Science & Sensibility

Taking the hospital tour is considered to be a right of passage for expectant parents choosing to birth in the hospital.  They gather together in a group, a bit nervous, a bit excited, following the tour guide, quietly tiptoeing through the labor and delivery unit, hearing and seeing women in labor, peeking into empty rooms, learning where to park and finding out about the amenities that the facility has to offer.  They smile slightly to themselves and begin to imagine themselves birthing in one of these very rooms in the not too distant future.

A few families may ask questions, inquiring about policies and what they are “allowed” to do once admitted.  In fact, some of these questions may come up in your classes or you may hear stories about what the students learned on their various tours.

Lamaze International is offering a Parent Webinar: Getting the Most out of Your Hospital Tour next Wednesday, April 24th. at 12 PM EST.  This one hour webinar is being presented by Allison Walsh, IBCLC, LCCE.  This engaging learning opportunity can help parents to prepare for their tour,  ask questions that count and really understand what they need to do to have an active, upright birth within the hospital setting.

I encourage childbirth educators to inform their students about this webinar opportunity and suggest your CBE families register now.  The webinar will be made available in recorded form in a timely fashion after the live presentation is completed.  As an educator, I see lots of opportunities to bring this webinar into your classroom for discussion, watch snippets of it throughout your series, or ask your students to do a fun role play, incorporating what they learned from the webinar.

Some CBEs and L&D nurses may be the tour guide at the hospital, and this webinar can help them to offer an effective and evidence based tour that thoroughly meets the need of participants.

Tweet about this opportunity, post it on Facebook and share with students and your community of pregnant families, encouraging them to register now!  By attending this free webinar, families will become more informed maternity care consumers and in a better position to “Push for Their Baby.”

The Lamaze Parent blog, Giving Birth With Confidence highlighted this webinar in a comprehensive blog post yesterday that you may also want to share with your families.

To learn more about the Parent Webinar: “Getting the Most out of Your Hospital Tour” and to register, please click here.  See you at the webinar!

Sharon Muza Childbirth Education, Continuing Education, Evidence Based Medicine, Giving Birth with Confidence, Healthy Birth Practices, Healthy Care Practices, informed Consent, Maternity Care, Patient Advocacy, Push for Your Baby, Social Media, Webinars Allison Walsh, CBE, Childbirth Education, Giving Birth With Confidence, Lamaze webinars, maternity care continuing education, Sharon Muza

In recognition of Cesarean Awareness Month, I want to share an interview with Christa Billings, the president of International Cesarean Awareness Network (ICAN).  For over 30 years, ICAN has had an international presence and through peer to peer support and many volunteer hours, has worked tirelessly to prevent unneeded cesareans, help women recover emotionally from a cesarean and advocated for VBAC as a safe and appropriate choice for many women when they plan their future births.

I have been the chapter co-leader of ICAN Seattle for several years, and have been honored to walk alongside the women who make up our chapter as they have discovered their own strength and power and learned how to seek information and evaluate evidence and research.  There are many chapter leaders just like myself, working hard in our own communities, to help women both before and after a cesarean birth. ICAN has partnered with many other maternal health organizations and maternity leaders to help improve the state of maternity care for many women.  Learn more about this organization and be sure to share this organization (and its resources) with your students, clients and patients.

Sharon Muza: Can you tell me a bit about the history of ICAN?

Christa Billings: The International Cesarean Awareness Network, Inc. (ICAN) is a nonprofit organization that was founded by Esther Booth Zorn and many other motivated women in 1982. ICAN originated as “Cesarean Prevention Movement,” later changing its name to ICAN in 1992 to reflect a more positive statement. ICAN has now grown to over 180 chapters throughout the United States and worldwide over the past 30 years. ICAN’s mission is to improve maternal-child health by preventing unnecessary cesareans through education, providing support for cesarean recovery, and promoting Vaginal Birth After Cesarean (VBAC).

