in conjunction with sound medical judgment.”³ Because many psychiatric diagnoses have no FDA-approved medications, off-label prescribing often may be a psychiatrist’s only pharmacologic option.

Unfortunately, off-label prescribing can increase a psychiatrist’s risk for liability when treatment falls short of patients’ expectations, or when patients allege that they were injured by the use of an off-label medication. Off-label prescribing does not automatically lead to losing a malpractice suit because the FDA states that physicians can prescribe approved medications for any scientifically supported use, including off-label.¹ Medical malpractice lawsuits alleging negligence in prescribing practices, such as off-label prescribing, typically include allegations against the psychiatrist for failure to⁴:

• adequately assess the patient
• consult the patient’s medical records
• obtain informed consent from the patient
• appropriately prescribe a medication for the clinical indication, dosage, patient’s age, etc.
• monitor for adverse effects and therapeutic effectiveness.

Steps to minimize your risk

When prescribing a medication off-label, the following approaches can help reduce your liability risk:

Conduct a comprehensive clinical assess­ment. This should include requesting and reviewing your patient’s medical records.

Explain your motivation. Explain to your patient how prescribing an off-label medication can directly benefit him/her. Make it clear that you are not conducting experimental research by prescribing off-label because some patients might perceive this as a covert form of research.

Know the medications you prescribe. Although this sounds obvious, psychiatrists should thoroughly understand how each medication they prescribe is likely to clinically affect their patient. This information is available from many sources, including the FDA’s medication information sheets and the manufacturer’s medication package inserts. If possible, make sure that your off-label prescribing is supported by reputable, peer-reviewed literature.

Obtain informed consent. Tell your patient that the medication you are recommending is being prescribed off-label. Discuss the medication’s risks, benefits, adverse effects, associated “black-box” warnings, off-label uses, and alternatives to the off-label medication.⁴ Allow time for the patient to ask questions about these treatments.

Continue to: Document all steps

Document all steps. There is an adage in medicine that “If it’s not written, it wasn’t done.” To help reduce your liability risk when prescribing off-label, be sure to document the following⁴:

• your clinical assessment
• information you gleaned from the patient’s medical records
• your review of information regarding both therapeutic and adverse effects of the medication you want to prescribe
• your discussion of informed consent, including documentation that the patient is aware that the medication is being prescribed off-label
• your clinical rationale for why the off-label medication is in the patient’s best interest.

Also, document the steps you take to monitor for adverse events and therapeutic effectiveness.⁴ Overall, the goal of documentation should be to support the adequate continuing care of our patients.

Psychiatric emergencies—such as a patient who is agitated, self-destructive, or suicidal—may arise in a variety of settings, including emergency departments and inpatient units.¹ Before emergently prescribing psychotropic medications to address acute psychiatric symptoms, there are numerous factors a clinician needs to consider.^1-3 Asking the following questions may help you quickly obtain important clinical information to determine which medication to use during a psychiatric emergency:

Age. Is the patient a child, adolescent, adult, or older adult?

Allergies. Does the patient have any medication allergies or sensitivities?

Behaviors. What are the imminent dangerous behaviors that warrant emergent medication use

Collateral information. If the patient was brought by police or family, how was he/she behaving in the community or at home? If brought from a correctional facility or other institution, how did he/she behave in that setting?

Concurrent diagnoses/interventions. Does the patient have a psychiatric or medical diagnosis? Is the patient receiving any pharmacologic or nonpharmacologic treatments?

First visit. Is this the patient’s first visit to your facility? Or has the patient been to the facility previously and/or repeatedly? Has the patient ever been prescribed psychotropic medications? If the patient has received emergent medications before, which medications were used, and were they helpful?

Continue to: Legal status

Legal status. Is the patient voluntary for treatment or involuntary for treatment? If voluntary, is involuntary treatment needed?

Street. Was this patient evaluated in a medical setting before presenting to your facility? Or did this patient arrive directly from the community/street?

Substance use. Has the patient been using any licit and/or illicit substances?

In my experience with psychiatric emergencies, asking these questions has helped guide my decision-making during these situations. They have helped me to determine the appropriate medication, route of administration, dose, and monitoring requirements. Although other factors can impact clinicians’ decision-making in these situations, I have found these questions to be a good starting point.

Psychiatric emergencies—such as a patient who is agitated, self-destructive, or suicidal—may arise in a variety of settings, including emergency departments and inpatient units.¹ Before emergently prescribing psychotropic medications to address acute psychiatric symptoms, there are numerous factors a clinician needs to consider.^1-3 Asking the following questions may help you quickly obtain important clinical information to determine which medication to use during a psychiatric emergency:

Age. Is the patient a child, adolescent, adult, or older adult?

Allergies. Does the patient have any medication allergies or sensitivities?

Behaviors. What are the imminent dangerous behaviors that warrant emergent medication use

Collateral information. If the patient was brought by police or family, how was he/she behaving in the community or at home? If brought from a correctional facility or other institution, how did he/she behave in that setting?

Concurrent diagnoses/interventions. Does the patient have a psychiatric or medical diagnosis? Is the patient receiving any pharmacologic or nonpharmacologic treatments?

First visit. Is this the patient’s first visit to your facility? Or has the patient been to the facility previously and/or repeatedly? Has the patient ever been prescribed psychotropic medications? If the patient has received emergent medications before, which medications were used, and were they helpful?

Continue to: Legal status

Legal status. Is the patient voluntary for treatment or involuntary for treatment? If voluntary, is involuntary treatment needed?

Street. Was this patient evaluated in a medical setting before presenting to your facility? Or did this patient arrive directly from the community/street?

Substance use. Has the patient been using any licit and/or illicit substances?

In my experience with psychiatric emergencies, asking these questions has helped guide my decision-making during these situations. They have helped me to determine the appropriate medication, route of administration, dose, and monitoring requirements. Although other factors can impact clinicians’ decision-making in these situations, I have found these questions to be a good starting point.

Psychiatric emergencies—such as a patient who is agitated, self-destructive, or suicidal—may arise in a variety of settings, including emergency departments and inpatient units.¹ Before emergently prescribing psychotropic medications to address acute psychiatric symptoms, there are numerous factors a clinician needs to consider.^1-3 Asking the following questions may help you quickly obtain important clinical information to determine which medication to use during a psychiatric emergency:

Age. Is the patient a child, adolescent, adult, or older adult?

Allergies. Does the patient have any medication allergies or sensitivities?

Behaviors. What are the imminent dangerous behaviors that warrant emergent medication use

Collateral information. If the patient was brought by police or family, how was he/she behaving in the community or at home? If brought from a correctional facility or other institution, how did he/she behave in that setting?

Concurrent diagnoses/interventions. Does the patient have a psychiatric or medical diagnosis? Is the patient receiving any pharmacologic or nonpharmacologic treatments?

First visit. Is this the patient’s first visit to your facility? Or has the patient been to the facility previously and/or repeatedly? Has the patient ever been prescribed psychotropic medications? If the patient has received emergent medications before, which medications were used, and were they helpful?

Continue to: Legal status

Legal status. Is the patient voluntary for treatment or involuntary for treatment? If voluntary, is involuntary treatment needed?

Street. Was this patient evaluated in a medical setting before presenting to your facility? Or did this patient arrive directly from the community/street?

Substance use. Has the patient been using any licit and/or illicit substances?

In my experience with psychiatric emergencies, asking these questions has helped guide my decision-making during these situations. They have helped me to determine the appropriate medication, route of administration, dose, and monitoring requirements. Although other factors can impact clinicians’ decision-making in these situations, I have found these questions to be a good starting point.

It has been a busy month. September will mark the ninth month of U.S. COVID-19 with the country now surpassing 5 million cases and more than 175,000 deaths. Daily life and our medical practices will never be the same. Many have lost friends, family, businesses, and hope. Instead of acting as a nation to pull through this together, we seem to be entering a continual state of Thoreau solitude combined with Garrett Hardin’s tragedy of the commons.

In the last 2 months GI & Hepatology News published a two-part opinion piece about the acquisition of physicians’ GI practices by private equity (PE) companies. I received a strongly worded (but justified) email criticizing the newspaper for being one sided and not declaring a conflict of interest on the part of the author. For both issues, I take sole responsibility. While it is important for us to understand how PE is affecting GI practices, the author did have a personal stake in the success of this financial model. It is important to note that details of a PE acquisition can vary greatly depending on the PE company involved and PE companies looking to acquire practices now can be counted in the hundreds. The pros and cons of PE acquisitions were argued prior to COVID-19, but since the first quarter of 2020, the model is even more confusing. We will find out over the next several years whether this ever-proliferating model of practice financing will be successful or disastrous.

In November, GI & Hepatology News will publish a special supplement called Gastroenterology Data Trends. This publication will include brief, but robust snapshots of major trends in topics ranging from NAFLD, IBD, and GI cancers to the impact of COVID-19 on GI practices. We have collected a stellar group of authors to help us.

This month, the school year begins in ways that are still being sorted out. The “Big House” will not host its usual 110,000 fans packed like sardines watching Michigan football. I hope all of our readers skipped Sturgis this year. Stay safe, stay apart, and mask up.

John I. Allen, MD, MBA, AGAF
Editor in Chief

It has been a busy month. September will mark the ninth month of U.S. COVID-19 with the country now surpassing 5 million cases and more than 175,000 deaths. Daily life and our medical practices will never be the same. Many have lost friends, family, businesses, and hope. Instead of acting as a nation to pull through this together, we seem to be entering a continual state of Thoreau solitude combined with Garrett Hardin’s tragedy of the commons.

In the last 2 months GI & Hepatology News published a two-part opinion piece about the acquisition of physicians’ GI practices by private equity (PE) companies. I received a strongly worded (but justified) email criticizing the newspaper for being one sided and not declaring a conflict of interest on the part of the author. For both issues, I take sole responsibility. While it is important for us to understand how PE is affecting GI practices, the author did have a personal stake in the success of this financial model. It is important to note that details of a PE acquisition can vary greatly depending on the PE company involved and PE companies looking to acquire practices now can be counted in the hundreds. The pros and cons of PE acquisitions were argued prior to COVID-19, but since the first quarter of 2020, the model is even more confusing. We will find out over the next several years whether this ever-proliferating model of practice financing will be successful or disastrous.

In November, GI & Hepatology News will publish a special supplement called Gastroenterology Data Trends. This publication will include brief, but robust snapshots of major trends in topics ranging from NAFLD, IBD, and GI cancers to the impact of COVID-19 on GI practices. We have collected a stellar group of authors to help us.

This month, the school year begins in ways that are still being sorted out. The “Big House” will not host its usual 110,000 fans packed like sardines watching Michigan football. I hope all of our readers skipped Sturgis this year. Stay safe, stay apart, and mask up.

John I. Allen, MD, MBA, AGAF
Editor in Chief

It has been a busy month. September will mark the ninth month of U.S. COVID-19 with the country now surpassing 5 million cases and more than 175,000 deaths. Daily life and our medical practices will never be the same. Many have lost friends, family, businesses, and hope. Instead of acting as a nation to pull through this together, we seem to be entering a continual state of Thoreau solitude combined with Garrett Hardin’s tragedy of the commons.

In the last 2 months GI & Hepatology News published a two-part opinion piece about the acquisition of physicians’ GI practices by private equity (PE) companies. I received a strongly worded (but justified) email criticizing the newspaper for being one sided and not declaring a conflict of interest on the part of the author. For both issues, I take sole responsibility. While it is important for us to understand how PE is affecting GI practices, the author did have a personal stake in the success of this financial model. It is important to note that details of a PE acquisition can vary greatly depending on the PE company involved and PE companies looking to acquire practices now can be counted in the hundreds. The pros and cons of PE acquisitions were argued prior to COVID-19, but since the first quarter of 2020, the model is even more confusing. We will find out over the next several years whether this ever-proliferating model of practice financing will be successful or disastrous.

In November, GI & Hepatology News will publish a special supplement called Gastroenterology Data Trends. This publication will include brief, but robust snapshots of major trends in topics ranging from NAFLD, IBD, and GI cancers to the impact of COVID-19 on GI practices. We have collected a stellar group of authors to help us.

This month, the school year begins in ways that are still being sorted out. The “Big House” will not host its usual 110,000 fans packed like sardines watching Michigan football. I hope all of our readers skipped Sturgis this year. Stay safe, stay apart, and mask up.

John I. Allen, MD, MBA, AGAF
Editor in Chief

As in its typical fashion, the question sprang out from a young Black patient after some meandering conversation during preconception counseling: “How do y’all prevent Black maternal mortality?” At the beginning of my career, I used to think preparing a patient for pregnancy involved recommending prenatal vitamins and rubella immunity screening. Now, having worked in a society with substantial racial health disparities for 14 years, there is greater awareness that pregnancy can be a matter of life or death that disproportionately affects people of color.

