There are few experiences as universal to human existence as pregnancy and childbirth, and yet its most difficult parts — perinatal mood and anxiety disorders (PMADs) — are still dealt with in the shadows, shrouded in stigma. The fact is 1 in 5 new and expecting birthing people will experience a PMAD, yet among those who do many are afraid to talk about it, some are not even aware they’re experiencing one, and others don’t know where to turn for help. The fact is, when someone suffers from a maternal mental health disorder it affects not only them, their babies, partners, and families - it impacts our communities.
In the Previa Alliance Podcast series, Sarah Parkhurst and Whitney Gay are giving air to a vastly untapped topic by creating a space for their guests — including survivors of PMADs and healthcare professionals in maternal mental health — to share their experiences and expertise openly. And in doing so, Sarah and Whitney make it easy to dig deep and get real about the facts of perinatal mental health, fostering discussions about the raw realities of motherhood. Not only will Previa Alliance Podcast listeners walk away from each episode with a sense of belonging, they’ll also be armed with evidence-based tools for healing, coping mechanisms, and the language to identify the signs and symptoms of PMADs — the necessary first steps in a path to treatment. The Previa Alliance Podcast series is intended for anyone considering pregnancy, currently pregnant, and postpartum as well as the families and communities who support them.
Sarah Parkhurst
Previa Alliance Podcast Co-host; Founder & CEO of Previa Alliance
A postpartum depression survivor and mom to two boys, Sarah is on a mission to destigmatize the experiences of perinatal mood and anxiety disorders (PMADs), and to educate the world on the complex reality of being a mom. Sarah has been working tirelessly to bring to light the experiences of women who have not only suffered a maternal mental health crisis but who have survived it and rebuilt their lives. By empowering women to share their own experiences, by sharing expert advice and trusted resources, and by advocating for health care providers and employers to provide support for these women and their families, Sarah believes as a society we can minimize the impact of the current maternal mental health crisis, while staving off future ones.
Whitney Gay
Previa Alliance Podcast Co-host; licensed clinician and therapist
For the past ten years, Whitney has been committed to helping women heal from the trauma of a postpartum mental health crisis as well as process the grief of a miscarriage or the loss of a baby. She believes that the power of compassion paired with developing critical coping skills helps moms to heal, rebuild, and eventually thrive. In the Previa Alliance Podcast series, Whitney not only shares her professional expertise, but also her own personal experiences of motherhood and recovery from grief.
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
0:00
|
20:25
We prepare for so much in pregnancy—but rarely for mental health, even though it’s the most common complication of childbirth. In this episode, we talk about why we don’t think twice about mammograms or colonoscopies, why mental health deserves the same preventive approach, and how having a therapist early in pregnancy can make all the difference. Listen in as Sarah and Whitney tackle this important conversation head on.
Hi guys, welcome back to Preview Lions Podcast. This is Sarah, and I have Whitney with me. Whitney, hello, my friend. Hey, friends. We are back, and you know, Whitney, March is a big month in general, but it talks, it's like National Women Empowerment Month, it's Women's History Month. Love it. So, what better to talk about something that we're both passionate about? I know you offer to your clients and Previa does, but how there's a big important conversation that is missing when it comes to maternal mental health. And it shouldn't be, but it is a preventative conversation of okay, I'm pregnant, I'm fine. Why would I even need you, Whitney? Like, why would I need a maternal mental therapist? Like, shouldn't I be like Googling Pinterest nursery room ideas or like figuring out diapers? But like the more important conversation is your mental health really needs to be looked at more than
Right. Well, and here's the thing the two can coexist. You can be Pinteresting those nurseries, absolutely. And you can have a therapist on board.
unknown
Yes.
SPEAKER_00
100% the two can coexist. And the reason that you would want to have a therapist on board, even if you're feeling fine in pregnancy, and here's the thing, you genuinely could be. We could not be experiencing anxiety, we could not be experiencing depression, OCD, anything of that nature. And your pregnancy could go smooth, you may not have a traumatic delivery. Everything could be as it's supposed to be, it could be picture perfect. However, postpartum, we don't really ever know what that is actually going to look like. And so we talk about this quite a bit. Even with breastfeeding, all women go through that progesterone crash.
Yeah. So there's not a lot that we can do to buffer that honestly nosedive that happens with our progesterone and even our estrogen. And that is when most moms do experience the baby blues, which can develop into postpartum anxiety, depression, OCD, potentially PTSD if you have a complication post-delivery, things of that nature. So you want to have a therapist kind of in your back pocket, so to speak, that if you start to experience things, you have someone to talk to. You have a judgment-free zone where you can say, I'm scared, or I feel very nervous right now, or I'm really sad, or I can't sleep when the baby sleeps, because if I do, something bad will happen. Right here.