SM: How many chapters does ICAN have nationally and internationally?

CB: ICAN has 181 chapters, 145 in the USA, and another 36 internationally.   

Mission Statement of International Cesarean Awareness Network The International Cesarean Awareness Network, Inc. (ICAN) is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to improve maternal-child health by preventing unnecessary cesareans through education, providing support for cesarean recovery, and promoting Vaginal Birth After Cesarean (VBAC).

SM: What does an ICAN meeting look like?

CB: A typical ICAN meeting entails women coming together with women of similar experiences for peer to peer support. Meetings are sometimes topic specific and sometimes general support. Often birth stories are shared. There is often laughter, tears and a feeling of camaraderie. The feel of a particular meeting can change based on who is there and what it being discussed. I like to remind newcomers that they should always try a second meeting as they are all different. Sometimes meetings can be VBAC heavy and other times they can be cesarean recovery heavy. It really depends on who shows up to the meeting and who is driving the discussion.

SM: Who is welcome? Mothers? Partners? Birth Professionals? Providers?

CB: Some meetings are open for women/lap babies only and other meetings welcome children, dads, husbands, partners, birth professionals and other community members who want to learn about cesareans, VBAC and recovery. Each chapter may vary on how they do things, so check in with the chapter leader if you have any questions.

SM: What are some things that ICAN does that reinforces it’s mission statement?

CB: We offer support to mothers through listening. We also help in educating them by providing evidence based research to help them make the best possible birth choices for them or to cope/understand what they have experienced. We recognize that both VBAC and cesareans carry risks. We help women understand what those risks are with both choices, where typically many providers only provide the VBAC risks.

SM: I know that ICAN periodically holds conferences; can you tell me about them? Are there continuing ed hours available from them?

CB: The ICAN conferences are a time to spend quality face to face, talking with women who support VBAC and are interested in reducing the cesarean rate. This conference isn’t just for VBAC and cesarean mothers; it’s for anyone who supports birth. There are many great speakers and public discussion on various birth topics.  We do offer continuing education hours.

SM: How did you get involved in ICAN yourself? How did you find yourself in the president’s position?

CB: I found ICAN five years ago when I first stepped foot into an ICAN meeting during Cesarean Awareness Month. I was just a mom looking for support as I planned a VBAC. I quickly found great support. My second birth ultimately ended in another cesarean, even though I attempted a VBAC. If I couldn’t have a vaginal birth I wanted to make sure others had the support and education to ensure the best advantage in planning for their births. I wanted to give back to the organization that helped shape my birth journey. I decided to join my local ICAN chapter’s board & accepted a position as the Northwest Regional Coordinator. Later in 2010, I went on to VBAC my 3rd daughter at home after 2 cesareans. After attending the 2011 ICAN conference I really felt pulled to do more. The conference was very inspiring and it touched me deeply.  It was a thrill to meet all the women I had been communicating with over the years. These mothers were no longer just a name in an email. Putting names & faces to it gave the journey to VBAC a whole new meaning to my life. In 2012 I joined the Board of Directors as Chapter Director. As we reshaped the board be a bit smaller and focused, I moved into the role of Vice President. The previous President stepped down and in October 2012 and I became the new President of ICAN. I never envisioned my life taking this path, but here I am and I’m proud to be the voice of the mothers for an organization so dear to my heart. ICAN has forever changed my life.

SM: What challenges do we face in lowering the cesarean rate? Do you think the tide has turned?

CB: While research has consistently shown that VBAC is a reasonably safe choice for women with a prior cesarean, there is an alarming disconnect between what evidence based research shows is good for women and babies, and the way that hospitals and providers practice. Mothers need to start demanding research based care. The challenges we still face are getting care providers to work with us to improve birth outcomes by providing evidence based care and to stop practicing by provider preference, convenience, legal liability concerns and to perform cesareans only when the research clearly indicates it is needed.

