Teaching Women’s Mental Health to Medical Students: A Wrap-Around Approach

Pregnancy, once believed to be protective against mental illness, is now recognized as a risk factor. Training in medical school is key to addressing the needs of the peripartum population. We developed a three-pronged women’s mental health curriculum embedded in the Psychiatry Clerkship consisting of: 1) a multimedia reproductive psychiatry eBook; 2) a graded psychopharmacology quiz question; and 3) a postpartum depression OSCE case. Students completed surveys before and after engaging with the curriculum to evaluate comfort level assessing risk, diagnosing psychiatric conditions, and treating peripartum patients. Our results demonstrate significant improvement in students’ comfort levels across all measures through engaging with the curriculum.