{"id":125263,"date":"2025-05-23T12:43:20","date_gmt":"2025-05-23T12:43:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/125263\/"},"modified":"2025-05-23T12:43:20","modified_gmt":"2025-05-23T12:43:20","slug":"after-losing-her-sister-she-now-works-to-help-other-moms-take-care-of-their-mental-health","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/125263\/","title":{"rendered":"After losing her sister, she now works to help other moms take care of their mental health"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is part of a <\/b>series of stories<\/b><\/a> about people working to build stronger networks of care for new moms and families across New Hampshire. <\/b>Read more here<\/b><\/a>.<\/b><\/p>\n

Nearly 16 years ago, Heather Martin lost her sister to suicide.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt happened so fast, about three weeks postpartum,\u201d Martin recalled. \u201cShe struggled with what we know now was postpartum psychosis.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Martin has tried to figure out how this could happen to her sister \u2014 who seemed happy and healthy one moment, gone the next \u2014 she\u2019s tried to use her family\u2019s experience to prevent others from going through the same.<\/p>\n

In her work as a maternal mental health navigator at Dartmouth Health Children\u2019s 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\u2019s life.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe’re actually seeing moms have more stress and anxiety at the four-, six- and nine-month [check ups],\u201d Martin said. \u201cSo it’s not just right out of the gate, postpartum.\u201d<\/p>\n

Martin has also helped to launch a new statewide \u201cMom Hub<\/a>,\u201d a centralized access point to connect new parents with local mental health support.<\/p>\n

To Martin and other maternal health advocates, the need for prevention couldn\u2019t 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\u2019s latest report<\/a> on maternal mortality.<\/p>\n

Martin recently joined NHPR\u2019s Julia Furukawa to share more about her work to reverse that trend.<\/p>\n

If you need support<\/b><\/p>\n

Help is available. You can contact the
\nNational Suicide and Crisis Lifeline<\/b> by calling or texting 988<\/b>. Help is also available at 988lifeline.org<\/a>. Support is also available through the New Hampshire Rapid Response Access Point<\/b>. Call or text them at 833-710-6477<\/b>, or chat online at www.nh988.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Transcript<\/b><\/p>\n

So Heather, you run the maternal mental health program at Dartmouth Health. What does that work look like?<\/b><\/p>\n

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 \u2014 having someone help them navigate the resources here in our state has always been an issue \u2014 and finding the right resources for moms.<\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Can you tell me what is unique or different about care in that type of setting?<\/b><\/p>\n

So recognizing that in the pediatric practice is huge \u2014\u00a0because 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. <\/p>\n

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], \u201cHeather Martin’s here to help. We can get you connected.\u201d Doing the follow up calls; I probably have about 20 to 30 contacts a week. Just offering that support for everyday moms.<\/p>\n

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?<\/b><\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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?<\/b><\/p>\n

\u201cThank you for asking how I’m feeling.\u201d <\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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, \u201cYou saved my life this last pregnancy. You saved my life by just talking to you and getting help.\u201d<\/p>\n

What would you like to see from the state and from lawmakers to improve access to maternal mental health care here?<\/b><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Dartmouth Health is an NHPR underwriter. They had no editorial role in this story, and we cover them like any other institution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This is part of a series of stories about people working to build stronger networks of care for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":125264,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4317],"tags":[105,218,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-125263","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-mental-health","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114557209989609528","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125263"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125263\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}