VSRF LIVE TONIGHT: Episode 208 with Dr. Adam Urato, MD.
Thursday, December 18: 7pm Eastern | 4pm Pacific
Tonight on VSRF Live, we’re tackling a subject that affects countless women, yet is rarely discussed with the honesty it deserves, the widespread use of antidepressants and other medications during pregnancy, and the lack of clear, honest risk–benefit discussions surrounding their use.
We’re joined by Dr. Adam Urato, a board-certified obstetrician-gynecologist and maternal-fetal medicine physician with nearly 30 years of experience caring for pregnant women, including the most high-risk cases. Over his career, Dr. Urato has become a leading voice questioning the routine prescribing of medications during pregnancy, often in the absence of meaningful informed consent.
Dr. Urato has written and lectured extensively on medication exposures during pregnancy and has not shied away from challenging entrenched practices in obstetrics. His work helped expose the failures of Makena, a drug once widely promoted to prevent preterm birth and ultimately pulled from the market by the FDA in 2023.
What sets Dr. Urato apart is his willingness to say what too few physicians are willing to say out loud: protecting maternal mental health and protecting developing babies are not opposing goals, but both require honest, evidence-based conversations about risk.
Tonight, we’ll discuss:
Why antidepressants and other medications are so commonly prescribed during pregnancy
What the data actually show, and where the evidence is thin or missing
Why women are often not told the full story about potential risks
And why Dr. Urato returns again and again to a simple but uncomfortable truth: chemicals have consequences
I hope you’ll join us tonight for a look at how pregnancy care intersects with mental health and whether women are being given the full picture. Bring your questions and bring a friend!
Steve
PS: PLEASE SHARE OUR SOCIALS!
Can’t wait to watch, thank you . 😊
Really appreciate bringing Dr. Urato on for this. The informed consent gap around antidepressant use during preganancy is something I've seen play out in my own family, where the discussion was basically "it's fine" without any actual data. What's interesting is how this mirrors the broader trend of medicalizing normal life transitions while the alternative support systems (therapy, community, lifestyle interventions) get zero institutional backing. I wonder if part of the issue is that phramaceutical interventions are just easier to scale than addressing root causes. The "chemicals have consequences" framing cuts through the usual hand-waving pretty well.