Health committee  Just speaking outside of the postpartum, women are also more likely to be significant caregivers to their elderly parents as well. That also creates a big burden. I just want to say something about the women's health committee and the percentage of men on the committee. We also need male allies.

Health committee  I haven't either.

Health committee  Yes, I think maybe what you are remembering is the Summit trial by Daisy Singla, Simone Vigod and others. I'm not super familiar with it, but they were training non-professionals to be sort of like therapists in certain situations in the postpartum and it worked very well. The trial results are released already.

Health committee  Also, empower women. If we tell people that women's health is valued information to have, then more people will do it. Right now it's so undervalued, and I think that's part of the problem.

Health committee  Sure, I'll start. Yes, we need more training, but again, to be able to train people, we need to know what to train them and what the evidence-based information is that we can tell our health care practitioners. I also want to underscore that postpartum is really important, but I don't want the women's health committee to only focus on the postpartum, because it's the whole lifespan.

Health committee  I'll say—and I believe you heard this on Monday—that we don't have a Canadian perinatal mental health strategy in Canada. That was voted against for some reason. Australia, the U.K. and the U.S. have one. I think having guidelines and a strategy for perinatal mental health would go a long way for health care practitioners, so that we have that information, and for the people who are pregnant, so that they have that information.

Health committee  At the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, we have another womenmind-funded researcher named Daisy Singla. She just did a very huge study with Simone Vigod, whom you heard from on Monday, about talk therapy. They had some really great data showing that you can instruct another person, not necessarily a medical doctor or a formal health care practitioner, to do some of this talk therapy, and that works very well.

Health committee  I'm going to try to start. As far as I'm aware—because I'm not a medical doctor, as you know—there is not much taught about women's health, specifically, in medical school. I think there's a morning for menopause and a week or so for pregnancy. I'm not sure, but I'm sure it's not necessarily about the mental health of pregnancy or those susceptible times.

Health committee  I was writing down a whole bunch of things. Obviously, my big message here is research, research, research. We know so little about what happens to the maternal brain. As I said, there are a number of biological signatures that occur across pregnancy and postpartum. I would love to make some jokes, but I know I don't have time for them.

Health committee  I'll answer the last question first. I'm sorry, my French isn't very good. The $1 trillion worldwide that we could save if we achieved more knowledge in women's health research is from the World Economic Forum's report that was just released a month ago or so. One of the major federal funding agencies is the Canadian Institutes for Health Research.

Health committee  Yes, it does—100%. We tend to research what we are interested in, and we're interested in things that we've experienced. I'll give you a really good example of this. I experienced nausea and vomiting very badly during pregnancy. I was told it was just in my head. I want to make it clear that I had a fantastic health care provider.

Health committee  I would say the same thing. I don't know, but my guess would be...

Health committee  It's having an enormous impact. We have so little of it in the first place. Let's be clear: Our funding levels have been low and they are declining in comparison to the G7 and G20; our health research funding is going in the opposite direction to that in many other countries. We have that against us.

Health committee  I'm going to speak to what I know. With concussions, we all think about sports injuries, football players and hockey players. It is more than a thousandfold more with interpartner violence from domestic violence with girls and women.

Health committee  Can we have more time? We know so little. In fact, I was just listening to a podcast called “This Podcast Will Kill You.” The title of the podcast episode was, “Menopause is whatever you want it to be”. It made me both angry and happy to listen to it. They talked about all the different symptoms that occur during perimenopause, which is the two- to 10-year period prior to menopause, the cessation of menstrual cycles.