Jennifer Lawrence is fiercely private about her personal life, but the No Hard Feelings star just got candid about her experience with postpartum anxiety.
In a new interview with The New Yorker, the 35-year-old shared that she had intense fears after welcoming her son, whose name and birth date she hasn’t shared publicly. “I just thought every time he was sleeping he was dead,” she said. “I thought he cried because he didn’t like his life, or me, or his family. I thought I was doing everything wrong, and that I would ruin my children.”
She also talked about crying after asking ChatGPT a question about breastfeeding. When it told her, “You’re doing the most amazing thing for your baby” and “You’re such a loving mother,” Lawrence said she felt like anyone who told her the same thing wasn’t being sincere.
Lawrence said that she eventually decided to seek help. Her doctor prescribed Zurzuvae, a medication designed to treat postpartum depression. Lawrence said it helped her so quickly and significantly that she thinks all new moms should be aware of it.
Zurzuvae isn’t a household name, making it fair to wonder what this medication is all about. Here’s what pharmacists and doctors who treat postpartum depression and anxiety want new moms to know.
A “breakthrough in women’s health”
Zurzuvae (or zuranolone) was approved in 2023 by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as an oral medication to treat postpartum depression. Before that, the only medicated treatment that was specifically indicated for postpartum depression was only available via a 60-hour IV infusion, Tamar Gur, MD, PhD, a reproductive psychiatrist and director of the Sarah Ross Soter Women’s Health Research Program at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, tells SELF.
“It’s the first new FDA-approved drug for psychiatric disorder in over a decade,” Dr. Gur says. “It’s been a wonderful breakthrough in women’s health.”
The medication is usually prescribed at a 50-milligram dose and should be taken once a day for 14 days in the evening with a fatty meal. (The “fatty meal” part is to enhance absorption, Dr. Gur explains.)
Catherine Birndorf, MD, founder of The Motherhood Center in New York City and an associate professor of psychiatry at the Weill Cornell Medical College, tells SELF that she’s “excited” about the medication, but stresses that there are some important caveats for new moms to be aware of (more on those in a moment).
How Zurzuvae works to help combat postpartum depression
Zurzuvae enhances the effect of gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), a neurotransmitter that sends signals in the brain to calm nerve activity, Kelly Johnson-Arbor, MD, a toxicologist at MedStar Health, tells SELF.
