Introduction to Women’s Reproductive and Mental Health

This course is for social workers, mental health counselors, medical providers, nurses, prescribers and others who work with girls and women at any stage of the lifespan.

 

This course is intended to clarify the participant’s ability to identify, diagnose and treat girls and women with mood disorders and mental health concerns as appropriate to their scope of practice.

 

Specific topics covered:

• The role of reproductive hormones in mood, cognition, and anxiety regulation, and how they interact with neurotransmitters to impact mental health.
• Understanding the increased psychiatric vulnerability at each stage of reproductive life - puberty, pregnancy, postpartum, and menopause – and which require heightened clinical vigilance.
• Differentiating hormone-related symptoms that mimic anxiety and mood disorders from primary psychiatric disorders.
• Assessing patients for hormone sensitivity across the reproductive timeline.
• Integrating hormone-informed considerations into diagnostic and treatment planning of medical and mental health conditions.
• Integrating mental health care into general medical practice, including primary care, adolescent medicine, obstetrics, gynecology, family medicine and geriatrics.