I would like to think that the tide is starting to turn, but I am not ready to say it’s turned quite yet. Mothers are joining together to recognize they have a voice and choices in their maternity care and are starting to demand evidence based care. The recent statements from ACOG give us a little hope that people are opening up their eyes to see how out of control the cesarean rates are in many places.

SM: Are you optimistic with recent statements from ACOG about who should VBAC and how to handle maternal request cesareans?

CB: I’m not sure optimistic is the right word, I would say hopeful. I think it is great that ACOG is finally acknowledging that primary cesareans will affect future births and that in the absence of maternal or fetal indications for cesarean delivery, a plan for vaginal delivery is safe and appropriate and should be recommended to patients. These births are a very small percentage of the births, as often primary cesareans are not being performed based on maternal request, but rather being performed by provider preference, convenience, legal liability concerns and many other reasons. I will be optimistic when providers and hospital administration acknowledge that birth is a human right, that the consumer has the right to decide whether they accept the choices presented to her and start providing true informed consent and stop using scare tactics to influence women’s decisions. 

SM: What do you want childbirth educators to know and share with students about ICAN and cesarean awareness?

CB: That ICAN is a non-profit advocacy and support group whose mission is to improve maternal and child health by preventing unnecessary cesareans through education, providing support for cesarean recovery, and promoting vaginal birth. We offer support and information to thousands of women through our main office, local chapters, website, forums, email support groups and various social networks. We provide evidence-based information, using research that is accessible for women and their care providers.  It’s important that women understand the effects a primary cesarean can have on them and on all future births.  It would be great if childbirth educators included ICAN as a resource for the families in their classes who may end up with a cesarean.

SM:What do you want health care providers to know?

CB: We are a support network for women healing from past birth experiences and for those preparing for future births. Our vision is to reduce the cesarean rate driven by women making evidence-based and risk appropriate childbirth decisions. We are not anti-cesarean. ICAN recognizes that when a cesarean is medically necessary, it can be a lifesaving technique for both mother and baby, and worth the risks involved. While VBAC does carry risks associated with the possibility of uterine rupture, cesarean surgery carries life-threatening risks as well. The choice between VBAC and elective repeat cesareans isn’t between risk versus no risk. It’s a choice between which set of risks you want to take on. We are here to help educate mothers on all risks to help them make the best choices for their birth.

SM: If someone was interested in adding a chapter, what would the first step?

CB: If someone wanted to start a chapter in their city or town, they would need to contact the regional coordinator for their area. Their regional coordinator will walk them through the steps & requirements to open a chapter.

SM: What can people do if they want to volunteer in other ways besides being a chapter?

CB: They can contact our volunteer coordinator for more information on how they can help. Please let our volunteer coordinator know what your special skills are that you have to offer and she will match you up with the right position suited to your skills. We have many positions or tasks within ICAN that are not chapter specific. As an all volunteer organization. we are always looking for help.

SM: I want to thank you, Christa for all the information you have provided and for your time in doing this interview.  I hope that more people will share the resources that ICAN offers with the birthing families that are affected by cesarean birth.

 

 

Sharon Muza ACOG, Cesarean Birth, Childbirth Education, Evidence Based Medicine, informed Consent, Maternity Care, Patient Advocacy Cesarean Awareness Month, Childbirth Education, Christa Billings, Evidence Based Medicine, ICAN, International Cesarean Awareness Network, Sharon Muza

 

I’d like to draw your attention to a very important study that is currently looking for participants – The Maternity Support Survey. This comprehensive study is the first to compare doulas, childbirth educators, and labor and delivery nurses, working in the United States and Canada, in terms of their approach to maternal support and care. The survey explores these individuals’ knowledge and attitudes toward current childbirth practices, technologies and support.  Now is your opportunity to share how you view your responsibilities.  This research team wants to hear from you!