That was me with my first. Okay. I'm telling on myself. I had postpartum anxiety due to the fear of SIDS. Yeah. Okay. And so I had a great pregnancy. It was uncomplicated. Did not really experience much anxiety during my pregnancy, except for one like preterm labor scare around 33 weeks. So even then, realistically speaking, it was not catastrophic. And it was short-lived.
SPEAKER_03
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00
But baby comes. We get home and I'm terrified of SIDS.
SPEAKER_03
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00
Terrified of it. So my anxiety goes through the roof. When I tell you the benefit I could have had of having a therapist just to say, hey, this is what I'm scared about, this is what I'm stressed about. And we can't actually heal without sleep, but I wasn't letting myself sleep. So I was in a terrible cycle with that. Had I had a therapist that actually specialized in maternal mental health and postpartum health mental health, maybe I could have had some coping skills taught to me. And I know what y'all are thinking. Whitney, don't you know those coping skills? You are the maternal mental health therapist. I am right now. I was not in 2017. Yeah. And I will say this it is so different when you're in the trenches. Totally. Like when you're in that fight or flight, when you are sleep deprived, when your progesterone and estrogen have crashed, honestly, your logic kind of goes out the window. You don't have your box as much. And so I would have really been, it would have been good for me had I had a therapist, because that would have been my toolbox. Yeah. They could have reminded me, hey Whitney, try this. Hey, Whitney, do these exercises. Try to ground in these moments. And just having that therapist voice in my head to kind of counteract my own inner voice, man, I could have had a much better postpartum route.
no. And the reality is the most common complication of pregnancy and childbirth is maternal mental health disorders. And we don't wish that upon anybody, but it's the reality. And it's the same sense of you get a mammogram to be preventative, you get a colonoscopy to be preventative. You get the blood work, you get the blood pressure checks. Every pregnancy visit, you pee in the cup and you test for protein in your urine. But what we do and our model of care at Previa is offer is you come to us early in pregnancy. And just like those blood tests, we are going to do a screening. We're going to see our baselines for anxiety and depression. We're going to ask you, we're going to ask Whitney, tell us about your family history. Tell me about your history. Tell me about how life is right now. Is your husband deployed? Are you single? Are you with the father of the child? Support system. Yeah, what's your support system? How's work? Are you financially stable? Have you had a miscarriage? Did you do IVF? Right. How's your thyroid? We're going to ask those questions and we're putting together a picture of information that we're going to provide to you to say, okay, Whitney, you know, here is what research tells us and we've seen could be added to your risk factors. Just because Whitney has a risk factor and I have a risk factor, doesn't mean we're going to have postpartum depression and depression and pregnancy. Correct.
SPEAKER_00
Am I more actable to it? For sure. And that's okay. We're not, yeah, that's not a faulty thing at all. I don't want y'all to hear us saying that. But just like if your family has heart disease, if your family has dementia, cancer, kidney disease, any of those things that we think of as a physical, biological health problem, you know that genetically you're higher risk. So chances are, like if you have had grandparents, aunts, uncles, parents even have high cholesterol, have congestive heart failure, have high blood pressure, you would likely see a cardiologist earlier in your life versus later to be as
proactive and preventative as possible. That is our goal here is to be your toolbox throughout your pregnancy to check in with you, to make sure that you have what you need, to ensure that you do tap into your support system if they are there and available to you. It's also to help you brainstorm what resources could I even bring in for myself. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02
It's invaluable to have that knowledge, and knowledge is power. So you alone knowing, if you've never knew and you come to a material mental therapist, and now you leave that appointment. You go, okay, I know now kind of a baseline on anxiety, depression is screening. This is often probably the first time anyone's ever been screened, so it can feel a little off and weird, but hey, now you're getting introduced to how people ask about depression and anxiety. Right. You're getting a risk factor thing. You're you're going, okay, wait, you know, that's right. My mom did struggle with depression. Okay, yeah, no, I am military. Okay. Yep, I had a previous, you know, loss. Oh, okay. Yep, I did have this, right? So now your brain's starting to get, we're just being aware. That's that's all we're doing in the same sense. And then we're coming to you going, okay, so do you are showing signs of anxiety according to this? Let's talk about it. Is this situational? You know, what is going on? So you're having this full picture and you're now you're being educated, because then as part of a, you know, what terminal mental health therapists do, is there to teach you what pregnancy and depression would look like. What does anxiety look like? To pick that out on you to say, okay, it sounds like the last pregnancy you had, you were anxious. And maybe never no one people just said, Well, you're pregnant, of course you're worried. But maybe it was more.