SDI Productions/E+

For Black patients in the United States, the maternal mortality ratio is almost four times higher than the ratio for White patients, 42 deaths versus 13 deaths per 100,000 live births, respectively.¹ Georgia has the highest maternal mortality ratio in the United States at 67 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births. However, if you are a Black woman in Georgia, your chance of dying of pregnancy-related causes is 2.7 times that of a non-Hispanic White woman living in Georgia.²

How do we answer this patient’s question in a way that addresses the systemic racism that underlies these disparities? We start by actively listening. Black patients often are not taken seriously, even when they are wealthy, have attained high levels of education, or are famous. Serena Williams, a Black woman and one of the most talented tennis players of all time, was ignored when complaining that she felt a blood clot had returned in her lungs post partum. As a recognition of this crisis, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has a new campaign to improve recognition of the warning signs of problems in pregnancy called the HEAR HER campaign. This issue is a pervasive problem in our lives that runs across the spectrum of Black experience. I have had Black friends, patients, and colleagues who have been ignored when complaining about labor pain, workplace discrimination, and even when trying to advocate for their patients. We need to uplift Black voices so they can be heard and support the initiatives and interventions they are asking for.

We practice standardized responses to emergencies and to health conditions. We use drills to practice our responses to life-threatening emergencies such as STAT cesarean delivery, shoulder dystocia, obstetrical hemorrhage, or treatment of preeclampsia and eclampsia. The Alliance for Innovation on Maternal Health has organized evidence-driven protocols called AIM bundles to reduce preventable maternal morbidity and mortality when implemented. Standardization is an important component of equitable treatment and reduction of disparities. The concept has been used across industries to reduce error and bias. The Alliance for Innovation on Maternal Health bundles even include a section on Reduction of Peripartum and Ethnic Disparities.

We admit that bias exists and that we need training to recognize and eliminate it. According to a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America about racial bias in pain assessment more than 20% of White residents and medical students surveyed believed that Black people had less sensitive nerve endings than Whites.³ Studies show that this stereotype leads to inappropriate pain management in Black patients, a chief concern when considering how patients are treated on labor and delivery or after surgery.⁴ Additionally, unconscious bias can be addressed by hiring a diverse workforce at all levels. Familiarity with a diverse group can help us learn from one another in our day-to-day lives.

We need to offer the same high-quality preconception counseling to all of our patients. A patient’s perceived race or ethnicity is a poor indicator of their actual health needs. The amount of melanin in our skin is highly variable but our genetics are remarkably similar, therefore our health concerns are similar. All patients deserve a focus on prevention. Folic acid supplements in the form of prenatal vitamins should be recommended. Routine vaccinations and rubella immunity checks should be offered. Basic carrier screening for diseases of hemoglobin (which includes sickle cell trait), fragile X, spinomuscular atrophy, and cystic fibrosis should be offered. Finally, an emphasis on safety, mental health, and daily low-level exercise (i.e., walking) should be promoted to help prevent illness and injury in this age group. The leading causes of death for people of reproductive age are accidents, suicide, homicide, and heart disease – all preventable.

We treat the social determinants of health, not just the patient in front of us. When “race” is a risk factor for disease, it’s usually racism that’s the problem. As stated earlier, how much melanin is in our skin has little to do with our genetics – if we removed our skin, we’d have similar life expectancies and die of similar things. However, it has everything to do with how we navigate our society and access health care. The stress associated with being Black in America is the likely cause of preterm birth rates – leading to infant illness and death – and maternal mortality being higher in Black patients. This is referred to as “weathering” – the cumulative effects of stress as we age. It explains why Black women are more likely to die in pregnancy despite higher levels of education and increasing age – factors that are protective for other groups. Improving access to quality education, reforming the criminal justice system, affordable housing and child care, living wages, family planning, and universal basic health care exemplify the intersectionality of some of our greatest societal challenges. Addressing these root causes will reduce weathering and ultimately, save Black lives.

We strive to train more “underrepresented minorities” in medicine. According to the American Association of Medical Colleges, only 7.3% of medical students in 2019-2020 identified as Black or African American. This is way below their representation of 13% of the U.S. population. I’m proud that my division and department as a whole have hired and promoted diverse faculty with 30% of my generalist ob.gyn. colleagues being people of color. This shows that we have the input of diverse experiences as well as recognize the special concerns of patients of color. Underrepresented students interested in the health professions need us to do more to get their “foot in the door.” They are less likely to have connections to the field of medicine (family members, mentors), have access to prep courses or advisors, or have the finances to support the expensive application process. Reach out to your alma maters and ask how you can help mentor students at a young age and continue through adulthood, support scholarships, support unpaid internship recipients, and promote interconnectedness throughout this community.

I hope I answered my patient’s question in that moment, but I know what needs to be done is bigger that taking care of one patient. It will require small progress, by us, every single day. Until these interventions and others reshape our society, I’ll still have Black patients who say: “Don’t let me die, okay?” with a look right into my soul and a tight grip on my hand. And I’ll feel the immense weight of that trust, and squeeze the hand back.
 

Dr. Collins (she/her/hers) is assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology, generalist division, at Emory University, Atlanta. She has no relevant financial disclosures. Email Dr. Collins at [email protected].
 

References

1. CDC Pregnancy Mortality Surveillance System, 2016. https://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/maternal-mortality/pregnancy-mortality-surveillance-system.htm.

2. Maternal Mortality Fact Sheet, 2012-2015. https://dph.georgia.gov/maternal-mortality.

3. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2016 Apr 19;113(16):4296-301.

4. Pain Med. 2012 Feb;13(2):150-74.

As in its typical fashion, the question sprang out from a young Black patient after some meandering conversation during preconception counseling: “How do y’all prevent Black maternal mortality?” At the beginning of my career, I used to think preparing a patient for pregnancy involved recommending prenatal vitamins and rubella immunity screening. Now, having worked in a society with substantial racial health disparities for 14 years, there is greater awareness that pregnancy can be a matter of life or death that disproportionately affects people of color.

SDI Productions/E+

For Black patients in the United States, the maternal mortality ratio is almost four times higher than the ratio for White patients, 42 deaths versus 13 deaths per 100,000 live births, respectively.¹ Georgia has the highest maternal mortality ratio in the United States at 67 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births. However, if you are a Black woman in Georgia, your chance of dying of pregnancy-related causes is 2.7 times that of a non-Hispanic White woman living in Georgia.²

How do we answer this patient’s question in a way that addresses the systemic racism that underlies these disparities? We start by actively listening. Black patients often are not taken seriously, even when they are wealthy, have attained high levels of education, or are famous. Serena Williams, a Black woman and one of the most talented tennis players of all time, was ignored when complaining that she felt a blood clot had returned in her lungs post partum. As a recognition of this crisis, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has a new campaign to improve recognition of the warning signs of problems in pregnancy called the HEAR HER campaign. This issue is a pervasive problem in our lives that runs across the spectrum of Black experience. I have had Black friends, patients, and colleagues who have been ignored when complaining about labor pain, workplace discrimination, and even when trying to advocate for their patients. We need to uplift Black voices so they can be heard and support the initiatives and interventions they are asking for.

We practice standardized responses to emergencies and to health conditions. We use drills to practice our responses to life-threatening emergencies such as STAT cesarean delivery, shoulder dystocia, obstetrical hemorrhage, or treatment of preeclampsia and eclampsia. The Alliance for Innovation on Maternal Health has organized evidence-driven protocols called AIM bundles to reduce preventable maternal morbidity and mortality when implemented. Standardization is an important component of equitable treatment and reduction of disparities. The concept has been used across industries to reduce error and bias. The Alliance for Innovation on Maternal Health bundles even include a section on Reduction of Peripartum and Ethnic Disparities.

We admit that bias exists and that we need training to recognize and eliminate it. According to a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America about racial bias in pain assessment more than 20% of White residents and medical students surveyed believed that Black people had less sensitive nerve endings than Whites.³ Studies show that this stereotype leads to inappropriate pain management in Black patients, a chief concern when considering how patients are treated on labor and delivery or after surgery.⁴ Additionally, unconscious bias can be addressed by hiring a diverse workforce at all levels. Familiarity with a diverse group can help us learn from one another in our day-to-day lives.

We need to offer the same high-quality preconception counseling to all of our patients. A patient’s perceived race or ethnicity is a poor indicator of their actual health needs. The amount of melanin in our skin is highly variable but our genetics are remarkably similar, therefore our health concerns are similar. All patients deserve a focus on prevention. Folic acid supplements in the form of prenatal vitamins should be recommended. Routine vaccinations and rubella immunity checks should be offered. Basic carrier screening for diseases of hemoglobin (which includes sickle cell trait), fragile X, spinomuscular atrophy, and cystic fibrosis should be offered. Finally, an emphasis on safety, mental health, and daily low-level exercise (i.e., walking) should be promoted to help prevent illness and injury in this age group. The leading causes of death for people of reproductive age are accidents, suicide, homicide, and heart disease – all preventable.

We treat the social determinants of health, not just the patient in front of us. When “race” is a risk factor for disease, it’s usually racism that’s the problem. As stated earlier, how much melanin is in our skin has little to do with our genetics – if we removed our skin, we’d have similar life expectancies and die of similar things. However, it has everything to do with how we navigate our society and access health care. The stress associated with being Black in America is the likely cause of preterm birth rates – leading to infant illness and death – and maternal mortality being higher in Black patients. This is referred to as “weathering” – the cumulative effects of stress as we age. It explains why Black women are more likely to die in pregnancy despite higher levels of education and increasing age – factors that are protective for other groups. Improving access to quality education, reforming the criminal justice system, affordable housing and child care, living wages, family planning, and universal basic health care exemplify the intersectionality of some of our greatest societal challenges. Addressing these root causes will reduce weathering and ultimately, save Black lives.

We strive to train more “underrepresented minorities” in medicine. According to the American Association of Medical Colleges, only 7.3% of medical students in 2019-2020 identified as Black or African American. This is way below their representation of 13% of the U.S. population. I’m proud that my division and department as a whole have hired and promoted diverse faculty with 30% of my generalist ob.gyn. colleagues being people of color. This shows that we have the input of diverse experiences as well as recognize the special concerns of patients of color. Underrepresented students interested in the health professions need us to do more to get their “foot in the door.” They are less likely to have connections to the field of medicine (family members, mentors), have access to prep courses or advisors, or have the finances to support the expensive application process. Reach out to your alma maters and ask how you can help mentor students at a young age and continue through adulthood, support scholarships, support unpaid internship recipients, and promote interconnectedness throughout this community.

I hope I answered my patient’s question in that moment, but I know what needs to be done is bigger that taking care of one patient. It will require small progress, by us, every single day. Until these interventions and others reshape our society, I’ll still have Black patients who say: “Don’t let me die, okay?” with a look right into my soul and a tight grip on my hand. And I’ll feel the immense weight of that trust, and squeeze the hand back.
 

Dr. Collins (she/her/hers) is assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology, generalist division, at Emory University, Atlanta. She has no relevant financial disclosures. Email Dr. Collins at [email protected].
 

References

1. CDC Pregnancy Mortality Surveillance System, 2016. https://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/maternal-mortality/pregnancy-mortality-surveillance-system.htm.

2. Maternal Mortality Fact Sheet, 2012-2015. https://dph.georgia.gov/maternal-mortality.

3. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2016 Apr 19;113(16):4296-301.

4. Pain Med. 2012 Feb;13(2):150-74.

As in its typical fashion, the question sprang out from a young Black patient after some meandering conversation during preconception counseling: “How do y’all prevent Black maternal mortality?” At the beginning of my career, I used to think preparing a patient for pregnancy involved recommending prenatal vitamins and rubella immunity screening. Now, having worked in a society with substantial racial health disparities for 14 years, there is greater awareness that pregnancy can be a matter of life or death that disproportionately affects people of color.