The team behind the research has been working for over two years via conference calls to develop the survey and methodology.   The research team consists of Louise M. Roth, PhD, (Principal Investigator), Christine Morton, PhD (Co-PI and regular contributor to this blog), Marla Marek, RNC, BSN, MSN, PhD(c), Megan Henley, Nicole Heidbreder BSN, MA, Miriam Sessions, Jennifer Torres, and Katie Pine, PhD.  They are sociologists and nurses, working in California, Arizona, Washington DC, Michigan, and Wyoming.  To raise funds for the project, they launched an Indiegogo campaign and have been featured on the Every Mother Counts blog.  The Maternity Support Survey has been approved by the Institutional Review Board of the University of Arizona, and Louise M. Roth, PhD, is the Principal Investigator of the study.

I’m sure the readers of this blog are aware that research has shown that support during labor and delivery has a significant impact on method of delivery, maternal and neonatal morbidity, and rates of postpartum depression. Yet existing research in maternity care has largely focused on how mothers and families view their care or on the perspectives of midwives and obstetricians, with less attention to the views of individuals who provide support to women during pregnancy and birth. The Maternity Support Survey is addressing this need.

Topics that the survey investigates include: whether doulas and childbirth educators view their maternity support work as a career, how doulas and childbirth educators establish their expertise, how technology affects workload among labor and delivery nurses, how maternity support workers are affected by managed care and litigation concerns, and emotional burnout among maternity support workers.

The Maternity Support Survey has partnered with Lamaze International and the following organizations in the recruitment of participants: Association of Women’s Health, Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses (AWHONN); Birthing from Within; International Childbirth Education Association (ICEA); BirthWorks; DONA International; toLABOR (formerly ALACE); and CAPPACanada.  These organizations felt that this research was important enough to reach out to their collective members with a request for participation.

The survey launched in November 2012 – the organizations above sent emails to their members, along with monthly reminders.  By early mid January 2013, the survey had logged 1500 responses, with relatively equal numbers of each group responding.  Then, the research team decided to extend the reach of the survey to those doulas, CBEs and L&D nurses BEYOND the membership organizations.  A viral social media blitz ensued, with positive results.  Within a week, the survey logged an additional 600 responses.  As of January 21, 2013, the survey has been completed by just over 2100 respondents.  Doulas now comprise about 44%, with L&D nurses at 35% and CBEs at 33% of the total respondents.  The survey will be open through mid-March, so there is still time to share widely among your networks.  Data cleaning will happen in April, and analysis will begin in May 2013.  The researchers plan to disseminate their findings at conferences and publish in journals of interest to these occupational groups as well as in sociology and other fields.

Those of you who are members of these organizations may have already received an email with a link to the survey (and hopefully have already completed it). However, if you are not a member of one of these national organizations OR have NOT received an email from your organization inviting you to take the survey, here’s how you can share your views:

The survey is available online for US residents here.

The survey is available online for Canadian residents here.

The survey takes approximately 30 minutes to complete, and participation is entirely voluntary. The research team will NOT have any way of personally identifying you or your responses, and will not contact you for any purposes unrelated to this survey or give your information to any commercial organizations. For questions or feedback, please contact Louise M. Roth, PhD.

 

Sharon Muza Childbirth Education, Lamaze International, Maternal Quality Improvement, Maternity Care, Patient Advocacy, Research, Research Opportunities Childbirth Education, childbirth educators, doulas, L&D Nurses, Lamaze International Christine Morgan, maternity care, Maternity Support Survey, research

Today, Amy Romano, CNM, MSN, Associate Director of Programs for Childbirth Connection (and former Community Manager for this blog) follows up last Thursday’s post, Have You Made the Connection with Childbirth Connection? Three Reports You Don’t Want to Miss with her professional suggestions for educators and advocates to consider using the data and information contained in these reports and offering your students, clients and patients the consumer materials that accompany them.- Sharon Muza, Community Manager.

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As we begin 2013, it is clear from my vantage point at the Transforming Maternity Care Partnership that the transformation is underway. In Childbirth Connection’s nearly century-long history, we’ve never seen so much political will from leaders, so much passion from grassroots advocates, and so much collaboration among clinicians and other stakeholders. This new landscape presents many new opportunities for educators and advocates.