SPEAKER_00
Well, and I will say this sometimes people, and it
gets under my skin. I do have to say that it's a little bit of a bias for me. I do feel like oftentimes if a pregnant mom expresses anxiety, depression, just feeling off in pregnancy to a non-professional, uh-huh, then they're saying, Oh, it's just your hormones.
SPEAKER_02
Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_00
I'm not discounting that hormones play a role. However, we should never just say, Oh, it's your hormones. Let's not do anything about it.
SPEAKER_03
Right.
SPEAKER_00
Like, why don't we dig a little deeper and say, well, what do you think is making you feel a little bit sad?
unknown
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00
Is it that it's winter time and it's gloomy and it's like a seasonal effective thing? Is it that this is your first pregnancy post-miscarriage? Yeah. And you're still grieving your other baby. You know, are we over here thinking, well, you know what? Like, man, her hours just got cut.
unknown
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00
And now she found out she's pregnant. Guess what? I'd have some depression anxiety too.
SPEAKER_02
Exactly.
SPEAKER_00
Here's the thing: if you experience depression and anxiety, it's founded.
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00
It is founded and it is valid. And so we want to be able to walk alongside you with those challenges, with those difficulties, and be a resource and support to you during those times. Because no one is immune from life. Life has a very sneaky way of throwing us a curveball when we are least expecting it. Uh-huh. And you want to have support and resources more or less at your fingertips when life hits.
SPEAKER_02
100%. And I think just the lack of conversation, the lack of awareness
leads moms very alone. And a lot of times we aren't able to catch early, like a preventative approach. It's a crisis approach or a reactionary approach, which we're trying to step away from that because it's clearly not working because moms are suffering in silence. And how our models care is once they come in, you do that intake. You can do a group route or you can do an individual kind of therapy route, where people are like, Well, will my insurance pay? Well, there's, you know, I always tell people pregnancy is adjustment, and there's such a thing as an adjustment disorder. There is, I mean, that is the largest life adjustment that I think you will ever see in your life. Absolutely. Because you never go back from it. And what we also are able to do is, like you said, be that safe space because you can be like, Well, I don't want to talk to someone every week. You don't have to. That could be once a trimester for some people. It could be once a month for some people. Absolutely. You could get in and realize you have a crisis situational something that doesn't even have to do with your pregnancy, but you handling that situation. If it's a job, if it's your narcissistic father, if it's a death that just happened, that we can be very supportive of, which is going to benefit your whole pregnancy and postpartum. Absolutely. Thousand percent. So we're not saying it's one fits all. It's again, everybody's going for
that mammogram, everybody's going for that colonoscopy. So this is what we do. So we stick with you. And again, you have that person. And there's that, it's just halfway, half. I've seen so much of it. Just knowing I have a therapist, even outside of postpartum. It's so powerful. Just knowing someone's in your corner, someone is there to equip you. You don't have to figure it out your own. You can be super honest about it and say, I'm feeling X, Y, and Z. OBs have enough on their plate to manage you physically. Yes. Now, granted, they can prescribe. They can prescribe. And the majority, I think, would feel as partnership of knowing that you are in therapy or you are working on things because both can, again, be amazing partners together, medication and therapy. But there is a caveat that, you know, we really sometimes got to dig deep into like our history, our thought patterns, our coping skills. I mean, if you don't even know what anxiety is, you may not even be able to say, My gosh, this is how I am anxious, or this is PTSD for my birth experience, or I'm experiencing OCD now. You know, it's awareness. Absolutely. I mean, we're gonna teach you the difference between baby blues and post-prime depression. You're gonna know that that is equipped. You're gonna be so equipped and empowered. You're gonna know what an intrusive thought is. So when you're walking down the stairs and you settling in your mind, see yourself a baby falling, and you see yourself going with the baby to NICU, you don't go, am I losing my mind? You're able to say, This is an intrusive thought. I know what to do.
SPEAKER_00
I have the ability to handle it.
