Last week, Gov. Deval Patrick signed into law a bill designed to help women dealing with emotional difficulties after giving birth.
The Postpartum Depression bill was sponsored by state Rep. Ellen Story (D-Amherst) and championed by activist groups including MotherWoman, the Amherst non-profit that runs support groups for new moms and offers training sessions for healthcare professionals who work with mothers.
According to MotherWoman, 15 percent of Massachusetts mothers experience postpartum depression, “a painful condition marked by despair, guilt, anxiety, and fears of hurting oneself or one’s baby.”
The new law establishes a commission made up of legislators, state officials, healthcare providers, advocates and mothers who’ve experienced post-partum emotional stress, with the charge of strengthening PPD support programs in the state, including treatment, screening and public-awareness efforts. The commission will assess existing programs and research successful practices, develop a referral list of services and seek federal funding for PPD programs.
Missing from the final version of the law is a controversial element from earlier drafts: a provision that would have required universal PPD screenings of all new mothers, to be covered by insurance companies. Critics—most notably, Northampton’s Freedom Center—worried the screening could lead to over-diagnoses of PPD, and over-prescription of psychiatric drugs. Others considered the universal screening an invasion of new mothers’ privacy. (“Searching for Consensus,” May 20, 2010.)
In a press release celebrating the signing, MotherWoman called the new law “a milestone for Massachusetts: our first official recognition that perinatal depressive and anxiety disorders are the most common complication of pregnancy, and demand the attention of our public health system.”
