Speaker 1: 0:00

Hi guys, this is Sarah with the Preview Alliance podcast and today I'm so excited I have Jamie Velsito. She is the founder of Maternal Mental Health Leadership Alliance, a former state rep and, most importantly, a mom who is fighting for moms, and she has been for over 20 years. But, most importantly, we are going to be talking about the National Maternal Mental Health Hotline, so I want to make sure you guys have this number. No-transcript. This is Sarah Nasset in my intro. I am so excited for you guys to get to know someone. I've had the pleasure of knowing, jamie Belsito, and she is a powerhouse. Jamie, welcome and thank you.

Speaker 2: 1:10

Girl, I am thrilled to be here. I feel the same about you Powerhouse down south, and together we are joining forces to take care of the mamas, and thrilled to be here with you today.

Speaker 1: 1:23

Thank you. Now, Jamie, introduce yourself to our listeners who don't know you. Tell us about you from the personal stance and then where you're at today fighting for moms.

Speaker 2: 1:33

Sure, thank you so much. So first I'll give the most Massachusetts thing possible, which is where I am based in Boston. I'm currently in a Dunkin' Donuts having a coffee on my way to an event here to again keep talking about moms. So I am running on Dunkin's this morning. I am Jamie Belsito. I am the founder of the Maternal Mental Health Leadership Alliance, which is a nonprofit that I created because I knew we needed to address policy as it relates to taking care of mom's mental health. I myself am a two-time what I'll say survivor of perinatal mental health complications. My girls are the best. They're now 12 and 15. They are fabulous, they were wonderful.

Speaker 2: 2:19

I was a mess and, although we here in Massachusetts consider ourselves privileged with healthcare, when it came to finding maternal mental healthcare, first off, no one even identified that that was a thing, and then, secondly, I couldn't find any help, and part of it was just lack of access, lack of education, lack of knowing what this is and destigmatization. So again, I'll pivot back to why I created the Maternal Mental Health Leadership Alliance. We me and yourself and hundreds of other moms and families across the United States have been affected by a loss, by personally feeling alone, isolated, and I've just been slowly but surely bringing people together in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, creating the first ever advocacy day at the state house, and we've done great things around screening and support and access and home visiting and pediatric mom baby dyad screenings and all the things all the way through to the federal steps where we created the first ever advocacy day in 2016. Here we are, nine years later. We just had our Maternal Mental Health Leadership Alliance Advocacy Day where, sarah, we are advocating for two programs that we fought tooth and nail for.

Speaker 2: 3:40

That is a state psychiatry access program where, if I come to see you as a mom and you're my doctor, but you're just my general practitioner and I don't feel well and you say, hey, you know you're a new mom, let's screen you for mental health conditions, see how you're doing, and I screen that I am definitely suffering from postpartum anxiety. You can pick up a phone. You don't have to be the expert, you can pick up a phone at your state telepsychiatry access program Get me some support services local. And we're also fighting to make sure that our hotline the Maternal Mental Health Hotline 24-7, text access bilingual continues to be supported and these are the things we're doing. So very excited to meet with you today to talk about them.

Speaker 1: 4:29

And you know, I know we both shared that personal experience and feeling helpless of where do I go, what do I do. And so much has evolved since me and you were immediate postpartum but it still hasn't in a lot of areas and especially where I'm at in the South. And one thing specifically I wanted to bring to people's attention was the hotline. I want to come back to psychiatric access program because I think that is so needed on so many levels. But the hotline. You know what was the inspiration and what was some of the hurdles for a hotline like this. You know there's a suicide hotline right. There's prayer hotlines, you name it. Like. Baby formulas have called 24-7,. Asked me a question about baby formula and people are probably going wait, that wasn't even a thing until recently. We had to advocate for this Like. Give us the origin of this. That seems like it should be common sense for moms.

Speaker 2: 5:22

Absolutely, and that is part of the myth of it. Right Is that moms are expected, or there is this unrealistic expectation. I guess I don't know if it hails from this. You know Madonna syndrome or not. Madonna material girl, but like moms, do all the things and so you just know how to be a mom and even if you're struggling, you should just be functioning.

Speaker 2: 5:49

Moms are juggling so much these days. They're going to school, they're working from home, they're working a full-time job away from home, they have other children, they are the main breadwinners, you name it. You name it. Maybe they don't have access to care, maybe there's a whole bunch. They have other physical or mental health issues going on that aren't identified or under-identified and kind of brushed under the rug.

Speaker 2: 6:15

So this maternal mental health hotline, adrienne Griffin, my dear friend, my work partner and our founding executive director, formerly of Postpartum Support, virginia, former naval officer, has three children, and this is a woman who served in the military, served overseas, worked for the White House and, as she says, the one thing that brought her to her knees was her second child.

Speaker 2: 6:43

And I laugh because I think any of us who have been there know what that's like and I know that same thing happened to me. I questioned everything about why I even existed and had there been a text line or a hotline to call. In the middle of the night, when you literally look out the window and you see not one other person's awake, or you've been trying to tough through it and you know, praying to God, praying to the Virgin Mary, praying to whoever you think is that person for you, and you're still not doing well and you've just lost all hope that there is a lifeline there that will connect you to local support systems on the ground. And perinatal mental health complications, or masking them with substance use because you can't find another way, are not the same as regular anxiety, bipolar, other issues that are equally as important, but are not the same, and so that's why we knew that there was a need for this hotline and just started to educate folks about it, and it's now serviced over 60,000 families across the United States.