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For Black patients in the United States, the maternal mortality ratio is almost four times higher than the ratio for White patients, 42 deaths versus 13 deaths per 100,000 live births, respectively.¹ Georgia has the highest maternal mortality ratio in the United States at 67 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births. However, if you are a Black woman in Georgia, your chance of dying of pregnancy-related causes is 2.7 times that of a non-Hispanic White woman living in Georgia.²

How do we answer this patient’s question in a way that addresses the systemic racism that underlies these disparities? We start by actively listening. Black patients often are not taken seriously, even when they are wealthy, have attained high levels of education, or are famous. Serena Williams, a Black woman and one of the most talented tennis players of all time, was ignored when complaining that she felt a blood clot had returned in her lungs post partum. As a recognition of this crisis, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has a new campaign to improve recognition of the warning signs of problems in pregnancy called the HEAR HER campaign. This issue is a pervasive problem in our lives that runs across the spectrum of Black experience. I have had Black friends, patients, and colleagues who have been ignored when complaining about labor pain, workplace discrimination, and even when trying to advocate for their patients. We need to uplift Black voices so they can be heard and support the initiatives and interventions they are asking for.

We practice standardized responses to emergencies and to health conditions. We use drills to practice our responses to life-threatening emergencies such as STAT cesarean delivery, shoulder dystocia, obstetrical hemorrhage, or treatment of preeclampsia and eclampsia. The Alliance for Innovation on Maternal Health has organized evidence-driven protocols called AIM bundles to reduce preventable maternal morbidity and mortality when implemented. Standardization is an important component of equitable treatment and reduction of disparities. The concept has been used across industries to reduce error and bias. The Alliance for Innovation on Maternal Health bundles even include a section on Reduction of Peripartum and Ethnic Disparities.

We admit that bias exists and that we need training to recognize and eliminate it. According to a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America about racial bias in pain assessment more than 20% of White residents and medical students surveyed believed that Black people had less sensitive nerve endings than Whites.³ Studies show that this stereotype leads to inappropriate pain management in Black patients, a chief concern when considering how patients are treated on labor and delivery or after surgery.⁴ Additionally, unconscious bias can be addressed by hiring a diverse workforce at all levels. Familiarity with a diverse group can help us learn from one another in our day-to-day lives.

We need to offer the same high-quality preconception counseling to all of our patients. A patient’s perceived race or ethnicity is a poor indicator of their actual health needs. The amount of melanin in our skin is highly variable but our genetics are remarkably similar, therefore our health concerns are similar. All patients deserve a focus on prevention. Folic acid supplements in the form of prenatal vitamins should be recommended. Routine vaccinations and rubella immunity checks should be offered. Basic carrier screening for diseases of hemoglobin (which includes sickle cell trait), fragile X, spinomuscular atrophy, and cystic fibrosis should be offered. Finally, an emphasis on safety, mental health, and daily low-level exercise (i.e., walking) should be promoted to help prevent illness and injury in this age group. The leading causes of death for people of reproductive age are accidents, suicide, homicide, and heart disease – all preventable.

We treat the social determinants of health, not just the patient in front of us. When “race” is a risk factor for disease, it’s usually racism that’s the problem. As stated earlier, how much melanin is in our skin has little to do with our genetics – if we removed our skin, we’d have similar life expectancies and die of similar things. However, it has everything to do with how we navigate our society and access health care. The stress associated with being Black in America is the likely cause of preterm birth rates – leading to infant illness and death – and maternal mortality being higher in Black patients. This is referred to as “weathering” – the cumulative effects of stress as we age. It explains why Black women are more likely to die in pregnancy despite higher levels of education and increasing age – factors that are protective for other groups. Improving access to quality education, reforming the criminal justice system, affordable housing and child care, living wages, family planning, and universal basic health care exemplify the intersectionality of some of our greatest societal challenges. Addressing these root causes will reduce weathering and ultimately, save Black lives.

We strive to train more “underrepresented minorities” in medicine. According to the American Association of Medical Colleges, only 7.3% of medical students in 2019-2020 identified as Black or African American. This is way below their representation of 13% of the U.S. population. I’m proud that my division and department as a whole have hired and promoted diverse faculty with 30% of my generalist ob.gyn. colleagues being people of color. This shows that we have the input of diverse experiences as well as recognize the special concerns of patients of color. Underrepresented students interested in the health professions need us to do more to get their “foot in the door.” They are less likely to have connections to the field of medicine (family members, mentors), have access to prep courses or advisors, or have the finances to support the expensive application process. Reach out to your alma maters and ask how you can help mentor students at a young age and continue through adulthood, support scholarships, support unpaid internship recipients, and promote interconnectedness throughout this community.

I hope I answered my patient’s question in that moment, but I know what needs to be done is bigger that taking care of one patient. It will require small progress, by us, every single day. Until these interventions and others reshape our society, I’ll still have Black patients who say: “Don’t let me die, okay?” with a look right into my soul and a tight grip on my hand. And I’ll feel the immense weight of that trust, and squeeze the hand back.
 

Dr. Collins (she/her/hers) is assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology, generalist division, at Emory University, Atlanta. She has no relevant financial disclosures. Email Dr. Collins at [email protected].
 

References

1. CDC Pregnancy Mortality Surveillance System, 2016. https://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/maternal-mortality/pregnancy-mortality-surveillance-system.htm.

2. Maternal Mortality Fact Sheet, 2012-2015. https://dph.georgia.gov/maternal-mortality.

3. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2016 Apr 19;113(16):4296-301.

4. Pain Med. 2012 Feb;13(2):150-74.

Against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic and ongoing national conversations around racial injustice, it is more important than ever that we identify and root out systemic discrimination – including in our health care system. As an ob.gyn., I’ve spent my entire career making sure that women receive the best care, and have witnessed firsthand the results of a system that provides differing levels of care based on one’s socioeconomic level, race, or ethnicity. The simple and sad reality is black and Hispanic women in this country continue to have less access to critical maternal and prenatal care.

This disparity is borne out in this country’s maternal health outcomes. For example, the latest figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicate that the maternal mortality rate for black women, 37.1 deaths per 100,000 live births, is more than double the rate for white women at 14.7. In addition, the black infant mortality rate, at 11.4 per 1,000 live births, is also more than double the white infant mortality rate, 4.9. While many of these differences stem from discriminatory levels of coverage and care after delivery, just as important is the coverage and care before delivery: prenatal care.

Prenatal care includes a variety of screening tests, including those that can help expecting mothers identify whether the baby is more or less likely to have certain genetic disorders. These tests include traditional and less accurate options like serum or combined screening, and newer noninvasive prenatal testing (NIPT) options that use blood samples from the mother to analyze the baby’s DNA.

Research already has demonstrated that NIPT is the most accurate and effective screening option for common chromosomal abnormalities (Ont Health Technol Assess Ser. 2019;19[4]:1-166). A 2015 New England Journal of Medicine study showed that, without access to NIPT, 22% of pregnancies with Down syndrome were missed. With older screening methods, 5.4% of positive results for Down syndrome were false, compared with 0.06% of the NIPT tests (N Engl J Med 2015;372:1589-97). Older, less accurate screening tests cause unnecessary referrals to specialists for possible invasive testing, resulting in additional costs and undue stress on women and their families.

And yet, troubling new data have shown that black and Hispanic women have less access to NIPT than white women. Currently, NIPT is available to all California women through the state-funded prenatal screening program as a second-tier test. Many women, however, decide to opt out or go outside of the state program to have NIPT as a first-tier test, choosing private payer or other plans instead. New data shared by the California Department of Public Health with ob.gyns. and maternal-fetal medicine physicians in California showed that white women who opted out of California’s state-funded prenatal screening program were more than twice as likely to gain access to NIPT as black and Hispanic women (39%-17%). We can assume this to be true of women outside California as well – women who have no access to a state-funded program like California’s and depend solely on private payer or other health care plans. In fact, although some commercial insurance companies do cover NIPT, noninvasive prenatal screening is not covered by large insurance companies like Aetna and UnitedHealthcare.

As ob.gyns., physicians, and health professionals, we need to ask ourselves: Why is there such a great disparity in the access of superior and more effective NIPT options for black and Hispanic women?

Many reasons are apparent. There are significant differences by ethnic and racial groups in their knowledge of the availability of prenatal testing. Furthermore, there are higher levels of mistrust along certain racial and ethnic lines of the medical system in this country; specific religious or ethnic beliefs also may obviate the use of prenatal testing or diagnosis. Significant differences also exist in the types of health coverage by race and ethnicity, ultimately impacting the ability to have prenatal testing. Finally, there are different physician group recommendations. While medical societies such as the American College of Medical Genetics, International Society for Prenatal Diagnosis, and the American Society of Human Genetics all have long endorsed newer NIPT option for all pregnant women, two of the national physician groups that make recommendations about what care pregnant women should be able to access – the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine – only recently have recommended broad access to NIPT. As a result, some state Medicaid programs have not made NIPT available to patients.

We know that racial disparities are a public health crisis in America. The recent data from the California Department of Public Health, paired with COVID-19’s disproportionate impact on blacks and Hispanics, only further illustrate the existing health disparities experienced by this country’s communities of color.

We need to root out systemic discrimination in health care and we can begin with our maternal health care. Providing equitable access to the most accurate and consistent prenatal screenings, including NIPT options, regardless of insurance plan, socioeconomic level, race, or ethnicity is paramount in starting this work.
 

Dr. Gaither is a double board–certified physician in ob.gyn. and maternal-fetal medicine. She is director of perinatal services for NYC Health+Hospitals/Lincoln. She reports no conflicts of interest. Email her at [email protected].

Against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic and ongoing national conversations around racial injustice, it is more important than ever that we identify and root out systemic discrimination – including in our health care system. As an ob.gyn., I’ve spent my entire career making sure that women receive the best care, and have witnessed firsthand the results of a system that provides differing levels of care based on one’s socioeconomic level, race, or ethnicity. The simple and sad reality is black and Hispanic women in this country continue to have less access to critical maternal and prenatal care.

This disparity is borne out in this country’s maternal health outcomes. For example, the latest figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicate that the maternal mortality rate for black women, 37.1 deaths per 100,000 live births, is more than double the rate for white women at 14.7. In addition, the black infant mortality rate, at 11.4 per 1,000 live births, is also more than double the white infant mortality rate, 4.9. While many of these differences stem from discriminatory levels of coverage and care after delivery, just as important is the coverage and care before delivery: prenatal care.

Prenatal care includes a variety of screening tests, including those that can help expecting mothers identify whether the baby is more or less likely to have certain genetic disorders. These tests include traditional and less accurate options like serum or combined screening, and newer noninvasive prenatal testing (NIPT) options that use blood samples from the mother to analyze the baby’s DNA.

Research already has demonstrated that NIPT is the most accurate and effective screening option for common chromosomal abnormalities (Ont Health Technol Assess Ser. 2019;19[4]:1-166). A 2015 New England Journal of Medicine study showed that, without access to NIPT, 22% of pregnancies with Down syndrome were missed. With older screening methods, 5.4% of positive results for Down syndrome were false, compared with 0.06% of the NIPT tests (N Engl J Med 2015;372:1589-97). Older, less accurate screening tests cause unnecessary referrals to specialists for possible invasive testing, resulting in additional costs and undue stress on women and their families.

And yet, troubling new data have shown that black and Hispanic women have less access to NIPT than white women. Currently, NIPT is available to all California women through the state-funded prenatal screening program as a second-tier test. Many women, however, decide to opt out or go outside of the state program to have NIPT as a first-tier test, choosing private payer or other plans instead. New data shared by the California Department of Public Health with ob.gyns. and maternal-fetal medicine physicians in California showed that white women who opted out of California’s state-funded prenatal screening program were more than twice as likely to gain access to NIPT as black and Hispanic women (39%-17%). We can assume this to be true of women outside California as well – women who have no access to a state-funded program like California’s and depend solely on private payer or other health care plans. In fact, although some commercial insurance companies do cover NIPT, noninvasive prenatal screening is not covered by large insurance companies like Aetna and UnitedHealthcare.

As ob.gyns., physicians, and health professionals, we need to ask ourselves: Why is there such a great disparity in the access of superior and more effective NIPT options for black and Hispanic women?

Many reasons are apparent. There are significant differences by ethnic and racial groups in their knowledge of the availability of prenatal testing. Furthermore, there are higher levels of mistrust along certain racial and ethnic lines of the medical system in this country; specific religious or ethnic beliefs also may obviate the use of prenatal testing or diagnosis. Significant differences also exist in the types of health coverage by race and ethnicity, ultimately impacting the ability to have prenatal testing. Finally, there are different physician group recommendations. While medical societies such as the American College of Medical Genetics, International Society for Prenatal Diagnosis, and the American Society of Human Genetics all have long endorsed newer NIPT option for all pregnant women, two of the national physician groups that make recommendations about what care pregnant women should be able to access – the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine – only recently have recommended broad access to NIPT. As a result, some state Medicaid programs have not made NIPT available to patients.

We know that racial disparities are a public health crisis in America. The recent data from the California Department of Public Health, paired with COVID-19’s disproportionate impact on blacks and Hispanics, only further illustrate the existing health disparities experienced by this country’s communities of color.

