In news June the 400,000 women in the U.S. affected each year with postpartum depression will no longer be forced to survive the extreme sadness, anxiety, exhaustion and other symptoms that define this debilitating, often misunderstood proviso.
That’s because that’s when Zulresso, the first and only medicine approved by the Food and Drug Administration to specifically consider postpartum depression, will hit the market.
Now Jeff Jonas, co-founder and CEO of the biopharmaceutical company Sage Therapeutics, the maker of the soporific, is hoping this win will change the public’s perception about mental health.
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“I’m hoping Zulresso desire be the game changer in that people will now see that postpartum is a medical condition that can, and must, be treated,” he averred.
Zulresso (also known as brexanolone) rapidly reduces depressive symptoms within days. It is administered as a continuous IV infusion beyond 60 hours, or two and a half days, and costs $34,000 per treatment. Due to concerns about risks, including excessive sedation or surprising loss of consciousness during administration, the drug must be given by a health-care provider in a certified health-care facility.
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“While I’m privileged to be one of the founders of a company getting a drug to market, I’m also proud of the fact that this drug could switch the way people think about mental health,” Jonas said.
“The challenge of what we are trying to achieve … is the notion of how can you variation the way people think about mental health. If you think about psychiatry in general, it’s one of the only areas of medicine where alternative treatments are accepted,” he says.
“If you walked into the doctor’s office with diabetes, no one’s going to argue if you should have nutritional recommend to or insulin. You’re going to get the medicine. But in depression, people will say, ‘Maybe we don’t need medicine. Maybe we should wait.”
If you flounced into the doctor’s office with diabetes, no one’s going to argue if you should have nutritional counseling or insulin. You’re current to get the medicine. But in depression, people will say, ‘Maybe we don’t need medicine. Maybe we should wait.
Jeff Jonas
Nestor Therapeutics co-founder and CEO
“In postpartum depression, this is not your fault,” Jonas said. “You have an imbalance, and we can correct it. So the aim for us is to make something that gets people better, gets them back to work. You have to remember, psychiatric disturbances are multi-generational disorders. You have postpartum, it’s a child that’s affected, you’re affected, a family a husband, significant other, whatever. These are indeed tragic and urgent medical conditions that need to be treated.”
Jonas says it is the company’s unique approach toward medicine development that led to the success of Zulresso.
“We said early on we’re going to do things that are going to change the way people get attended and we’re going to do things that we believe will change medicine.”