SPEAKER_02
I can handle this. And that is something that moms we hear all the time is I feel so alone. I feel like I keep I'm failing. I can't do this. We are that safe space, and that is what we want you to do. In early screenings, you may be saying, Okay, are we really doing anxiety and depression screenings frequently? Well, sometimes you don't know and you can't dissay it, but the question will help us pull it out of you in a way. Again, objective doesn't tell the whole story, right? But an objective baseline so we can kind of see what our scores are doing. Absolutely. No right, no wrong. It just is what it is. And the cool part of how previous setup and what we hope when you're looking, if you're not part of Alabama, you cannot be a part of previous, find a mature mental health therapist. Say, I want to get established. I want this preventively for my health, I want to know my risk factors, I want to have someone to check in. I want to someone to know my baseline. Right. Absolutely. Know me and rock with me through pregnancy. And postpartum doesn't end at three months. Right. Postpartum, they're saying can last up to four years, but we're especially going to be with you till that baby is one. That first year is absolutely critical. And we know the highest risk of maternal overdose and suicide is when we're looking at honestly that
four to 12 months postpartum. Really seen a lot of peak at six and nine months, and people are going, why? I thought it's the first three months. It's because if it's not treated, if it's not picked up on, if it's she's not getting support, it just doesn't magically go away. Absolutely. So, Whitney, if you are if a listener's saying, okay, Whitney, obviously I'm not in Alabama. Uh, Whitney, we can't multiply with Whitney and put her in every 50 state as much as much as we're trying to with Chat GPT. No, I'm just kidding. But what as a therapist should they look for in? And what would be if someone came to you out of the blue pregnant and said, I heard this episode, Whitney, this is what I want. Like, help walk through. Maybe they're like, Okay, this how am I gonna do this? How am I gonna make that call? How am I gonna say this to my therapist?
SPEAKER_00
So we have a couple of options as far as finding your therapist. So you can always call your insurance carrier and say, who is in network? I will say this as a therapist, we are licensed for the whole state. So my office is in the Birmingham area of Alabama. I can see someone that is in Huntsville and I can see someone that is in Mobile. I can see within these state lines of Alabama. So if your insurance recommends someone that's two hours away, you can always do virtual. So be mindful of
that. You can go through insurance, you can go through psychology today, which is probably what I would really recommend first, because you can narrow it down to specialties of being maternal mental health, postpartum pregnancy. Try to use those keywords or even women's mental health. Try to look for some of those keywords on psychology today. You can also look to see location-wise, are they convenient to you? Do they offer telehealth? Things of that nature. The next one is postpartum support international. They basically have like a nationwide database or log of these different therapists. That is a great place to narrow it down to at least your area. And you already know that you filtered it to maternal mental health because that's all that they do. So those are the three things that I would do as far as figuring out who you can see that specializes in maternal mental health or postpartum mental health. As far as approaching the therapist, you don't have to get nitty-gritty. You really don't. If you are just filling out that contact form or you're emailing someone, you can just say, hi, I'm X amount of months pregnant, or I'm X amount of months postpartum, and I'm just looking for some support. We don't have to be nitty-gritty. That can be really challenging and very vulnerable to put in an email. If you're already experiencing anxiety, we don't really want to put gas on that fire.
unknown
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00
So you can just say, I'm looking for some support during my pregnancy or while I am postpartum. Thousand percent. Because guess what? During our first session, that's when I'm going to talk with you about what's going on. Help me have a picture here. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02
No, love that. And I think it's just, if anything, I tell anyone who's pregnant who
come across my way, if you know me or you're not, and if you ask me or if you're not, I always say, you know, the best thing I could have ever done for myself was get in with a therapist, mature mental health therapist. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00
So I think for therapists are judgment-free zones.
SPEAKER_02
Totally, in a safe place. And I will caveat this. If the first therapist that you get assigned to, it doesn't mesh, that's okay. That's not personal. There is plenty of incredible mature mental health therapists. Well, Whitney, as always, I'm thankful for you. I know our women are thankful for mature mental health therapists who on this month of celebrating women, we are hoping to propel this conversation that let's not react, let's not let moms get into this crisis, let's not let them suffer in silence, but let's be ahead of it and actually preventative.
SPEAKER_00
Yes, we want to embrace y'all with open arms and be the support that you deserve.
SPEAKER_02
And we are here, you can find us every week and go back through our episodes. We have a lot of really great episodes. It's going to touch on something that I guarantee is going on in your life. But if you've never heard our What Is series, where we go through every uh maternal mental health disorder, such a great place to start. Safe place to start and a way to start conversations with yourself and your loved ones. Absolutely. All right, friends. We will be back next week. So we hope you guys have a great week. See ya.
SPEAKER_01
Maternal mental health is as important as physical health. The Preview Alliance podcast was created for and by moms dealing with postpartum depression and all its variables like anxiety, anger, and even apathy. Hosted by CEO, founder Sarah Parkers, and licensed clinical social worker Whitney Gay, each episode focuses on specific issues relevant to pregnancy and postpartum. Join us and hear how other moms have overcome mental health challenges as well as access tips and suggestions on dealing with your own challenges as moms. You can also browse our podcast library and listen to previous episodes at any time. Please know you're not alone on this journey. We're here to help.