We need to root out systemic discrimination in health care and we can begin with our maternal health care. Providing equitable access to the most accurate and consistent prenatal screenings, including NIPT options, regardless of insurance plan, socioeconomic level, race, or ethnicity is paramount in starting this work.
 

Dr. Gaither is a double board–certified physician in ob.gyn. and maternal-fetal medicine. She is director of perinatal services for NYC Health+Hospitals/Lincoln. She reports no conflicts of interest. Email her at [email protected].

Against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic and ongoing national conversations around racial injustice, it is more important than ever that we identify and root out systemic discrimination – including in our health care system. As an ob.gyn., I’ve spent my entire career making sure that women receive the best care, and have witnessed firsthand the results of a system that provides differing levels of care based on one’s socioeconomic level, race, or ethnicity. The simple and sad reality is black and Hispanic women in this country continue to have less access to critical maternal and prenatal care.

This disparity is borne out in this country’s maternal health outcomes. For example, the latest figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicate that the maternal mortality rate for black women, 37.1 deaths per 100,000 live births, is more than double the rate for white women at 14.7. In addition, the black infant mortality rate, at 11.4 per 1,000 live births, is also more than double the white infant mortality rate, 4.9. While many of these differences stem from discriminatory levels of coverage and care after delivery, just as important is the coverage and care before delivery: prenatal care.

Prenatal care includes a variety of screening tests, including those that can help expecting mothers identify whether the baby is more or less likely to have certain genetic disorders. These tests include traditional and less accurate options like serum or combined screening, and newer noninvasive prenatal testing (NIPT) options that use blood samples from the mother to analyze the baby’s DNA.

Research already has demonstrated that NIPT is the most accurate and effective screening option for common chromosomal abnormalities (Ont Health Technol Assess Ser. 2019;19[4]:1-166). A 2015 New England Journal of Medicine study showed that, without access to NIPT, 22% of pregnancies with Down syndrome were missed. With older screening methods, 5.4% of positive results for Down syndrome were false, compared with 0.06% of the NIPT tests (N Engl J Med 2015;372:1589-97). Older, less accurate screening tests cause unnecessary referrals to specialists for possible invasive testing, resulting in additional costs and undue stress on women and their families.

And yet, troubling new data have shown that black and Hispanic women have less access to NIPT than white women. Currently, NIPT is available to all California women through the state-funded prenatal screening program as a second-tier test. Many women, however, decide to opt out or go outside of the state program to have NIPT as a first-tier test, choosing private payer or other plans instead. New data shared by the California Department of Public Health with ob.gyns. and maternal-fetal medicine physicians in California showed that white women who opted out of California’s state-funded prenatal screening program were more than twice as likely to gain access to NIPT as black and Hispanic women (39%-17%). We can assume this to be true of women outside California as well – women who have no access to a state-funded program like California’s and depend solely on private payer or other health care plans. In fact, although some commercial insurance companies do cover NIPT, noninvasive prenatal screening is not covered by large insurance companies like Aetna and UnitedHealthcare.

As ob.gyns., physicians, and health professionals, we need to ask ourselves: Why is there such a great disparity in the access of superior and more effective NIPT options for black and Hispanic women?

Many reasons are apparent. There are significant differences by ethnic and racial groups in their knowledge of the availability of prenatal testing. Furthermore, there are higher levels of mistrust along certain racial and ethnic lines of the medical system in this country; specific religious or ethnic beliefs also may obviate the use of prenatal testing or diagnosis. Significant differences also exist in the types of health coverage by race and ethnicity, ultimately impacting the ability to have prenatal testing. Finally, there are different physician group recommendations. While medical societies such as the American College of Medical Genetics, International Society for Prenatal Diagnosis, and the American Society of Human Genetics all have long endorsed newer NIPT option for all pregnant women, two of the national physician groups that make recommendations about what care pregnant women should be able to access – the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine – only recently have recommended broad access to NIPT. As a result, some state Medicaid programs have not made NIPT available to patients.

We know that racial disparities are a public health crisis in America. The recent data from the California Department of Public Health, paired with COVID-19’s disproportionate impact on blacks and Hispanics, only further illustrate the existing health disparities experienced by this country’s communities of color.

We need to root out systemic discrimination in health care and we can begin with our maternal health care. Providing equitable access to the most accurate and consistent prenatal screenings, including NIPT options, regardless of insurance plan, socioeconomic level, race, or ethnicity is paramount in starting this work.
 

Dr. Gaither is a double board–certified physician in ob.gyn. and maternal-fetal medicine. She is director of perinatal services for NYC Health+Hospitals/Lincoln. She reports no conflicts of interest. Email her at [email protected].

Case: A 56-year-old man with a history of type 2 diabetes, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, and obesity calls clinic to discuss concerns about COVID-19, stating: “I want to do everything I can to reduce my risk of infection.” In addition to physical distancing, mask wearing, hand hygiene, and control of chronic conditions, which of the following supplements would you recommend for this patient?

1. Coenzyme Q10 160 mg twice a day

2. Vitamin D 2,000 IU daily

3. Vitamin E 400 IU daily

4. Vitamin B₁₂ 1,000 mcg daily

Of these choices, vitamin D supplementation is likely the best option, based on the limited data that is available.

Vitamin D has been implicated in the prevention of many disease processes, including acute respiratory infections. Risk factors for worse COVID-19 outcome, such as older age, obesity, and more pigmented skin are also risk factors for vitamin D deficiency. This makes the study of vitamin D and COVID-19 both challenging and relevant.

In a recent study of 7,807 people living in Israel, Merzon and colleagues found that low plasma vitamin D level was an independent risk factor for COVID-19 infection. Mean plasma vitamin D level was significantly lower among those who tested positive for COVID-19 (19.00 ng/mL) than negative (20.55 ng/ mL). After controlling for demographic variables and several medical conditions, the adjusted odds ratio of COVID-19 infection in those with lower vitamin D was 1.45 (95% confidence interval, 1.08-1.95; P < .001). However, the odds of hospitalization for COVID-19 was not significantly associated with vitamin D level.¹

yulka3ice/Getty Images

Prior studies have also looked at vitamin D and respiratory infection. Martineau and colleagues analyzed 25 randomized, controlled trials with a pooled number of 11,321 individuals, including healthy ones and those with comorbidities, and found that oral vitamin D supplementation in daily or weekly doses had a protective effect against acute respiratory infection (adjusted odds ratio, 0.88; 95% CI, 0.81-0.96; P < .001). Patients with vitamin D deficiency (less than 25 nmol/L) experienced the most protective benefit. Vitamin D did not influence respiratory infection outcome.²

These studies suggest an adequate vitamin D level may be protective against infection with COVID-19, but who will benefit from vitamin D supplementation, and in what dose? Per U.S. Preventive Services Task Force guidelines, there is insufficient evidence to recommend screening for vitamin D deficiency in asymptomatic adults. Regarding daily dietary intake, the Institute of Medicine recommends 600 IU for persons aged 1-70, and 800 IU for those aged over 70 years. Salmon (447 IU per 3 oz serving), tuna (154 IU), and fortified milk (116 IU) are among the most vitamin D–rich foods.³ The recommended upper level of intake is 4,000 IU/day.
 

Too much of a good thing?

Extra vitamin D is stored in adipose tissue. If it builds up over time, storage sites may be overwhelmed, causing a rise in serum D level. While one might expect a subsequent rise in calcium levels, studies have shown this happens inconsistently, and at very high vitamin D levels, over 120 ng/mL.⁴ Most people would have to take at least 50,000 IU daily for several months to see an effect. The main adverse outcome of vitamin D toxicity is kidney stones, mediated by increased calcium in the blood and urine.

Several animal models have demonstrated hypervitaminosis D–induced aortic and coronary artery calcification. Like with kidney stones, the mechanism appears to be through increased calcium and phosphate levels. Shroff and colleagues studied serum vitamin D levels and vascular disease in children with renal disease on dialysis and found a U-shaped distribution: Children with both low and high vitamin D levels had significantly increased carotid artery intima-media thickness and calcification.⁵ Given the specialized nature of this population, it’s unclear whether these results can be generalized to most people. More studies are warranted on this topic.
 

Other benefits

Vitamin D is perhaps most famous for helping to build strong bones. Avenell and colleagues performed a Cochrane meta-analysis of vitamin D supplementation in older adults and found that vitamin D alone did not significantly reduce the risk of hip or other new fracture. Vitamin D plus calcium supplementation did reduce the risk of hip fracture (nine trials, pooled number of individuals was 49,853; relative risk, 0.84; P = .01).⁶

A lesser-known benefit of vitamin D is muscle protection. A prospective study out of the Jewish Hospital of Cincinnati followed 146 adults who were intolerant to two or more statins because of muscle side effects and found to have a vitamin D level below 32 ng per mL. Subjects were given vitamin D replacement (50,000 units weekly) and followed for 2 years. On statin rechallenge, 88-95% tolerated a statin with vitamin D levels 53-55 ng/mL.⁷

Pearl

Vitamin D supplementation may protect against COVID-19 infection and has very low chance of harm at daily doses at or below 4,000 IU. Other benefits of taking vitamin D include bone protection and reduction in statin-induced myopathy. The main adverse effect is kidney stones.

Ms. Sharninghausen is a medical student at the University of Washington, Seattle. Dr. Paauw is professor of medicine in the division of general internal medicine at the University of Washington and serves as third-year medical student clerkship director at the University of Washington. He is a member of the editorial advisory board of Internal Medicine News. Dr. Paauw has no conflicts to disclose. Contact him at [email protected].

References

1. Merzon E et al. Low plasma 25(OH) vitamin D level is associated with increased risk of COVID‐19 infection: An Israeli population‐based study. FEBS J. 2020. doi: 10.1111/febs.15495.

2. Martineau AR et al. Vitamin D supplementation to prevent acute respiratory tract infections: Systematic review and meta-analysis of individual participant data. BMJ. 2017;356:i6583. doi:10.1136/bmj.i6583

3. “How to Get More Vitamin D From Your Food,” Cleveland Clinic. 2019 Oct 23. https://health.clevelandclinic.org/how-to-get-more-vitamin-d-from-your-food/.

4. Galior K et al. Development of vitamin d toxicity from overcorrection of vitamin D Deficiency: A review of case reports. Nutrients. 2018;10(8):953. doi: 10.3390/nu10080953

5. Shroff R et al. A bimodal association of vitamin D levels and vascular disease in children on dialysis. J Am Soc Nephrol. 2008;19(6):1239-46. doi: 10.1681/ASN.2007090993.

6. Avenell A et al. Vitamin D and vitamin D analogues for preventing fractures in post‐menopausal women and older men. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2014 Apr 14;2014(4):CD000227. doi: 10.1002/14651858.CD000227.pub4.

7. Khayznikov M et al. Statin intolerance because of myalgia, myositis, myopathy, or myonecrosis can in most cases be safely resolved by vitamin D supplementation. N Am J Med Sci. 2015;7(3):86-93. doi:10.4103/1947-2714.153919
 

Case: A 56-year-old man with a history of type 2 diabetes, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, and obesity calls clinic to discuss concerns about COVID-19, stating: “I want to do everything I can to reduce my risk of infection.” In addition to physical distancing, mask wearing, hand hygiene, and control of chronic conditions, which of the following supplements would you recommend for this patient?

1. Coenzyme Q10 160 mg twice a day

2. Vitamin D 2,000 IU daily

3. Vitamin E 400 IU daily

4. Vitamin B₁₂ 1,000 mcg daily

Of these choices, vitamin D supplementation is likely the best option, based on the limited data that is available.

Vitamin D has been implicated in the prevention of many disease processes, including acute respiratory infections. Risk factors for worse COVID-19 outcome, such as older age, obesity, and more pigmented skin are also risk factors for vitamin D deficiency. This makes the study of vitamin D and COVID-19 both challenging and relevant.

