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Ronnie Falcao, LM MS, a homebirth midwife in Mountain View, CA

Natural Progesterone for Post-partum Depression and PMS Psychosis

[from an MD]

I have never treated a patient with full-blown post-partum psychosis, but I have treated many cases of post-partum depression, and four cases of recurrent PMS psychosis, with very large injections of IM natural progesterone. The results have been nothing short of astounding.

I first became aware of this when as a very green practitioner in 1983, a sad, desperate woman came in to see me about her 12 yo daughter. The daughter had had her first period about six months previously, and from the third cycle onwards had become floridly psychotic three days prior to each flow, with abrupt return of normal mental status the second day of flow. This had resulted in suspension from school several times, for destruction of property and beatings of other students, and the parents had just been told that the child would be permanently expelled if another episode occurred. She had a book titled Progesterone Therapy and the Premenstrual Syndrome, by Katharina Dalton, FRCGP, the British GP, which she asked me to read. It seemed like nonsense, but given how grim the outlook was in that case, I agreed to give it a try. I advised the mother to keep her child out of school during the vulnerable times, and set about looking for some progesterone. I couldn't find a U.S. vendor for about two months, but finally got some. Dramatically, it arrived the day the girl was expected to go nuts. So I actually met the girl for the first time with both parents literally dragging her in the door, making a huge ruckus, kicking and screaming. I thought, "Oh, No! What have you gotten yourself into?" We gave her 150 mg IM, and in 30 minutes, she was in her right mind again. I followed her until she was 17 years old and she never had another psychotic break. She would start 50 mg IM daily about 6 days before an expected period and stop with onset of menses, and after about 2 years of that stopped doing anything at all except avoiding chocolate (ugh, what a life!)

This whole thing was very upsetting to me because it ran specifically against my training, which held that PMS was a manifestation of women's inability to cope with their own sexuality/fertility. None of my female classmates ever protested that interpretation, and I never really thought about it because it didn't seem important. But this case demanded a reconstruction of the whole thing, because no other psychosis I had ever seen, responded so completely and rapidly to treatment. This was a seminal event in rejecting quite a bit of my training.

Since then, I have had 3 other cases of recurrent PMS psychosis, all of whom stopped having psychotic breaks abruptly upon using progesterone.

Since Dalton has insisted that post-partum depression was related to PMS, I tried treating it with progesterone as well. The results have seemed good to me.

HOWEVER, this entire field suffers terribly from bad science. Authors have become noted in this field by publishing studies with as few as 8 patients followed for as little as 4 months. It's an embarrassment that as much as has been said on this subject, so little has actually been studied. I am painstakingly putting together a study on this subject. My budgeted expenses so far to really do it right and get conclusive results run in the neighborhood of 8.5 million dollars. I don't have to tell you that no granting agency is going to give me that kind of money until I have established a reputation. Who knows when it will happen.