One area of maternity care that has garnered increasing attention is the overuse of cesarean section, especially in low-risk women. Last year, the multi-stakeholder Maternity Action Team at the National Priorities Partnership set goals for the U.S. health care system and identified promising strategies to reach these goals. One of the goals was to reduce the cesarean section rate in low-risk women to 15% or less. This work served as the impetus for Childbirth Connection to revisit and update our Cesarean Alert Initiative. We undertook a best evidence review to compare outcomes of cesarean delivery with those of vaginal birth. Based on the results, we also updated and redesigned our consumer booklet, What Every Pregnant Woman Needs to Know About Cesarean Section. These are powerful new tools to help educators and advocates push for safer care, support shared decision making, and inform and empower women.

Two of the biggest obstacles to change have been persistent liability concerns and the current payment system that rewards care that is fragmented and procedure-intensive. Efforts to make maternity care more evidence-based or woman-centered often run up against policies and attitudes rooted in fear of lawsuits or increasing malpractice premiums, or against the reality that clinicians can not get easily reimbursed for doing the right thing. But these barriers are shifting, 

Recently the literature has provided example after example of programs that reduced harm and saw rapid and dramatic drops in liability costs as a result. That’s right – one of the best ways to decrease liability costs is to provide safer care. Rigorous quality and safety programs are the most effective prevention strategy among the ten substantive solutions identified in Childbirth Connections new report, Maternity Care and Liability. The report pulls together the best available evidence and holds potential liability solutions up to a framework that addresses the diverse aims of a high-functioning liability system that serves childbearing women and newborns, maternity care clinicians, and payers.  

The evidence and analysis show that some of the most widely advocated reforms do not stand up to the framework, while quality improvement programs, shared decision making, and medication safety programs, among other interventions, all have potential to be win-win-win solutions for women and newborns, clinicians, and payers. If we are to find our way out of the intractable situation where liability concerns block progress, we must learn to effectively advocate for such win-win-win solutions.  Advocates and educators can better understand these solutions by accessing the 10 fact sheets and other related resources on our Maternity Care and Liability page.

Evidence also shows that improving the quality of care reduces costs to payers. As payment reforms roll out, there will be many more opportunities to realize these cost savings. To predict potential cost savings, however, it is necessary to know how much payers are currently paying for maternity care. Surprising, this information has been largely unavailable, and as a result we have had to settle for using facility charges as a proxy. This is a poor proxy because payers negotiate large discounts, and because charges data do not capture professional fees, lab and ultrasound costs, and other services. Childbirth Connection, along with our partners at Catalyst for Payment Reform and the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform, recently commissioned the most comprehensive available analysis of maternity care costs. The report, The Cost of Having a Baby in the United States shows wide variation across states, high costs for cesarean deliveries, and rapid growth in costs in the last decade. It also shows the sky-high costs uninsured women must pay – costs that can easily bankrupt a growing family. Even insured women face significant out-of-pocket costs that have increased nearly four-fold over six years. Fortunately, health care reform legislation has made out-of-pocket costs for maternity care more transparent by requiring a simple cost sample to each person choosing an individual or employer-sponsored health plan.

Educators and advocates have to be able to help women be savvy consumers of health care. That means being informed about their options and also being able to identify and work around barriers to high quality, safe, affordable care. Childbirth Connection produced this trio of reports to provide a well of data and analysis to help all stakeholders work toward a high-quality, high-value maternity care system.

