This is part of a series of stories about people working to build stronger networks of care for new moms and families across New Hampshire. Read more here.
Nearly 16 years ago, Heather Martin lost her sister to suicide.
“It happened so fast, about three weeks postpartum,” Martin recalled. “She struggled with what we know now was postpartum psychosis.”
As Martin has tried to figure out how this could happen to her sister — who seemed happy and healthy one moment, gone the next — she’s tried to use her family’s experience to prevent others from going through the same.
In her work as a maternal mental health navigator at Dartmouth Health Children’s in Manchester, Martin helped to create a new screening program to ensure more regular check ins with new moms during their pediatric visits. The idea is to keep an eye on how a mom is feeling not just in the early weeks after they give birth, but also throughout the first year of their baby’s life.
“We're actually seeing moms have more stress and anxiety at the four-, six- and nine-month [check ups],” Martin said. “So it's not just right out of the gate, postpartum.”
Martin has also helped to launch a new statewide “Mom Hub,” a centralized access point to connect new parents with local mental health support.
To Martin and other maternal health advocates, the need for prevention couldn’t be more urgent. In recent years, mental health conditions were identified as the primary underlying cause in nearly 60% of pregnancy-related deaths, according to New Hampshire’s latest report on maternal mortality.
Martin recently joined NHPR’s Julia Furukawa to share more about her work to reverse that trend.
Help is available. You can contact the National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988. Help is also available at 988lifeline.org. Support is also available through the New Hampshire Rapid Response Access Point. Call or text them at 833-710-6477, or chat online at www.nh988.com
Transcript
So Heather, you run the maternal mental health program at Dartmouth Health. What does that work look like?
So [as] the maternal mental health navigator, we check in with moms with our screening process. There are moms that just want to talk about how they're doing, how they're feeling — having someone help them navigate the resources here in our state has always been an issue — and finding the right resources for moms.
I have a designated resource list for therapists [and] groups in the area. And upcoming, I'm going to be able to do visits with moms, either in the office or telehealth, for low- to moderate-risk anxiety patients. I'm going to be able to give them the tools and the strategies to manage stress and anxiety.
We're going to be able to do that in the pediatric setting, which has never been done before. [We've] never [been able] to have that support for maternal mental health in the pediatric setting.
Can you tell me what is unique or different about care in that type of setting?
So recognizing that in the pediatric practice is huge — because moms, they're giving birth and then they go to their six-, eight-week check-up at the OB[-GYN]. Sometimes they don't even make that a priority, right? But they're going to make their pediatric appointments for their babies their priority.
So that's where we can talk to moms. We can open up that conversation with moms at those pediatric visits. And it's working. I come in contact with, I'd say, about 10 moms a week, going into the exam room after they've spoken with the provider [saying], “Heather Martin's here to help. We can get you connected.” Doing the follow up calls; I probably have about 20 to 30 contacts a week. Just offering that support for everyday moms.
Heather, this is an issue that is close to your heart. Can you tell me about your journey to becoming an advocate for maternal mental health?
Next month, it'll be 16 years that I lost my sister to maternal suicide. It happened so fast, about three weeks postpartum. She struggled with what we know now was postpartum psychosis.
We talk about this being a rare thing that can happen, but it can happen to anyone. My sister was happy, healthy, [and had a] wonderful pregnancy, birthing experience. So it just came out of nowhere and just shocked my family [and] the whole community.
We just wanted to figure out what was going on. [I wanted to] figure out how this happened and what we can do for maternal mental health and to help prevent a tragedy like this happening to someone else and their family.
Earlier you mentioned this screening process. When you do that, what do you hear most often from patients who are struggling with their mental health postpartum?
“Thank you for asking how I'm feeling.”
Because we talk about babies and our children and how exciting it is to have a baby and how happy everyone is. But it's not always like that, right? For a lot of moms, it's feeling stressed [or] anxious. A lot of these feelings are normal, and we want to normalize that.
A couple months ago, I had seen a mom, [and] she had had a new baby. I had talked to her during her previous pregnancy. She said, “You saved my life this last pregnancy. You saved my life by just talking to you and getting help.”
What would you like to see from the state and from lawmakers to improve access to maternal mental health care here?
I would love having a dedicated perinatal mental health peer support model here in our state. They've done it in other states. I want that here for New Hampshire, whether it be a community health worker, a doula doing this peer support work. They want to do this work, but we need to reimburse them for their time and for giving moms support.
Dartmouth Health is an NHPR underwriter. They had no editorial role in this story, and we cover them like any other institution.
