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Because few health care programs are aware
of the prevalence of postpartum depression and its dangerous consequences,
we are working hard to get the word out. We maintain the PPD HOPE
Information Center (www.ppdhope.org).
There, you can learn all about PPD, diagnosis and treatment by reading
the comprehensive Frequently Asked Questions on the website. You
will also find articles and books about PPD and links to other PPD-related
sites. Plus, there is a screening test that women can take to see
if they may have PPD.
Education
We sponsor the annual National PPD Screening Day, during which we
encourage pregnant women and new mothers to screen themselves for
PPD at our PPD HOPE Information Center website and urge health-care
professionals to implement screening programs. We held our first
screening day event on May 11, 2005, at the American Public Health
Association building in Washington, D.C.
We have brochures and other handouts about PPD. Our brochure was
given to every new mother in the State of Virginia. It is also available
at the National Naval Medical Center and a variety of facilities
up and down the East Coast. These materials are available to individuals,
organizations and government agencies. We can also recommend and
provide speakers to groups interested in learning about PPD and
experts for the media. Speakers and experts include our board members,
doctors and women who have suffered from PPD.
We have a first draft of a treatment manual for professionals who
deal with PPD. We train volunteers to answer the Warmline. We are
in the process of recruiting, training, and organizing women who
have suffered from PPD to form peer support groups, run them and
maintain them. We are hoping to obtain funds to hire and train maternal
and child health (MCH) paraprofessionals, to facilitate
these groups and keep records of the number of women attending.
Screening
Our mission is to make universal depression screening a national
standard of care so that every pregnant woman and new mother is
screened for PPD. In addition to our online screening test, we conducted
a PPD screening program through a grant from the Health Resources
and Services Administration (HRSA) of the federal government.
The program, entitled —“Improving Women’s Health Through
Universal Perinatal Depression Screening in Primary Care Settings,”
involved screening of all patients at multiple primary care sites in Washington,
D.C including; Mary’s Center for Maternal and Child Care; the Pediatric
Outpatient Clinic of the Children’s Hospital National Medical Center;
The Healthy Start Initiative for Wards 1, 2, and 4; The Healthy
Families Initiative of Wards, 1, 2, 4, and 5; the Columbia Road
Clinic; and Providence Hospital.
We also promote universal screening through our professional education
activities (see below).
Professional education
Outreach begins with educating health-care professionals and institutions
about PPD screening and treatment. We have a team led by FMHI Medical
Director Ralph Wittenberg, M.D., that makes presentations on PPD
screening and treatment to groups of professionals. So far, this
activity has taken place mostly in the Washington, D.C., area; Bolling
Air Force Base, DeWitt Army Hospital, the National Naval Medical
Center, Sibley Hospital, Potomac Hospital, Prince Georges County
Medical Center, Mary’s Center, Mount Vernon Hospital, The District
of Columbia Pediatric Group, Easton Memorial Hospital in Talbot
County, Maryland, the Washington Hospital Center, and the Foxhall
Obstetrics and Gynecology Practice. If you would like a presentation
before your group, contact us at info@fmhi.org.
We have a rough draft of a manual PPD screening-and-treatment for
doctors, nurses and other professionals that come into contact with
pregnant women and new mothers. We are also working on DVDs of our
PowerPoint presentations. We were invited to be a member of an expert
panel which developed an online training course for physicians,
with CME credits, under the auspices of the Virginia Department
of Health and carried out by the University of Virginia. We have presented a poster and a round table discussion at the last
meeting of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists,
North American Psychosocial section.
Website
Our website, www.ppdhope.org
provides education to pregnant and postpartum mothers, their families
and friends. It also has extensive materials for professional education
including lectures, bibliographies, and articles in the press that
relate to PPD. The website offers a facsimile of the depression
screening test we use, the Edinburgh Postpartum Depression Scale
(EPDS).
The website refers woman, their families and friends to our toll
free Warmline (1-877-PPD-HOPE
or 1-877-773-4673). The phone
is answered 24/7 by operators belonging to a traditional telephone
answering service. They have been provided with a script with which
to respond to the calls. They ask if the call is on their behalf
or someone else’s. In the latter case they are asked if they would
like to receive materials and inform them about the website as a
source of information. If the caller is the patient, she is asked
if she would like to be contacted by a mother who has been through
PPD herself. If she is interested she has to give a name and telephone
number so that the volunteer can call her back. The volunteer is
notified via e-mail once a day. If possible, the call is returned
within 24-hours.
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