TNT Open Mind Insights - Mental Health Interview Series
Preventable Deaths: Inside Maternal Mortality Review with Dr. Sarah Nagle-Yang
She expected to find that the screening never happened. Most of the time, it had. Dr. Sarah Nagle-Yang is a reproductive psychiatrist at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and co-chair of Colorado's Maternal Mortality Review Committee, where she reads through the record of everyone in the state who died while pregnant or in the year after. Suicide and unintentional overdose are the leading causes. She also co-chairs the National Curriculum in Reproductive Psychiatry, which began as a list she and a mentor put together so that trainees looking for a fellowship would not have to start with a Google search. In this conversation with Dr. Sarah Arshad, she walks through what a maternal mortality review actually involves and what it has revealed. Screening has largely made it into primary care. What follows a positive screen has not caught up, and that gap shows up in the cases she reviews. She gets specific about where clinicians can intervene, including the access lines built for exactly the moment a provider has someone in front of them and no clear next step. In this episode: What the mortality review revealed about screening and what comes after it Where the gap actually sits once a screen comes back positive The postpartum window where risk peaks and monitoring disappears Why cardiovascular disease leads for Black mothers, and what that has to do with mental health What perinatal psychiatric access lines do and who should be calling them Why an estimated one in ten fathers experiences postpartum depression The sleep question she puts to every family Learn more about the National Curriculum in Reproductive Psychiatry: https://ncrptraining.org If you see pregnant or postpartum patients, screen for depression in your practice, or love someone in their first year of parenthood, this conversation is for you. 0:00 Introduction 1:23 From OBGYN to psychiatry 2:41 The conference that changed her career 3:14 There is no accredited pathway 6:07 The list of fellowships that became a national curriculum 9:07 An all hands on deck problem 9:44 The leading causes of maternal mortality 10:59 Screening happens, then what 11:33 Inside a perinatal mental health access line 12:36 How a maternal mortality review works 14:53 Fifteen states, every suicide death preventable 15:39 Disparities in maternal mortality 17:08 Why cardiovascular disease leads for Black mothers 19:06 The drop off after the six week visit 21:54 Nobody is checking on partners 23:30 How perinatal access lines get funded 25:18 What access lines do and who should call 29:54 Sleep, support, and the we problem 32:18 Where to find her work Interview recorded on August 15th, 2026 Subscribe to hear more www.tntopenmind.org maternal mental health, perinatal mental health, reproductive psychiatry, maternal mortality, postpartum depression, maternal mortality review committee, perinatal suicide prevention, behavioral health, mental health, primary care, pediatrics, postpartum care, National Curriculum in Reproductive Psychiatry, University of Colorado, Sarah Nagle-Yang, TNT Open Mind Insights, perinatal access line, maternal health disparities Subscribe to TNT Open Mind Insights - Mental Health Interview Series on Soundwise
