Robert Freedman, MD, is a graduate of Harvard Medical School and trained at the National Institutes of Health and the University of Chicago. He is Professor of Psychiatry and Pharmacology and served as Chief of the Psychiatry Service, University of Colorado Hospital. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and served as Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of Psychiatry and on the Editorial Board of the New England Journal of Medicine. The Brain and Behavior Research Foundation recently featured his work on choline in their PBS series. The National Institutes of Health Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research featured his work on the benefits of prenatal choline supplements for the outcome of pregnancies of Black women in its Research Spotlights.
Each year, over 3.6 million women in the United States deliver babies, 23.4 million in all developed countries. At least 15% will have experienced mental illness themselves, in their partner, or a close family member. Many prospective parents will be concerned about whether their child will become mentally ill, potentially an audience of 480,000 couples in the U.S., 3.5 million worldwide each year. Already some are learning that taking prenatal choline supplements can help prevent their child’s mental illnesses. The purpose of the book I am writing now is to help guide expectant parents on steps that they can take before birth to better the chances that their baby will grow to become a mentally healthy child.
Other Books by Robert Freedman: The Madness Within Us: Schizophrenia as a Neuronal Process. Oxford University Press, 2009. This book follows a man and woman through their struggles and triumphs as they deal with schizophrenia from dual perspectives--their personal life experience and the problems in their brain function.