Pregnancy, postpartum, and women's mental health.
Becoming a parent, or trying to become one, can evoke complicated feelings that are rarely spoken about honestly. This is one of the areas Dr. Yu is most often sought out for.
Across the full arc
Dr. Yu has specialized training in women's and maternal mental health. Care spans the entire reproductive arc rather than a single window:
- Preconception planning: reviewing current medications and building a plan before you start trying, rather than after.
- Infertility and pregnancy loss: the grief, the treatment cycles, and the strain both place on a relationship.
- Pregnancy: depression and anxiety during pregnancy, and decisions about continuing or adjusting medication.
- Postpartum: postpartum depression and anxiety, intrusive thoughts, birth trauma, and the gap between how this was supposed to feel and how it does.
- Lactation: medication safety while breastfeeding, and what the evidence actually supports.
- Hormonal transitions: premenstrual mood changes and the perimenopausal period.
- Parenting: for those whose own mental health is keeping them from being the kind of parent they want to be.
The decision no one should make from a search engine.
Whether to take psychiatric medication during pregnancy or while breastfeeding is one of the most fraught decisions patients face, and it is frequently made badly, either by stopping everything abruptly out of fear, or by never raising the question at all.
Both untreated illness and medication exposure carry risk. The work is to weigh those against each other with your actual history, your actual symptoms, and the current evidence in front of you, and to make a decision you understand and can revisit.
With her background in epidemiology and education, Dr. Yu cuts through confusing jargon and misinformation to explain the research in a way that actually makes sense for you and your life.
She collaborates with your OB-GYN, midwife, fertility specialist, or pediatrician so that everyone involved is working from the same plan.
What care looks like.
Treatment may involve psychotherapy, medication, or both, and is adjusted as circumstances change, because in this period they change quickly.
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) for depression and anxiety.
- CBT for Insomnia (CBT-I), adapted for the realities of pregnancy and life with an infant.
- Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) where postpartum intrusive thoughts have an obsessive-compulsive quality, a common and commonly terrifying presentation that responds well to treatment.
- Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT).
- Psychodynamic psychotherapy for what becoming a parent stirs up about having been parented.
- Medication management with careful monitoring across pregnancy and postpartum.
A note on intrusive thoughts
Frightening, unwanted thoughts about harm coming to your baby are far more common than most new parents realize, and they are not a sign that you are dangerous. They are treatable, and they are safe to say out loud here.
Telehealth
Telehealth appointments are available throughout California, which matters considerably in late pregnancy and the early months with a newborn.
Currently accepting new patients.
In person in Noe Valley, or by telehealth anywhere in California.