In a recent study of 7,807 people living in Israel, Merzon and colleagues found that low plasma vitamin D level was an independent risk factor for COVID-19 infection. Mean plasma vitamin D level was significantly lower among those who tested positive for COVID-19 (19.00 ng/mL) than negative (20.55 ng/ mL). After controlling for demographic variables and several medical conditions, the adjusted odds ratio of COVID-19 infection in those with lower vitamin D was 1.45 (95% confidence interval, 1.08-1.95; P < .001). However, the odds of hospitalization for COVID-19 was not significantly associated with vitamin D level.¹

yulka3ice/Getty Images

Prior studies have also looked at vitamin D and respiratory infection. Martineau and colleagues analyzed 25 randomized, controlled trials with a pooled number of 11,321 individuals, including healthy ones and those with comorbidities, and found that oral vitamin D supplementation in daily or weekly doses had a protective effect against acute respiratory infection (adjusted odds ratio, 0.88; 95% CI, 0.81-0.96; P < .001). Patients with vitamin D deficiency (less than 25 nmol/L) experienced the most protective benefit. Vitamin D did not influence respiratory infection outcome.²

These studies suggest an adequate vitamin D level may be protective against infection with COVID-19, but who will benefit from vitamin D supplementation, and in what dose? Per U.S. Preventive Services Task Force guidelines, there is insufficient evidence to recommend screening for vitamin D deficiency in asymptomatic adults. Regarding daily dietary intake, the Institute of Medicine recommends 600 IU for persons aged 1-70, and 800 IU for those aged over 70 years. Salmon (447 IU per 3 oz serving), tuna (154 IU), and fortified milk (116 IU) are among the most vitamin D–rich foods.³ The recommended upper level of intake is 4,000 IU/day.
 

Too much of a good thing?

Extra vitamin D is stored in adipose tissue. If it builds up over time, storage sites may be overwhelmed, causing a rise in serum D level. While one might expect a subsequent rise in calcium levels, studies have shown this happens inconsistently, and at very high vitamin D levels, over 120 ng/mL.⁴ Most people would have to take at least 50,000 IU daily for several months to see an effect. The main adverse outcome of vitamin D toxicity is kidney stones, mediated by increased calcium in the blood and urine.

Several animal models have demonstrated hypervitaminosis D–induced aortic and coronary artery calcification. Like with kidney stones, the mechanism appears to be through increased calcium and phosphate levels. Shroff and colleagues studied serum vitamin D levels and vascular disease in children with renal disease on dialysis and found a U-shaped distribution: Children with both low and high vitamin D levels had significantly increased carotid artery intima-media thickness and calcification.⁵ Given the specialized nature of this population, it’s unclear whether these results can be generalized to most people. More studies are warranted on this topic.
 

Other benefits

Vitamin D is perhaps most famous for helping to build strong bones. Avenell and colleagues performed a Cochrane meta-analysis of vitamin D supplementation in older adults and found that vitamin D alone did not significantly reduce the risk of hip or other new fracture. Vitamin D plus calcium supplementation did reduce the risk of hip fracture (nine trials, pooled number of individuals was 49,853; relative risk, 0.84; P = .01).⁶

A lesser-known benefit of vitamin D is muscle protection. A prospective study out of the Jewish Hospital of Cincinnati followed 146 adults who were intolerant to two or more statins because of muscle side effects and found to have a vitamin D level below 32 ng per mL. Subjects were given vitamin D replacement (50,000 units weekly) and followed for 2 years. On statin rechallenge, 88-95% tolerated a statin with vitamin D levels 53-55 ng/mL.⁷

Pearl

Vitamin D supplementation may protect against COVID-19 infection and has very low chance of harm at daily doses at or below 4,000 IU. Other benefits of taking vitamin D include bone protection and reduction in statin-induced myopathy. The main adverse effect is kidney stones.

Ms. Sharninghausen is a medical student at the University of Washington, Seattle. Dr. Paauw is professor of medicine in the division of general internal medicine at the University of Washington and serves as third-year medical student clerkship director at the University of Washington. He is a member of the editorial advisory board of Internal Medicine News. Dr. Paauw has no conflicts to disclose. Contact him at [email protected].

References

1. Merzon E et al. Low plasma 25(OH) vitamin D level is associated with increased risk of COVID‐19 infection: An Israeli population‐based study. FEBS J. 2020. doi: 10.1111/febs.15495.

2. Martineau AR et al. Vitamin D supplementation to prevent acute respiratory tract infections: Systematic review and meta-analysis of individual participant data. BMJ. 2017;356:i6583. doi:10.1136/bmj.i6583

3. “How to Get More Vitamin D From Your Food,” Cleveland Clinic. 2019 Oct 23. https://health.clevelandclinic.org/how-to-get-more-vitamin-d-from-your-food/.

4. Galior K et al. Development of vitamin d toxicity from overcorrection of vitamin D Deficiency: A review of case reports. Nutrients. 2018;10(8):953. doi: 10.3390/nu10080953

5. Shroff R et al. A bimodal association of vitamin D levels and vascular disease in children on dialysis. J Am Soc Nephrol. 2008;19(6):1239-46. doi: 10.1681/ASN.2007090993.

6. Avenell A et al. Vitamin D and vitamin D analogues for preventing fractures in post‐menopausal women and older men. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2014 Apr 14;2014(4):CD000227. doi: 10.1002/14651858.CD000227.pub4.

7. Khayznikov M et al. Statin intolerance because of myalgia, myositis, myopathy, or myonecrosis can in most cases be safely resolved by vitamin D supplementation. N Am J Med Sci. 2015;7(3):86-93. doi:10.4103/1947-2714.153919
 

Case: A 56-year-old man with a history of type 2 diabetes, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, and obesity calls clinic to discuss concerns about COVID-19, stating: “I want to do everything I can to reduce my risk of infection.” In addition to physical distancing, mask wearing, hand hygiene, and control of chronic conditions, which of the following supplements would you recommend for this patient?

1. Coenzyme Q10 160 mg twice a day

2. Vitamin D 2,000 IU daily

3. Vitamin E 400 IU daily

4. Vitamin B₁₂ 1,000 mcg daily

Of these choices, vitamin D supplementation is likely the best option, based on the limited data that is available.

Vitamin D has been implicated in the prevention of many disease processes, including acute respiratory infections. Risk factors for worse COVID-19 outcome, such as older age, obesity, and more pigmented skin are also risk factors for vitamin D deficiency. This makes the study of vitamin D and COVID-19 both challenging and relevant.

In a recent study of 7,807 people living in Israel, Merzon and colleagues found that low plasma vitamin D level was an independent risk factor for COVID-19 infection. Mean plasma vitamin D level was significantly lower among those who tested positive for COVID-19 (19.00 ng/mL) than negative (20.55 ng/ mL). After controlling for demographic variables and several medical conditions, the adjusted odds ratio of COVID-19 infection in those with lower vitamin D was 1.45 (95% confidence interval, 1.08-1.95; P < .001). However, the odds of hospitalization for COVID-19 was not significantly associated with vitamin D level.¹

yulka3ice/Getty Images

Prior studies have also looked at vitamin D and respiratory infection. Martineau and colleagues analyzed 25 randomized, controlled trials with a pooled number of 11,321 individuals, including healthy ones and those with comorbidities, and found that oral vitamin D supplementation in daily or weekly doses had a protective effect against acute respiratory infection (adjusted odds ratio, 0.88; 95% CI, 0.81-0.96; P < .001). Patients with vitamin D deficiency (less than 25 nmol/L) experienced the most protective benefit. Vitamin D did not influence respiratory infection outcome.²

These studies suggest an adequate vitamin D level may be protective against infection with COVID-19, but who will benefit from vitamin D supplementation, and in what dose? Per U.S. Preventive Services Task Force guidelines, there is insufficient evidence to recommend screening for vitamin D deficiency in asymptomatic adults. Regarding daily dietary intake, the Institute of Medicine recommends 600 IU for persons aged 1-70, and 800 IU for those aged over 70 years. Salmon (447 IU per 3 oz serving), tuna (154 IU), and fortified milk (116 IU) are among the most vitamin D–rich foods.³ The recommended upper level of intake is 4,000 IU/day.
 

Too much of a good thing?

Extra vitamin D is stored in adipose tissue. If it builds up over time, storage sites may be overwhelmed, causing a rise in serum D level. While one might expect a subsequent rise in calcium levels, studies have shown this happens inconsistently, and at very high vitamin D levels, over 120 ng/mL.⁴ Most people would have to take at least 50,000 IU daily for several months to see an effect. The main adverse outcome of vitamin D toxicity is kidney stones, mediated by increased calcium in the blood and urine.

Several animal models have demonstrated hypervitaminosis D–induced aortic and coronary artery calcification. Like with kidney stones, the mechanism appears to be through increased calcium and phosphate levels. Shroff and colleagues studied serum vitamin D levels and vascular disease in children with renal disease on dialysis and found a U-shaped distribution: Children with both low and high vitamin D levels had significantly increased carotid artery intima-media thickness and calcification.⁵ Given the specialized nature of this population, it’s unclear whether these results can be generalized to most people. More studies are warranted on this topic.
 

Other benefits

Vitamin D is perhaps most famous for helping to build strong bones. Avenell and colleagues performed a Cochrane meta-analysis of vitamin D supplementation in older adults and found that vitamin D alone did not significantly reduce the risk of hip or other new fracture. Vitamin D plus calcium supplementation did reduce the risk of hip fracture (nine trials, pooled number of individuals was 49,853; relative risk, 0.84; P = .01).⁶

A lesser-known benefit of vitamin D is muscle protection. A prospective study out of the Jewish Hospital of Cincinnati followed 146 adults who were intolerant to two or more statins because of muscle side effects and found to have a vitamin D level below 32 ng per mL. Subjects were given vitamin D replacement (50,000 units weekly) and followed for 2 years. On statin rechallenge, 88-95% tolerated a statin with vitamin D levels 53-55 ng/mL.⁷

Pearl

Vitamin D supplementation may protect against COVID-19 infection and has very low chance of harm at daily doses at or below 4,000 IU. Other benefits of taking vitamin D include bone protection and reduction in statin-induced myopathy. The main adverse effect is kidney stones.

Ms. Sharninghausen is a medical student at the University of Washington, Seattle. Dr. Paauw is professor of medicine in the division of general internal medicine at the University of Washington and serves as third-year medical student clerkship director at the University of Washington. He is a member of the editorial advisory board of Internal Medicine News. Dr. Paauw has no conflicts to disclose. Contact him at [email protected].

References

1. Merzon E et al. Low plasma 25(OH) vitamin D level is associated with increased risk of COVID‐19 infection: An Israeli population‐based study. FEBS J. 2020. doi: 10.1111/febs.15495.

2. Martineau AR et al. Vitamin D supplementation to prevent acute respiratory tract infections: Systematic review and meta-analysis of individual participant data. BMJ. 2017;356:i6583. doi:10.1136/bmj.i6583

3. “How to Get More Vitamin D From Your Food,” Cleveland Clinic. 2019 Oct 23. https://health.clevelandclinic.org/how-to-get-more-vitamin-d-from-your-food/.

4. Galior K et al. Development of vitamin d toxicity from overcorrection of vitamin D Deficiency: A review of case reports. Nutrients. 2018;10(8):953. doi: 10.3390/nu10080953

5. Shroff R et al. A bimodal association of vitamin D levels and vascular disease in children on dialysis. J Am Soc Nephrol. 2008;19(6):1239-46. doi: 10.1681/ASN.2007090993.

6. Avenell A et al. Vitamin D and vitamin D analogues for preventing fractures in post‐menopausal women and older men. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2014 Apr 14;2014(4):CD000227. doi: 10.1002/14651858.CD000227.pub4.

7. Khayznikov M et al. Statin intolerance because of myalgia, myositis, myopathy, or myonecrosis can in most cases be safely resolved by vitamin D supplementation. N Am J Med Sci. 2015;7(3):86-93. doi:10.4103/1947-2714.153919
 

In a previous column, I addressed some of the issues that quickly arose in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and their implications for reproductive psychiatry. These issues ranged from the importance of sustaining well-being in pregnant and postpartum women during the pandemic, to temporary restrictions that were in place during the early part of the pandemic with respect to performing infertility procedures, to the practical issues of limiting the number of people who could attend to women during labor and delivery in the hospital.

lechatnoir/E+

Five months later, we’ve learned a great deal about trying to sustain emotional well-being among pregnant women during COVID-19. There is a high rate of anxiety among women who are pregnant and women who have particularly young children around the various issues of juggling activities of daily living during the pandemic, including switching to remote work and homeschooling children. There is fear of contracting COVID-19 during pregnancy, the exact effects of which are still somewhat unknown. We have seen a shift to telemedicine for prenatal and postpartum obstetrics visits, and a change with respect to visitors and even in-home nurses that would help during the first weeks of life for some couples.