How Childbirth Educators and Consumer Advocates Can Help Incorporating the findings of the cesarean best evidence review in teaching and advocacy, and sharing the information widely on Facebook, Twitter, blogs, listservs, and other social media. Getting the booklet, What Every Pregnant Women Needs to Know About Cesarean Section into the hands of expectant parents. Becoming familiar with the 10 Maternity Care and Liability fact sheets, and sharing them whenever a teachable moment arises. Learning more about shared decision making, and incorporating support for high-quality shared decision making into education efforts (a future blog post will focus on this.) Advocating for the use of quality improvement toolkits to improve care in hospitals and health systems. Talking about health care value – care that improves quality while reducing costs, including physiologic care to reduce the chance of c-sections. Helping women understand their likely maternity-related out-of-pocket costs when they enroll in a new health plan. Helping women to understand that, until we reform our payment systems, clinicians and hospitals are rewarded financially and logistically for cesareans and inductions, and to carefully explore whether these forms of care, when recommended, are right for them.

 What is the first thing that you are going to do to join this maternity care transformation? Can you share your ideas for using this information in your classroom or with clients or patients.  Can you bring others on board to help with this much needed transformation?- SM

Amy Romano Childbirth Education, Evidence Based Medicine, Guest Posts, Healthcare Reform, Maternal Quality Improvement, Maternity Care, Patient Advocacy, Research, Research for Advocacy, Transforming Maternity Care Amy Romano, cesarean, cesarean section, Childbirth Connection, Childbirth Education, guest post, interventions, maternity care quality, maternity care systems, research, Transforming Maternity Care

This is part two of a two part series on the support needs of women who experience postpartum psychosis and their partners and is written by regular contributor Walker Karraa.  Part one can be found here. – SM

In part two of a review of the recent JOGNN study, Support Needs of Mothers Who Experience Postpartum Psychosis and Their Partners (Doucet, Letourneau, & Blackmore, 2012), partner perception of support needs is highlighted.  In the multisite, exploratory, qualitative design, eight partners (Canada, n = 7, United States, n= 1) of women who had experienced postpartum psychosis were interviewed using one-on-one, in-depth, semi-structured, interviews lasting 45-120 minutes. Partners were interviewed separately from the mothers, and verbatim transcriptions were produced from audio recordings. Using inductive thematic analysis (Braune & Clarke, 2006) thematic content regarding support for partners emerged in the categories of (a) support needs; (b) support preferences; (c) accessibility to support; and (d) barriers to support.

Partner Support Needs

Instrumental, Informational, and Emotional

Identical to the mothers interviewed for the study, all partners expressed wanting instrumental or physical support, at home—help with caring for the baby, their partner, and the basic running of the house. One father reported:

I found for a long time it was at least a two-person job to manage things. Because one person had to take care of the baby, and usually I had to take care of my wife. (Doucet, Letourneau, & Blackmore, 2012, p. 241).

Informational support for partners was indicated as imperative, as none of the partners had “any prior knowledge of postpartum psychosis” (p. 241). Partners reported needing information on partner’s health status, treatment plans, long term prognosis, and how to manage partners’ illness at home:

I needed advice on how to handle the illness and what to say. Also, information on the early signs of relapse to watch for and if it was to the point that I needed to get help “(p. 241).

Many of the partners reported needing emotional support in the form of “a listening ear” or “an emotional outlet” (p. 241). Hospitalization of their partner proved emotionally taxing. One father reported:

I needed emotional support. I felt I was becoming depressed. It was everything, the long days at the hospital. I saw things that I never saw before and that affected me. I kept thinking, when is she going to snap out of it? Why is this happening? I thought having a baby was going to be the best thing to happen. (p. 241)

Another partner shared:

I was an emotional wreck but felt I had to gather myself together for my wife. And I didn’t want my parents to see me going downhill emotionally. I felt I couldn’t have any issues, someone had to be strong (p. 241)

Similar to their counterparts, partners reported tremendous isolation, and needing “reassurance from someone who had gone through a similar experience or who was actually going through it” (Doucet, et al., 2012, p. 241).

Partner Support Preferences

Partners overwhelmingly reported wanting instrumental support from informal networks, and informational support from trained professionals. The preference was for a combination of one-to-one support from trained professional and group support in the form of the partners of women who experienced postpartum psychosis.

