This National Science Foundation Minority Postdoctoral Fellowship will investigate the relationship between psychosocial and biological factors in relation to postpartum depression in the US Mexican population. Thus, in this fellowship, postpartum responses to a relevant stressor will be used to detect increased stress reactivity in association with psychosocial measures and postpartum depression in the US Mexican population. In addition, this fellowship will be the first investigation into the biology of postpartum depression in Mexican women, significantly enhancing the Fellow's skills as a clinical research scientist, and contributing to the field of maternal health disparities and postpartum depression research. The Fellow will perform her research under the direction of Drs. Randy Ross and Mark Laudenslager in the Psychiatry Department at University of Colorado Denver Health Sciences Center (UCHSC). UCHSC is a leader in health-related research and promotes a collaborative environment, where the fellow will have access to laboratories that specialize both in human maternal behavior and the neuroendocrine regulation of stress. The research combines quantitative and qualitative approaches to investigate stress reactivity (behavioral and physiological) in association with postpartum depression and whether this variation is moderated the influence of acculturation, life stress and social support on postpartum depression in the US Mexican population. Immigrant and non-immigrant Mexican women ranging from postpartum week 4-12 will be recruited and assessed for depressive symptoms, acculturation, social support and number of positive/negative life events. The infants first set of vaccinations will be used as the relevant stressor to detect increased stress reactivity in association with postpartum depression. To study stress reactivity in Mexican mothers, physiological (salivary cortisol, heart rate, blood pressure) and behavioral changes (parent-child interactions) will be observed before and after the stressor. The mothers perceived emotional response to the stressor and her perceived response to her infants stress will also be analyzed. The findings from this fellowship will help clinicians understand what factors make Mexican women susceptible to postpartum depression, such as psychosocial stressors, and how best to screen for it, likely during pregnancy. Importantly, this study will begin a research and education collaboration with local public and community agencies serving Mexicans and other underrepresented populations in the area. The specific training objectives of this fellowship are to enhance the Fellow's pyschosocial approaches to the study of maternal-related stress, race-related health disparities and to gain skills in psychobiology and to build her evolving program of clinical research, which examines the influence of maternal experiences and how they relate to postpartum depression for Mexican mothers within the US. These training goals will help the fellow attain a tenure-track academic professorship at a leading research university and develop a strong independent research program examining postpartum depression in the Latina population. Seminars, coursework, and participation in the Postdoctoral Research Training in Developmental Psychobiology program at UCHSC will also expand her scope of training experiences and prepare her to explore maternal behavior health disparities in the US Mexican population in new and innovative ways.