We wondered whether we would see a falloff in the numbers of women presenting to our clinic with questions about the reproductive safety of taking psychiatric medications during pregnancy. We were unclear as to whether women would defer plans to get pregnant given some of the uncertainties that have come with COVID-19. What we’ve seen, at least early on in the pandemic in Massachusetts, has been the opposite. More women during the first 4 months of the pandemic have been seen in our center compared with the same corresponding period over the last 5 years. The precise reasons for this are unclear, but one reason may be that shifting the practice of reproductive psychiatry and pregnancy planning for reproductive-age women to full virtual care has dropped the number of missed appointments to essentially zero. Women perhaps feel an urgency to have a plan for using psychiatric medication during pregnancy. They may also see the benefit of being able to have extended telemedicine consultations that frequently involve their partners, a practice we have always supported, but posed logistical challenges for some.

As our colleagues learned that we had shifted our clinical rounds at the Center for Women’s Mental Health, which we’ve been doing for 25 years, to a virtual format, we began offering a free 1-hour forum to discuss relevant issues around caring for psychiatrically ill women, with a focus on some of the issues that were particularly relevant during the pandemic. The most common reasons for consultation on our service are the appropriate, safest use of antidepressants and mood stabilizers during pregnancy, and that continues to be the case.

If there has been one guiding principle in treating perinatal depression during pregnancy, it has been our long-standing, laser-like focus on keeping women emotionally well during pregnancy, and to highlight the importance of this with women during consultations prior to and during pregnancy. Relapse of psychiatric disorder during pregnancy is one the strongest predictors of postpartum depression, and the impact of untreated depression during pregnancy has been described in the literature and over the years in this column. However, the implications of having severe relapse of a mood disorder, for example, such as depression or bipolar disorder during the pandemic, takes on a new context where we want to minimize, if possible, severe onset of illness requiring hospitalization or emergent attention considering it may make social distancing and some of the other mitigating factors vis-à-vis COVID-19 more challenging.

Despite the accumulated data over the last 2 decades on the reproductive safety of antidepressants, women continue to have questions about the safety of these medications during pregnancy. Studies show now that many women would prefer, if at all possible, to defer treatment with antidepressants, and so they come to us with questions about their reproductive safety, the potential of switching to nonpharmacologic interventions, and the use of alternative interventions that might be used to treat their underlying mood disorder.

Investigators at the University of British Columbia recently have tried to inform the field with still another look, not at reproductive safety per se, but at risk of relapse of depression if women discontinue those medicines during pregnancy.¹ There is a timeliness to this investigation, which was a systematic review and meta-analysis of studies that met a priori criteria for inclusion. Since some of our own group’s early work over 15 years ago on relapse of psychiatric disorder during pregnancy,² which indicated a substantial difference in risk of relapse between women who continued versus who discontinued antidepressants, other investigators have showed the difference in risk for relapse is not as substantial, and that continuation of medication did not appear to mitigate risk for relapse. In fact, in the systematic review, the investigators demonstrated that as a group, maintaining medicine did not appear to confer particular benefit to patients relative to risk for relapse compared to discontinuation of antidepressants.

However, looking more closely, Bayrampour and colleagues note for women with histories of more severe recurrent, major depression, relapse did in fact appear to be greater in women who discontinued compared with those with cases of mild to moderate depression. It is noteworthy that in both our early and later work, and certainly dovetailing with our clinical practice, we have noted severity of illness does not appear to correlate with the actual decisions women ultimately make regarding what they will do with antidepressants. Specifically, some women with very severe illness histories will discontinue antidepressants regardless of their risk for relapse. Alternatively, women with mild to moderate illness will sometimes elect to stay on antidepressant therapy. With all the information that we have about fetal exposure to antidepressants on one hand, the “unknown unknowns” are an understandable concern to both patients and clinicians. Clinicians are faced with the dilemma of how to best counsel women on continuing or discontinuing antidepressants as they plan to conceive or during pregnancy and in the postpartum period.

The literature cited and clinical experience over the last 3 decades suggests rather strongly that there is a relatively low likelihood women with histories of severe recurrent disease will be able to successfully discontinue antidepressants in the absence of relapse. A greater question is, what is the best way to proceed for women who have been on maintenance therapy and had more moderate symptoms?

I am inspired by some of the more recent literature that has tried to elucidate the role of nonpharmacologic interventions such as mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) in an effort to mitigate risk for depressive relapse in pregnant women who are well with histories of depression. To date, data do not inform the question as to whether MBCT can be used to mitigate risk of depressive relapse in pregnant women who continue or discontinue antidepressants. That research question is actively being studied by several investigators, including ourselves.

Of particular interest is whether the addition of mindfulness practices such as MBCT in treatment could mitigate risk for depressive relapse in pregnant women who continue or discontinue antidepressant treatment, as that would certainly be a no-harm intervention that could mitigate risk even in a lower risk sample of patients. The question of how to “thread the needle” during the pandemic and best approach woman with a history of recurrent major depression on antidepressants is particularly timely and critical.

Regardless, we make clinical decisions collaboratively with patients based on their histories and individual wishes, and perhaps what we have learned over the last 5 months is the use of telemedicine does afford us the opportunity, regardless of the decisions that patients make, to more closely follow the clinical trajectory of women during pregnancy and the postpartum period so that regardless of treatment, we have an opportunity to intervene early when needed and to ascertain changes in clinical status early to mitigate the risk of frank relapse. From a reproductive psychiatric point of view, that is a silver lining with respect to the associated challenges that have come along with the pandemic.
 

Dr. Cohen is the director of the Ammon-Pinizzotto Center for Women’s Mental Health at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, which provides information resources and conducts clinical care and research in reproductive mental health. He has been a consultant to manufacturers of psychiatric medications. Email Dr. Cohen at [email protected].

References

1. J Clin Psychiatry 2020;81(4):19r13134.

2. JAMA. 2006 Feb 1;295(5):499-507.

In a previous column, I addressed some of the issues that quickly arose in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and their implications for reproductive psychiatry. These issues ranged from the importance of sustaining well-being in pregnant and postpartum women during the pandemic, to temporary restrictions that were in place during the early part of the pandemic with respect to performing infertility procedures, to the practical issues of limiting the number of people who could attend to women during labor and delivery in the hospital.

lechatnoir/E+

Five months later, we’ve learned a great deal about trying to sustain emotional well-being among pregnant women during COVID-19. There is a high rate of anxiety among women who are pregnant and women who have particularly young children around the various issues of juggling activities of daily living during the pandemic, including switching to remote work and homeschooling children. There is fear of contracting COVID-19 during pregnancy, the exact effects of which are still somewhat unknown. We have seen a shift to telemedicine for prenatal and postpartum obstetrics visits, and a change with respect to visitors and even in-home nurses that would help during the first weeks of life for some couples.

We wondered whether we would see a falloff in the numbers of women presenting to our clinic with questions about the reproductive safety of taking psychiatric medications during pregnancy. We were unclear as to whether women would defer plans to get pregnant given some of the uncertainties that have come with COVID-19. What we’ve seen, at least early on in the pandemic in Massachusetts, has been the opposite. More women during the first 4 months of the pandemic have been seen in our center compared with the same corresponding period over the last 5 years. The precise reasons for this are unclear, but one reason may be that shifting the practice of reproductive psychiatry and pregnancy planning for reproductive-age women to full virtual care has dropped the number of missed appointments to essentially zero. Women perhaps feel an urgency to have a plan for using psychiatric medication during pregnancy. They may also see the benefit of being able to have extended telemedicine consultations that frequently involve their partners, a practice we have always supported, but posed logistical challenges for some.

As our colleagues learned that we had shifted our clinical rounds at the Center for Women’s Mental Health, which we’ve been doing for 25 years, to a virtual format, we began offering a free 1-hour forum to discuss relevant issues around caring for psychiatrically ill women, with a focus on some of the issues that were particularly relevant during the pandemic. The most common reasons for consultation on our service are the appropriate, safest use of antidepressants and mood stabilizers during pregnancy, and that continues to be the case.

If there has been one guiding principle in treating perinatal depression during pregnancy, it has been our long-standing, laser-like focus on keeping women emotionally well during pregnancy, and to highlight the importance of this with women during consultations prior to and during pregnancy. Relapse of psychiatric disorder during pregnancy is one the strongest predictors of postpartum depression, and the impact of untreated depression during pregnancy has been described in the literature and over the years in this column. However, the implications of having severe relapse of a mood disorder, for example, such as depression or bipolar disorder during the pandemic, takes on a new context where we want to minimize, if possible, severe onset of illness requiring hospitalization or emergent attention considering it may make social distancing and some of the other mitigating factors vis-à-vis COVID-19 more challenging.

Despite the accumulated data over the last 2 decades on the reproductive safety of antidepressants, women continue to have questions about the safety of these medications during pregnancy. Studies show now that many women would prefer, if at all possible, to defer treatment with antidepressants, and so they come to us with questions about their reproductive safety, the potential of switching to nonpharmacologic interventions, and the use of alternative interventions that might be used to treat their underlying mood disorder.

Investigators at the University of British Columbia recently have tried to inform the field with still another look, not at reproductive safety per se, but at risk of relapse of depression if women discontinue those medicines during pregnancy.¹ There is a timeliness to this investigation, which was a systematic review and meta-analysis of studies that met a priori criteria for inclusion. Since some of our own group’s early work over 15 years ago on relapse of psychiatric disorder during pregnancy,² which indicated a substantial difference in risk of relapse between women who continued versus who discontinued antidepressants, other investigators have showed the difference in risk for relapse is not as substantial, and that continuation of medication did not appear to mitigate risk for relapse. In fact, in the systematic review, the investigators demonstrated that as a group, maintaining medicine did not appear to confer particular benefit to patients relative to risk for relapse compared to discontinuation of antidepressants.

However, looking more closely, Bayrampour and colleagues note for women with histories of more severe recurrent, major depression, relapse did in fact appear to be greater in women who discontinued compared with those with cases of mild to moderate depression. It is noteworthy that in both our early and later work, and certainly dovetailing with our clinical practice, we have noted severity of illness does not appear to correlate with the actual decisions women ultimately make regarding what they will do with antidepressants. Specifically, some women with very severe illness histories will discontinue antidepressants regardless of their risk for relapse. Alternatively, women with mild to moderate illness will sometimes elect to stay on antidepressant therapy. With all the information that we have about fetal exposure to antidepressants on one hand, the “unknown unknowns” are an understandable concern to both patients and clinicians. Clinicians are faced with the dilemma of how to best counsel women on continuing or discontinuing antidepressants as they plan to conceive or during pregnancy and in the postpartum period.

The literature cited and clinical experience over the last 3 decades suggests rather strongly that there is a relatively low likelihood women with histories of severe recurrent disease will be able to successfully discontinue antidepressants in the absence of relapse. A greater question is, what is the best way to proceed for women who have been on maintenance therapy and had more moderate symptoms?

I am inspired by some of the more recent literature that has tried to elucidate the role of nonpharmacologic interventions such as mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) in an effort to mitigate risk for depressive relapse in pregnant women who are well with histories of depression. To date, data do not inform the question as to whether MBCT can be used to mitigate risk of depressive relapse in pregnant women who continue or discontinue antidepressants. That research question is actively being studied by several investigators, including ourselves.

Of particular interest is whether the addition of mindfulness practices such as MBCT in treatment could mitigate risk for depressive relapse in pregnant women who continue or discontinue antidepressant treatment, as that would certainly be a no-harm intervention that could mitigate risk even in a lower risk sample of patients. The question of how to “thread the needle” during the pandemic and best approach woman with a history of recurrent major depression on antidepressants is particularly timely and critical.

Regardless, we make clinical decisions collaboratively with patients based on their histories and individual wishes, and perhaps what we have learned over the last 5 months is the use of telemedicine does afford us the opportunity, regardless of the decisions that patients make, to more closely follow the clinical trajectory of women during pregnancy and the postpartum period so that regardless of treatment, we have an opportunity to intervene early when needed and to ascertain changes in clinical status early to mitigate the risk of frank relapse. From a reproductive psychiatric point of view, that is a silver lining with respect to the associated challenges that have come along with the pandemic.
 

Dr. Cohen is the director of the Ammon-Pinizzotto Center for Women’s Mental Health at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, which provides information resources and conducts clinical care and research in reproductive mental health. He has been a consultant to manufacturers of psychiatric medications. Email Dr. Cohen at [email protected].

References

1. J Clin Psychiatry 2020;81(4):19r13134.

2. JAMA. 2006 Feb 1;295(5):499-507.

In a previous column, I addressed some of the issues that quickly arose in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and their implications for reproductive psychiatry. These issues ranged from the importance of sustaining well-being in pregnant and postpartum women during the pandemic, to temporary restrictions that were in place during the early part of the pandemic with respect to performing infertility procedures, to the practical issues of limiting the number of people who could attend to women during labor and delivery in the hospital.

lechatnoir/E+

Five months later, we’ve learned a great deal about trying to sustain emotional well-being among pregnant women during COVID-19. There is a high rate of anxiety among women who are pregnant and women who have particularly young children around the various issues of juggling activities of daily living during the pandemic, including switching to remote work and homeschooling children. There is fear of contracting COVID-19 during pregnancy, the exact effects of which are still somewhat unknown. We have seen a shift to telemedicine for prenatal and postpartum obstetrics visits, and a change with respect to visitors and even in-home nurses that would help during the first weeks of life for some couples.

