Take Back the Narrative: What Women and Healthcare Providers Need to Know About the “First-Ever” Pill for Postpartum Depression

Industry reinforces the pharmaceuticalization of experience in ways that are not readily apparent to healthcare providers and the public. In this commentary, we describe the hidden antifeminist impulse of industry-funded disease-awareness campaigns. We also show how academia reinforces pharmaceuticalization by publishing the results of clinical trials that overstate the efficacy and underreport the harm of new drugs. Using the “first ever” pill for postpartum depression, zuranolone, as a case example, we argue that industry influence, along with the medicalization of experience, deflects attention from the sociopolitical and economic drivers of postpartum distress.