Mental health innovator will speak at 2023 Winter Commencement

作为精神健康领域的开拓者. Samantha Meltzer-Brody aims to inspire a new generation of leaders when she addresses Carolina graduates at the 2023 Winter Commencement.

Meltzer-Brody is the chair of the UNC School of 医学’s psychiatry department and the Assad Meymandi Distinguished Professor. She also directs the UNC Center for Women’s Mood Disorders. Meltzer-Brody is known globally for her re太阳城娱乐城 on perinatal and postpartum depression and served as principal investigator for the first FDA-approved drugs for the condition.

冬季毕业典礼将于下午两点开始.m. 12月. 17 .选d. 史密斯中心. 毕业生和嘉宾不需要门票参加.

UNC.edu 采访了梅尔策-布罗迪，了解更多关于她的情况.

What steered you toward this field of psychiatry and mental health?

My family had always been interested in working in community-focused areas. My mom trained as a social worker and was very focused on doing things that would help support mental health. My interest as a teen was to become a child psychologist. I was very interested in people’s lives and their narratives, and the factors that may lead to some people doing well and thriving and other people struggling significantly.

你什么时候开始关注女性心理健康的?

我上的是女子学院，西蒙斯学院. 大一的时候, I learned that many drugs on the market – approved drugs – had not been tested in women of reproductive age because of concerns of exposure to pregnant women. 虽然动机是好的, I was astonished that women were excluded from studies, leading to drugs approved without adequate data about how they would impact women. This was one of my primary motivations to go to medical school.

这种兴趣是如何影响你在卡罗莱纳的工作的?

当我开始当教员的时候, I was doing consultation liaison psychiatry – consults on medical, 医院的外科和妇产科楼层. It seemed like a great opportunity to take my interest in women’s health and develop a specialty program. With the support of colleagues in Psychiatry and OB-GYN, we were able to start the first UNC perinatal psychiatry clinic in 2004.

当新的系主任来的时候, 大卫·鲁比诺在2006年说的, 他创办了北卡罗来纳大学女性情绪障碍中心. 围产期精神病学项目就是其中的一部分. 我们能够在很多事情上合作, including opening the first perinatal psychiatry inpatient unit in the United States in 2011. That unit was critical in our being able to do the initial clinical trials for brexanolone, the first FDA-approved medication for postpartum depression.

How have you seen the climate evolve around mental health at Carolina and beyond?

Thankfully, there’s been a sea change in a positive direction. 我于2019年10月成为系主任. 在这一点上, it was clear there was a growing mental health crisis, 尤其是儿童和青少年. And then the pandemic put the crisis on steroids and made it overwhelmingly bad.

What we witnessed was a marked worsening in the mental health of our youth and of college-aged people. What we saw at UNC was an example of what was happening everywhere. I’ve been really impressed by the commitment from the chancellor, the dean of the School of 医学 and so many others towards making mental health a priority.

There’s been a huge investment in working to address things on campus, 这些东西非常, 非常复杂的. 没有仙尘可以解决问题, but there’s a lot of people working incredibly hard to try and make things better. 这将是一条漫长的道路, but I think we’re now on the right path to collectively work together to have a positive impact.