We wondered whether we would see a falloff in the numbers of women presenting to our clinic with questions about the reproductive safety of taking psychiatric medications during pregnancy. We were unclear as to whether women would defer plans to get pregnant given some of the uncertainties that have come with COVID-19. What we’ve seen, at least early on in the pandemic in Massachusetts, has been the opposite. More women during the first 4 months of the pandemic have been seen in our center compared with the same corresponding period over the last 5 years. The precise reasons for this are unclear, but one reason may be that shifting the practice of reproductive psychiatry and pregnancy planning for reproductive-age women to full virtual care has dropped the number of missed appointments to essentially zero. Women perhaps feel an urgency to have a plan for using psychiatric medication during pregnancy. They may also see the benefit of being able to have extended telemedicine consultations that frequently involve their partners, a practice we have always supported, but posed logistical challenges for some.

As our colleagues learned that we had shifted our clinical rounds at the Center for Women’s Mental Health, which we’ve been doing for 25 years, to a virtual format, we began offering a free 1-hour forum to discuss relevant issues around caring for psychiatrically ill women, with a focus on some of the issues that were particularly relevant during the pandemic. The most common reasons for consultation on our service are the appropriate, safest use of antidepressants and mood stabilizers during pregnancy, and that continues to be the case.

If there has been one guiding principle in treating perinatal depression during pregnancy, it has been our long-standing, laser-like focus on keeping women emotionally well during pregnancy, and to highlight the importance of this with women during consultations prior to and during pregnancy. Relapse of psychiatric disorder during pregnancy is one the strongest predictors of postpartum depression, and the impact of untreated depression during pregnancy has been described in the literature and over the years in this column. However, the implications of having severe relapse of a mood disorder, for example, such as depression or bipolar disorder during the pandemic, takes on a new context where we want to minimize, if possible, severe onset of illness requiring hospitalization or emergent attention considering it may make social distancing and some of the other mitigating factors vis-à-vis COVID-19 more challenging.

Despite the accumulated data over the last 2 decades on the reproductive safety of antidepressants, women continue to have questions about the safety of these medications during pregnancy. Studies show now that many women would prefer, if at all possible, to defer treatment with antidepressants, and so they come to us with questions about their reproductive safety, the potential of switching to nonpharmacologic interventions, and the use of alternative interventions that might be used to treat their underlying mood disorder.

Investigators at the University of British Columbia recently have tried to inform the field with still another look, not at reproductive safety per se, but at risk of relapse of depression if women discontinue those medicines during pregnancy.¹ There is a timeliness to this investigation, which was a systematic review and meta-analysis of studies that met a priori criteria for inclusion. Since some of our own group’s early work over 15 years ago on relapse of psychiatric disorder during pregnancy,² which indicated a substantial difference in risk of relapse between women who continued versus who discontinued antidepressants, other investigators have showed the difference in risk for relapse is not as substantial, and that continuation of medication did not appear to mitigate risk for relapse. In fact, in the systematic review, the investigators demonstrated that as a group, maintaining medicine did not appear to confer particular benefit to patients relative to risk for relapse compared to discontinuation of antidepressants.

However, looking more closely, Bayrampour and colleagues note for women with histories of more severe recurrent, major depression, relapse did in fact appear to be greater in women who discontinued compared with those with cases of mild to moderate depression. It is noteworthy that in both our early and later work, and certainly dovetailing with our clinical practice, we have noted severity of illness does not appear to correlate with the actual decisions women ultimately make regarding what they will do with antidepressants. Specifically, some women with very severe illness histories will discontinue antidepressants regardless of their risk for relapse. Alternatively, women with mild to moderate illness will sometimes elect to stay on antidepressant therapy. With all the information that we have about fetal exposure to antidepressants on one hand, the “unknown unknowns” are an understandable concern to both patients and clinicians. Clinicians are faced with the dilemma of how to best counsel women on continuing or discontinuing antidepressants as they plan to conceive or during pregnancy and in the postpartum period.

The literature cited and clinical experience over the last 3 decades suggests rather strongly that there is a relatively low likelihood women with histories of severe recurrent disease will be able to successfully discontinue antidepressants in the absence of relapse. A greater question is, what is the best way to proceed for women who have been on maintenance therapy and had more moderate symptoms?

I am inspired by some of the more recent literature that has tried to elucidate the role of nonpharmacologic interventions such as mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) in an effort to mitigate risk for depressive relapse in pregnant women who are well with histories of depression. To date, data do not inform the question as to whether MBCT can be used to mitigate risk of depressive relapse in pregnant women who continue or discontinue antidepressants. That research question is actively being studied by several investigators, including ourselves.

Of particular interest is whether the addition of mindfulness practices such as MBCT in treatment could mitigate risk for depressive relapse in pregnant women who continue or discontinue antidepressant treatment, as that would certainly be a no-harm intervention that could mitigate risk even in a lower risk sample of patients. The question of how to “thread the needle” during the pandemic and best approach woman with a history of recurrent major depression on antidepressants is particularly timely and critical.

Regardless, we make clinical decisions collaboratively with patients based on their histories and individual wishes, and perhaps what we have learned over the last 5 months is the use of telemedicine does afford us the opportunity, regardless of the decisions that patients make, to more closely follow the clinical trajectory of women during pregnancy and the postpartum period so that regardless of treatment, we have an opportunity to intervene early when needed and to ascertain changes in clinical status early to mitigate the risk of frank relapse. From a reproductive psychiatric point of view, that is a silver lining with respect to the associated challenges that have come along with the pandemic.
 

Dr. Cohen is the director of the Ammon-Pinizzotto Center for Women’s Mental Health at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, which provides information resources and conducts clinical care and research in reproductive mental health. He has been a consultant to manufacturers of psychiatric medications. Email Dr. Cohen at [email protected].

References

1. J Clin Psychiatry 2020;81(4):19r13134.

2. JAMA. 2006 Feb 1;295(5):499-507.

The COVID-19 pandemic has, like it or not, made experimental labs rats out of us all.

Since the U.S. “shutdown” began in March, we have all had to adjust to a situation in which we are home more, stuck seeing less of our friends, exercising less, often eating and drinking more, or using recreational substances more – in part because of the severe stress. We have been ripped away from many of the social “anchors” of our weeks; that is, the spiritual, social and physical, and tactile supports that sustain and motivate us in our lives.

And yet, many of us, of all ages, stripes, and colors are thriving. Why is that so? Without necessarily being fully fledged, card carrying misanthropes, many of us are actually not bereft when forced to spend some alone time.

CANCER CIFTCI/Getty Images

We may be self-starters and have hobbies and interests that we may have neglected but can fall back on with alacrity. Activities such as gardening, cooking, reading, working at our day jobs, listening to music, streaming TV, and so on are now more available to us.

The pandemic has produced unforeseen side effects, such as decreased pollution, less seismic “noise” on our planet, increasingly bold activity by wild life, and we can actually hear bird songs in our yards. Likewise, the social isolation has enabled us to focus more on “back burner” projects and to motivate us toward accessing and achieving other internally driven goals.

Also, to many, it has provided a surprising and unexpected privilege to meaningfully connect while in close quarters with spouses, children, and other loved ones, which has improved and cemented relationships under some level of duress, perhaps.

Similarly, and perhaps surprisingly, in addition to the above reasons, many of our patients with chronic mental illness may be functioning reasonably well, too, even better than their “walking wounded” loved ones and peers. They may be reaping the rewards of many years of consistent biopsychosocial support in strong mental health programs.

But another reason might be the lowered expectations. As one stable patient with schizophrenia said, “No one is hassling me now; no one is aggravating me to go to this group or that, to leave the house to volunteer, to get a job. I’m just so much more relaxed; I’ve got this.” And certainly the Freudian “schadenfreude” defense has something to do with this as well. Seeing family members lose their jobs, become financially vulnerable, being unable to or stymied from demonstrating mastery in many different situations and skill sets elicit the empathy and galvanizes the support of well-managed patients with mental illness – already used to existential threats – for their generally higher functioning loved ones.

As one of my struggling patients said, “Welcome to my world!” Years of hardship, lack of intimate relationships because of social anxiety, and psychotic level obsessive-compulsive disorder have trained, indeed, inured her to the daily pain, constriction, and misery of social isolation. Her life, despite working full time, has remained static, while younger siblings have married, started a family, moved away. She is still living at home with her elderly parents. They now worry about catching COVID-19, while she is now their protector with roles reversed, doing their shopping, and providing moral support and encouragement for the whole family.

Many of us have lost jobs, been furloughed, seen our dreams disappear, and are unable to pay rent or mortgages. Those with chronic mental illness, especially those living in states with a strong social safety net, are continuing to receive their Social Security disability checks, and maintain their in-home health and family supports. They also have continued their adherence with the mental health system structure by continuing with telemedicine therapy and regular medications or monthly intramuscular shots. Their families are especially cognizant of the need for ongoing structure and stability, which is now easier to provide. And what of those patients who endured severe anxiety and panic disorders in their prepandemic states? It is true that many do require higher doses of their anxiolytics, especially benzodiazepines. They do know how to “roll with the punches” with their lifetime experience, as opposed to the “newbies” whose incipient anxiety is brought to the forefront and who might not even recognize these debilitating symptoms and are not keen, for reasons of stigma, to be seen by a mental health expert unless compelled to.

It is up to us as psychiatrists and other mental health clinicians to minimize dependence on those medications by using alternative non–dependence-forming anxiolytics and encouraging our patients to hone and develop the skills from cognitive-behavioral therapy. COVID-19 is just one more stressor, superimposed on many others, and unlikely to precipitate any “tipping point” in functioning, even if there are significant losses among loved ones to the virus.

How about our child and adolescent patients? As a rule of thumb, those with anxiety disorders, social anxiety, selective mutism – and those experiencing challenges and bullying in the rough and tumble world of schools – are doing significantly better. Those with ADHD and impulse control disorders, however, might be struggling with school, especially with Zoom calls and very high distractibility, boredom, and motivational challenges. They may need their doses of medications adjusted up, and their parents are struggling. The risk for unwitnessed and unmonitored abuse in home situations is higher.

Those with chronic mental illness often do have increased risk factors for COVID-19 that might be compounded by their psychopharmacologic treatment for conditions/behaviors such as diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, and substance use. By proactively monitoring those comorbid disorders in a multimodal treatment program, we can help mitigate those baseline challenges.

This aspect of the COVID-19 pandemic is, alas, likely to prove to be an illusory positive “blip” on the radar screen for many with chronic mental illness. Nevertheless, the self-knowledge and awareness of hidden strengths rather than weakness, resilience rather than shrinking from challenges, is not insignificant. This “flight into normality” may be a change that can be internalized and nurtured once vaccines are available and life on planet Earth returns to a new normal.
 

Dr. Tofler is affiliated with Kaiser Permanente Psychiatry in Los Angeles. He also is a visiting faculty member in the department of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Tofler has no conflicts of interest.

The COVID-19 pandemic has, like it or not, made experimental labs rats out of us all.

Since the U.S. “shutdown” began in March, we have all had to adjust to a situation in which we are home more, stuck seeing less of our friends, exercising less, often eating and drinking more, or using recreational substances more – in part because of the severe stress. We have been ripped away from many of the social “anchors” of our weeks; that is, the spiritual, social and physical, and tactile supports that sustain and motivate us in our lives.

And yet, many of us, of all ages, stripes, and colors are thriving. Why is that so? Without necessarily being fully fledged, card carrying misanthropes, many of us are actually not bereft when forced to spend some alone time.

CANCER CIFTCI/Getty Images

We may be self-starters and have hobbies and interests that we may have neglected but can fall back on with alacrity. Activities such as gardening, cooking, reading, working at our day jobs, listening to music, streaming TV, and so on are now more available to us.

The pandemic has produced unforeseen side effects, such as decreased pollution, less seismic “noise” on our planet, increasingly bold activity by wild life, and we can actually hear bird songs in our yards. Likewise, the social isolation has enabled us to focus more on “back burner” projects and to motivate us toward accessing and achieving other internally driven goals.

Also, to many, it has provided a surprising and unexpected privilege to meaningfully connect while in close quarters with spouses, children, and other loved ones, which has improved and cemented relationships under some level of duress, perhaps.

