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The Silent Barrier: How Fear of Judgment from Healthcare Providers Keeps People from Seeking Help
What if the person meant to help you was the one you feared most? Imagine sitting in an exam room, fidgeting with your cell phone, scrolling through apps, and trying to distract yourself from the anxiety building inside. You are aware of the antiseptic smell lingering in the air, but it’s drowned...
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Collaborating for Change: Building a Stronger System of Maternal Mental Health Support in New York
Effectively addressing maternal mental health requires a comprehensive public health solution that targets risk and protective factors. These include social determinants of health, clinical care, community support, culturally responsive interventions, and policy changes. This is why the New York...
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Voices of Hope and Healing: Parental Mental Health Peer Support Program for New York Families
Perinatal mood and anxiety disorders, including postpartum depression (PMADs), are the most frequent complication related to childbearing and a leading cause of maternal mortality in New York State.1 PMADs affect up to 20% of birthing persons and new mothers. Also, up to 13% of fathers may...
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The Silent Struggles of Fertility: Understanding the Emotional Toll
When a woman embarks on the journey of fertility care, she enters a world filled with hope, uncertainty, and an emotional burden not always perceptible to others. The medical procedures and clinical visits are only part of the experience—behind closed doors, many face silent struggles that take a...
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Supporting Maternal Mental Health and Reducing Stigma: A Clinical Perspective
Becoming a mother is a beautiful and rewarding experience, but it comes with a set of challenges that often go unrecognized. Maternal mental health is a critical dimension of perinatal care that is often overlooked amid the focus on the physical aspect of pregnancy. During the perinatal period,...
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Addressing the Stigma of Perinatal Mood and Anxiety Disorders
When I had my son in 2024, I had more than a few medical professionals warn me that due to my anxiety pre-pregnancy, I was at greater risk for developing a perinatal mood disorder (PMD), specifically postpartum anxiety (PPA) and/or postpartum depression (PPD). I was warned to contact someone if I...
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Addressing America’s Silent Crisis: Maternal Mental Health
Maternal mental health in the U.S. is in crisis. Despite advancements in medicine and growing awareness around mental health, the emotional well-being of mothers has quietly deteriorated. This is particularly true during pregnancy and after childbirth. A recent study published in JAMA...
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“I Should Be Able to Handle This”: How Internalized Stigma Silences Moms
There’s a shared assumption in health care that if we make services more accessible, patients will use them. It’s the foundation of many well-intentioned interventions: Add depression screening to the six-week postpartum visit, embed a therapist in the OB/GYN clinic, expand access through...
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NYSPA Report – Biomarkers for Perinatal Mood and Anxiety Disorders: A Way to Reduce Stigma
The numbers are so depressing. The United States has the worst maternal mortality of any developed country, with a racial disparity that is shocking.[1] Mental health conditions are one of the leading causes of pregnancy-related death – in some places, THE leading cause.[2] We do a dismal job of...
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Voice and Identity: Daughters and Sons of Parents with Psychiatric Experiences
Parenting with a mental health condition is common, yet widely unsupported. The following statistics may surprise you: according to Joanne Nicholson of Brandeis and Kate Beibel at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, 68% of women and 57% of men with diagnosed psychiatric disorders are...