Partner Accessibility to Support

Regarding partners finding access to support, the themes of both limited professional support and limited community support emerged. The majority of partners had no access to professional help, reporting they were too proud to ask. Partners had universal difficulty in gaining access to information on community support for themselves and their partners. One father reported:

I called five psychiatrists in the community before we found one. It was hard finding the appropriate support. We could have been given contact information when leaving the hospital. And even then, have them set it up. Take some pressure off us. Just walk out, and walk into community support. (p. 243)

Partner Barriers to Support

Interestingly, partner barrier to support emerged in themes of health care provider barriers and personal barriers. Partners reported health care providers as universally uncaring, and not flexible in treatment plans—for example not giving them access to their partners in the hospital, and not allowing them to bring their babies to see their mothers.  One partner described:

Being put in isolation rooms and separated from babies. That’s pretty inhumane. I’m not really in a position to describe exactly what a better system might look like, but it would be a lot gentler on the mothers. (Doucet, et al., 2012, p. 243)

Partners felt dismissed by care providers, and that providers had predetermined treatment plan based solely on the diagnosis, rather than individual need of the mothers:

Health care providers are very hesitant to take those affected into account. They are more interested on where they peg you on the spectrum and what that diagnosis implies and that’s how they treat you. (Doucet, et al., 2012, p. 243)

Finally, partners reported they found it difficult to seek help from family, friends, community, or professionals due to fear of stigma and pride. One father reported regret for this dynamic in this way:

I wish I was able to send an SOS out to bring us casseroles or to help around the house. I couldn’t do that because I have difficulty asking for support. It’s a guy thing. (Doucet, et al., 2012, p. 243)

Discussion

The loss and suffering for partners of mothers with PP could not be more poignant than the work of Aaron Polson, who lost his wife Aimee Zeigler to PP at age 40. His story of raising his sons following her death is brings this topic home, and I hope you all get to read it.

This first study on the needs of mothers who experienced PP and their partners speaks to many areas of consideration for the childbirth professional. Here, we hear not only about the “symptoms” and “pathology”, but perhaps more importantly, the voices of mothers and partners speaking to specific needs. The opportunity is presented to reflect and review how this information resonates with our own practice, perceptions, and potentials for growth. This conversation, I believe, is one of the keys to preventing perinatal psychiatric illness from the social stigma and silence that contribute to such suffering.

Doucet et al., (2012) concluded that their findings may serve as a guide for future research and interventions. Hopefully we, too, can begin a dialogue of how we might apply this information to our future. How do you see this informing your practice, your continuing educational needs, or support networks within your practice? I look forward to hearing your words of wisdom.

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About Walker Karraa

Regular contributor Walker Karraa is currently the President of PATTCh, an organization dedicated to the Prevention and Treatment of Traumatic Childbirth. Walker is a doctoral student at Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, a certified birth doula, freelance writer, and maternal mental health advocate.  She holds an MA degree in Clinical Psychology from Antioch University Seattle, and a BA and MFA degree in dance from UCLA.  Walker is a contributor to the Lamaze sites, www.givingbirthwithconfidence.org and www.scienceandsensibility.com.  She lives in Sherman Oaks, California with her husband, and two children.

 

 

References

Doucet, S., Letourneau, N., & Blackmore, E. R. (2012). Support needs of mothers who experience postpartum psychosis and their partners. Journal of Obstetric, Gynecological & Neonatal Nursing, 41(2), 236-245.

 

Walker Karraa Depression, Maternal Mental Health, New Research, Patient Advocacy, Perinatal Mood Disorders, Postpartum Depression, Research, Science & Sensibility, Transforming Maternity Care care provider attitude, fathers, fathers emotional support, honoring fathers, how to help partners of mothers with mental illness, maternal psychiatric illness, partners of mothers with mental illness, postpartum support, psychosis, treatment for postpartum psyc, Walker Karraa