The Need for Accessible, Quality Maternal Mental Health Care
Immediately after the birth of my first some, I was on cloud 9. Nothing could bring me down. A few months down the line, I was as happy as a clam and no clouds were in my blue sky. I would say my mental health was at an all time high. In fact, I don’t even remember my provider discussing maternal mental health or mental health at any point with me during the time I was under their care. At the 6 week postpartum visit however, I do remember vividly filling out a one paged checklist that was handed to me upon checkin about the state of mind I was in. It was just that-a check list. I went through it in 3 minutes with my little man in the car seat quietly sleeping. I handed it to the doctor (who was not the doctor that attended the delivery, but she was very nice), she took it and slipped it into a manila folder and told me it would be scanned into my patient file. She wished me a good day, said I had a cute baby, and she was out. This appointment took all of 8 minutes.
If I could break down this postpartum appointment this is what it looked like:
First 3 minutes, she came in washed her hands asked if I had any concerns or questions and how nursing was going.
Next 2 minutes were spent reviewing my perineal stitches (only 2)
The 2 minutes after that were a quick scan of the little checklist on my mental health and that If I needed anything, to give the office a call. That was that.
This was nearly 8 years ago. Almost 2 years into my postpartum adventure, I found my self irritable, heavy chested, generally dissatisfied, stressed, and anxious. I didn’t know what was happening to me. Looking back now as a full on maternal health educator and birth worker and having received therapy, I was diagnosed with Postpartum Anxiety or PPA. Yes, I was shocked because 2 years later!? The therapist reminded me that this can manifest in various ways at various times if it was surpressed and I guess it was because there I was experiencing PPA.
A few things I would like to point out here:
Postpartum mental health challenges can creep up any time post birth.
These issues surrounding maternal health should be a constant ongoing conversation between providers and their clients/patients
The importance of building rapport with clients/patients is a missed opportunity for early detection.
The importance of continuity of care creating a safe space for a woman to feel confident in confiding in her provider.
Easy accessible modalities of support for maternal mental health are available.
Maternal mental health might sound like a buzzword these days, what with social media hashtags and coaches and virtual support, popping up that help address these issues, it’s hard to look at the realities of what these mental health challenges really are on a microscopic level. Once it’s understood to a point who, how, and some factors on why women are afflicted by maternal mental health issues, we can then remove the stigma, and assign access to quality care.
Let’s talk about two of my go to resources for virtual support-
Postpartum Support International: The purpose of the organization is to increase awareness among public and professional communities about the emotional changes that women experience during pregnancy and postpartum. I like this organization because it has a hotline (1.800.944.4773), different language offerings, workshops, vitural support, and various methods of identifying maternal mental health disorders as well as normalizing them to remove stigmas. They even have resources for dads!
Prospera Mental Health and Wellness: This one is one of my particular favorites mostly because of the personability of the organization itself. Directly from their website, “With Prospera, you’ll get personalized perinatal-informed emotional support from our kind, dedicated mental health coaches. We use evidence-based techniques drawing from cognitive behavioral therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, dialectic behavioral therapy, written exposure therapy, and more.”. If you inquire you can pop in my code since I’m a registered advocate using “Giana30” when it asks for a code.