Closing Gaps in Maternal Mental Health

The Policy Center for Maternal Mental Health is a national think tank, nonprofit organization advancing policies that support a health care system that routinely detects and treats maternal mental health disorders for every mother, every time.

The New USPSTF Recommendation: Prevention of Maternal Depression

February 25, 2019 by joy Burkhard in POLICY

We had the opportunity to pull leaders in the field together to review the draft USPSTF recommendation. To learn what was discussed read more here.

It has now become more well known that maternal mental health disorders are the most common complication of pregnancy and childbirth.

In 2017, after the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology (ACOG) overturned its position to recommend screening for maternal depression, the United States Preventive Service Task Force (USPSTF) changed its position to now recommend maternal depression screening.
Now, in 2019, the USPSTF released one of the firsts of its kind, a recommendation for a clinical intervention to prevent a potential disorder, not just screen for it retrospectively. The disorder? Maternal depression. The recommendation was published in on the USPSTF website and in the Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA) Network.