Similarly, and perhaps surprisingly, in addition to the above reasons, many of our patients with chronic mental illness may be functioning reasonably well, too, even better than their “walking wounded” loved ones and peers. They may be reaping the rewards of many years of consistent biopsychosocial support in strong mental health programs.

But another reason might be the lowered expectations. As one stable patient with schizophrenia said, “No one is hassling me now; no one is aggravating me to go to this group or that, to leave the house to volunteer, to get a job. I’m just so much more relaxed; I’ve got this.” And certainly the Freudian “schadenfreude” defense has something to do with this as well. Seeing family members lose their jobs, become financially vulnerable, being unable to or stymied from demonstrating mastery in many different situations and skill sets elicit the empathy and galvanizes the support of well-managed patients with mental illness – already used to existential threats – for their generally higher functioning loved ones.

As one of my struggling patients said, “Welcome to my world!” Years of hardship, lack of intimate relationships because of social anxiety, and psychotic level obsessive-compulsive disorder have trained, indeed, inured her to the daily pain, constriction, and misery of social isolation. Her life, despite working full time, has remained static, while younger siblings have married, started a family, moved away. She is still living at home with her elderly parents. They now worry about catching COVID-19, while she is now their protector with roles reversed, doing their shopping, and providing moral support and encouragement for the whole family.

Many of us have lost jobs, been furloughed, seen our dreams disappear, and are unable to pay rent or mortgages. Those with chronic mental illness, especially those living in states with a strong social safety net, are continuing to receive their Social Security disability checks, and maintain their in-home health and family supports. They also have continued their adherence with the mental health system structure by continuing with telemedicine therapy and regular medications or monthly intramuscular shots. Their families are especially cognizant of the need for ongoing structure and stability, which is now easier to provide. And what of those patients who endured severe anxiety and panic disorders in their prepandemic states? It is true that many do require higher doses of their anxiolytics, especially benzodiazepines. They do know how to “roll with the punches” with their lifetime experience, as opposed to the “newbies” whose incipient anxiety is brought to the forefront and who might not even recognize these debilitating symptoms and are not keen, for reasons of stigma, to be seen by a mental health expert unless compelled to.

It is up to us as psychiatrists and other mental health clinicians to minimize dependence on those medications by using alternative non–dependence-forming anxiolytics and encouraging our patients to hone and develop the skills from cognitive-behavioral therapy. COVID-19 is just one more stressor, superimposed on many others, and unlikely to precipitate any “tipping point” in functioning, even if there are significant losses among loved ones to the virus.

How about our child and adolescent patients? As a rule of thumb, those with anxiety disorders, social anxiety, selective mutism – and those experiencing challenges and bullying in the rough and tumble world of schools – are doing significantly better. Those with ADHD and impulse control disorders, however, might be struggling with school, especially with Zoom calls and very high distractibility, boredom, and motivational challenges. They may need their doses of medications adjusted up, and their parents are struggling. The risk for unwitnessed and unmonitored abuse in home situations is higher.

Those with chronic mental illness often do have increased risk factors for COVID-19 that might be compounded by their psychopharmacologic treatment for conditions/behaviors such as diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, and substance use. By proactively monitoring those comorbid disorders in a multimodal treatment program, we can help mitigate those baseline challenges.

This aspect of the COVID-19 pandemic is, alas, likely to prove to be an illusory positive “blip” on the radar screen for many with chronic mental illness. Nevertheless, the self-knowledge and awareness of hidden strengths rather than weakness, resilience rather than shrinking from challenges, is not insignificant. This “flight into normality” may be a change that can be internalized and nurtured once vaccines are available and life on planet Earth returns to a new normal.
 

Dr. Tofler is affiliated with Kaiser Permanente Psychiatry in Los Angeles. He also is a visiting faculty member in the department of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Tofler has no conflicts of interest.

The COVID-19 pandemic has, like it or not, made experimental labs rats out of us all.

Since the U.S. “shutdown” began in March, we have all had to adjust to a situation in which we are home more, stuck seeing less of our friends, exercising less, often eating and drinking more, or using recreational substances more – in part because of the severe stress. We have been ripped away from many of the social “anchors” of our weeks; that is, the spiritual, social and physical, and tactile supports that sustain and motivate us in our lives.

And yet, many of us, of all ages, stripes, and colors are thriving. Why is that so? Without necessarily being fully fledged, card carrying misanthropes, many of us are actually not bereft when forced to spend some alone time.

CANCER CIFTCI/Getty Images

We may be self-starters and have hobbies and interests that we may have neglected but can fall back on with alacrity. Activities such as gardening, cooking, reading, working at our day jobs, listening to music, streaming TV, and so on are now more available to us.

The pandemic has produced unforeseen side effects, such as decreased pollution, less seismic “noise” on our planet, increasingly bold activity by wild life, and we can actually hear bird songs in our yards. Likewise, the social isolation has enabled us to focus more on “back burner” projects and to motivate us toward accessing and achieving other internally driven goals.

Also, to many, it has provided a surprising and unexpected privilege to meaningfully connect while in close quarters with spouses, children, and other loved ones, which has improved and cemented relationships under some level of duress, perhaps.

Similarly, and perhaps surprisingly, in addition to the above reasons, many of our patients with chronic mental illness may be functioning reasonably well, too, even better than their “walking wounded” loved ones and peers. They may be reaping the rewards of many years of consistent biopsychosocial support in strong mental health programs.

But another reason might be the lowered expectations. As one stable patient with schizophrenia said, “No one is hassling me now; no one is aggravating me to go to this group or that, to leave the house to volunteer, to get a job. I’m just so much more relaxed; I’ve got this.” And certainly the Freudian “schadenfreude” defense has something to do with this as well. Seeing family members lose their jobs, become financially vulnerable, being unable to or stymied from demonstrating mastery in many different situations and skill sets elicit the empathy and galvanizes the support of well-managed patients with mental illness – already used to existential threats – for their generally higher functioning loved ones.

As one of my struggling patients said, “Welcome to my world!” Years of hardship, lack of intimate relationships because of social anxiety, and psychotic level obsessive-compulsive disorder have trained, indeed, inured her to the daily pain, constriction, and misery of social isolation. Her life, despite working full time, has remained static, while younger siblings have married, started a family, moved away. She is still living at home with her elderly parents. They now worry about catching COVID-19, while she is now their protector with roles reversed, doing their shopping, and providing moral support and encouragement for the whole family.

Many of us have lost jobs, been furloughed, seen our dreams disappear, and are unable to pay rent or mortgages. Those with chronic mental illness, especially those living in states with a strong social safety net, are continuing to receive their Social Security disability checks, and maintain their in-home health and family supports. They also have continued their adherence with the mental health system structure by continuing with telemedicine therapy and regular medications or monthly intramuscular shots. Their families are especially cognizant of the need for ongoing structure and stability, which is now easier to provide. And what of those patients who endured severe anxiety and panic disorders in their prepandemic states? It is true that many do require higher doses of their anxiolytics, especially benzodiazepines. They do know how to “roll with the punches” with their lifetime experience, as opposed to the “newbies” whose incipient anxiety is brought to the forefront and who might not even recognize these debilitating symptoms and are not keen, for reasons of stigma, to be seen by a mental health expert unless compelled to.

It is up to us as psychiatrists and other mental health clinicians to minimize dependence on those medications by using alternative non–dependence-forming anxiolytics and encouraging our patients to hone and develop the skills from cognitive-behavioral therapy. COVID-19 is just one more stressor, superimposed on many others, and unlikely to precipitate any “tipping point” in functioning, even if there are significant losses among loved ones to the virus.

How about our child and adolescent patients? As a rule of thumb, those with anxiety disorders, social anxiety, selective mutism – and those experiencing challenges and bullying in the rough and tumble world of schools – are doing significantly better. Those with ADHD and impulse control disorders, however, might be struggling with school, especially with Zoom calls and very high distractibility, boredom, and motivational challenges. They may need their doses of medications adjusted up, and their parents are struggling. The risk for unwitnessed and unmonitored abuse in home situations is higher.

Those with chronic mental illness often do have increased risk factors for COVID-19 that might be compounded by their psychopharmacologic treatment for conditions/behaviors such as diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, and substance use. By proactively monitoring those comorbid disorders in a multimodal treatment program, we can help mitigate those baseline challenges.

This aspect of the COVID-19 pandemic is, alas, likely to prove to be an illusory positive “blip” on the radar screen for many with chronic mental illness. Nevertheless, the self-knowledge and awareness of hidden strengths rather than weakness, resilience rather than shrinking from challenges, is not insignificant. This “flight into normality” may be a change that can be internalized and nurtured once vaccines are available and life on planet Earth returns to a new normal.
 

Dr. Tofler is affiliated with Kaiser Permanente Psychiatry in Los Angeles. He also is a visiting faculty member in the department of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Tofler has no conflicts of interest.

I wrote these poems in mid-March, when fear of COVID-19 struck and New York City locked down. Nearly a half-year later, the impact continues with uncertainty everywhere.

Before and After

Before – there were trees,

I hardly noticed them.

There were buses and newspapers.

Should I read a book or the Post?

Am I wasting time looking

out the window at crowds

milling into Central Park?

The tourists walk to Strawberry Fields,

and the bus turns to Central Park West.

I hardly noticed

because I had plans.

After – it ended, first slowly,

then abruptly. We sat together

in the shop, knitting,

only three of us

before the store shut.

After that –

In the park daffodils radiate gold

and grow in groups.

And the magnolia trees

flaunt their succulent petals.

The fragile cherry blossoms float flowers

Still – it is after

And before, there were trees

I hardly noticed.
 

War Means Nothing to Them

The birds and the trees know nothing.

They are not embarrassed.

The birds chirp, the trees flower;

War means nothing to them.

Grass grows thick and green,

welcomes the spring.

Babies too, even toddlers,

go about their infant business.

They play or coo or smile

as happy as the birds, the trees,

the grass, flush with life.

Dr. Cohen is in private practice and is a clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical Center of New York-Presbyterian Hospital, and psychiatric consultant at the Hospital for Special Surgery, also in New York.

I wrote these poems in mid-March, when fear of COVID-19 struck and New York City locked down. Nearly a half-year later, the impact continues with uncertainty everywhere.

Before and After

Before – there were trees,

I hardly noticed them.

There were buses and newspapers.

Should I read a book or the Post?

Am I wasting time looking

out the window at crowds

milling into Central Park?

The tourists walk to Strawberry Fields,

and the bus turns to Central Park West.

I hardly noticed

because I had plans.

After – it ended, first slowly,

then abruptly. We sat together

in the shop, knitting,

only three of us

before the store shut.

After that –

In the park daffodils radiate gold

and grow in groups.

And the magnolia trees

flaunt their succulent petals.

The fragile cherry blossoms float flowers

Still – it is after

And before, there were trees

I hardly noticed.
 

War Means Nothing to Them

The birds and the trees know nothing.

They are not embarrassed.

The birds chirp, the trees flower;

War means nothing to them.

Grass grows thick and green,

welcomes the spring.

Babies too, even toddlers,

go about their infant business.

They play or coo or smile

as happy as the birds, the trees,

the grass, flush with life.

Dr. Cohen is in private practice and is a clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical Center of New York-Presbyterian Hospital, and psychiatric consultant at the Hospital for Special Surgery, also in New York.

I wrote these poems in mid-March, when fear of COVID-19 struck and New York City locked down. Nearly a half-year later, the impact continues with uncertainty everywhere.

Before and After

Before – there were trees,

I hardly noticed them.

There were buses and newspapers.

Should I read a book or the Post?

Am I wasting time looking

out the window at crowds

milling into Central Park?

The tourists walk to Strawberry Fields,

and the bus turns to Central Park West.

I hardly noticed

because I had plans.

After – it ended, first slowly,

then abruptly. We sat together

in the shop, knitting,

only three of us

before the store shut.

After that –

In the park daffodils radiate gold

and grow in groups.

And the magnolia trees

flaunt their succulent petals.

The fragile cherry blossoms float flowers

Still – it is after

And before, there were trees

I hardly noticed.
 

War Means Nothing to Them

The birds and the trees know nothing.

They are not embarrassed.

The birds chirp, the trees flower;

War means nothing to them.

Grass grows thick and green,

welcomes the spring.

Babies too, even toddlers,

go about their infant business.

They play or coo or smile

as happy as the birds, the trees,

the grass, flush with life.

Dr. Cohen is in private practice and is a clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical Center of New York-Presbyterian Hospital, and psychiatric consultant at the Hospital for Special Surgery, also in New York.