Speaker 1: 7:49

And it's totally free. It's 24-7, bilingual. I know someone who works the hotline. She was incredibly well-trained. She is the type of person that I would want to have on the line. These are vetted people that I think sometimes they're going well. If I call in Jamie and I say how I really feel what's going to happen, am I going to be judged? I think that's what a lot of women have experienced. I've tried to say I'm not okay, you know, to my doctor, to my husband or to this lady that I broke down in front of at the grocery store, right? So I think, just speak culture of the hotline and purpose of we're not turning these women away with this hotline. It's truly a vessel for support.

Speaker 2: 8:37

It is such a vessel for support and it's folks who are trained as perinatal mental health clinicians or certified with the PMHC. We are partnering. We, the country I apologize Health and Human Services who put out a request for an RFO I'm flailing at the acronym off the end right here but put out a request for folks to respond crisis hotlines. Any organization that was able to accommodate and Postpartum Support International applied, applied and they won the contract, which you don't want to say that it was a match made in heaven from jump street, because who knows if there were other organizations out there to accommodate the need, but it truly is. I mean, these are counselors who have been operating the warm line right. We know what the warm line is. Do you want to share what the warm line is with your audience?

Speaker 1: 9:39

Well. So I think I want to focus just on the hotline so they don't get confused. We have a lot of the moms who we may have 10 minutes of them in carpool and I want them to know about the hotline at all and I want them to know about the hotline at all.

Speaker 1: 9:53

Just this focus in there versus the warm line of it is not a 24-7 situation, so the hotline here is really I'd rather, if you're going to know what number, know this hotline number, which I'm going to plaster this all over our show notes and our Instagram promotions for this. But with Postpartum Support International, we love them. We always tell if you care, not in Alabama and you can't work with Previo and our therapists, go there, find a Postpartum Support International trained therapist, maternal mental health trained counselor. We love them, we're all for them.

Speaker 2: 10:27

And that's who is being able to manage these hotlines. They took it out of the warm line sphere and put it into the hotline sphere. This is immediate response, within 30 seconds and individuals picking up their phone. They are trained professionals who, first and foremost, are going to say you are not alone, you are not doing this in a vacuum. It might feel like it, but you're not alone and we're going to get you the right support services. Have that individual to be there to just deescalate, destigmatize. Knows about perinatal depression, perinatal anxiety, postpartum psychosis, perinatal OCD, trauma related disorders, substance use comorbidities. You know these are so personal and so real and no one is ever going to be there to judge you, nor are they going to be looking to say oh geez, you're a new mom, you're dealing with these issues.

Speaker 2: 11:31

Maybe we should have somebody intervene. That's anything but supportive. That's not what this line does. This line is there for the moms, there for the families Grandmas can call, memas can call, sisters can call, aunties can call, partners can call. It's available for the family and it's there to connect you with support services in your backyard.

Speaker 1: 11:54

I love that. Now talk to us a little bit. When you were advocating for this bill, what was the responses you were getting? Because I think it's important to draw attention to the fight that it was to get this to be established and continue to be established, and I think people need to be holding I mean, you were a representative and they need to be holding their state and federal representatives accountable to things such as maternal mental health. So just shine light to kind of like what your challenges are fighting for mom's mental health and where we're going with that.

Speaker 2: 12:26

The issue is much more well-known. It is still not as known as it should. It is the number one complication of all pregnancies and the leading cause for maternal mortality and we're still having to educate folks on it. There is still this disconnect between what is physical manifestation of a pregnancy to the mental health manifestation of that pregnancy. That could affect individuals who have never had any mental health complications before. It is hormonal, physical and psychosocial triggers. It is biological. It could be a number of things. It could be.

Speaker 2: 13:05

You go in with your birth plan and think things are going to go one way and you come out on the other side of that trying to reconcile that it was a traumatic birth, that something happened, that the baby's in the NICU, that there's some sort of major traumatic episode that happened, and now you, the mom and the spouse, the partner, are trying to manage these, trying to manage these. And so when we went to start to talk about it to the legislators to say hey, we should be looking at having a maternal mental health line because, again, number one complication of pregnancy, leading cause of maternal mortality, the question was why can't 988 handle this, why can't a regular behavioral health hotline handle this? And the reason is because it is specific to the perinatal and postnatal time period. It is not the same as, quote regular OCD, different forms of PTSD, different forms of anxiety, different forms of depression. We need specialized help and the most amazing thing about this, Sarah, and you know this it is the only preventable, temporary and treatable mental health condition out there.

Speaker 1: 14:17

Yeah, and that's the thing is, people ask me what I do and I share to them and they'll go oh OK, you know, or they'll go on the opposite. My daughter had that. I experienced that. I knows my neighbor, you know we are battling. I tell people all this time.

Speaker 1: 14:41

You're battling every type of pause and care for your state and federal representatives' attention for this. That's right. So you are up against cancer, you're up against, you know, big oil, up against, you know fish markets, you name it. You're literally battling for them. So it can get very lost because it is the silent killer of mocks. We like to say. So if you're not talking about it, if you're not asking your representative saying you know, this is important to me, that this is in our state, if it is for a psychiatric residency program, if it is to ask for, you know, if let's talk about the Moms Act, we haven't even touched that. But something that passed last year that you guys were helped championing for, you know, let's talk about the Moms Act, we haven't even touched that. But something that passed last year that you guys were helped championing for, you know it is being aware of what legislation and funding is going towards maternal mental health, that if it's not you, it's your sister, it's your friend, someone can benefit.

Speaker 2: 15:35

That's exactly right. And you know what, sarah? Here's the thing Women are the ones giving birth to the next generation, right? In order to have a healthy society, women's health needs to be healthy, which then, in turn, makes infant health healthy, makes the family health healthy, makes the community healthy, and we know that this country has the worst maternal health outcomes in the industrialized world. And whatever side of the aisle you land on, politically, this has been a bipartisan everybody issue, because no one, no one, is saying that we want moms to die or we want families to lose a parent or we want children not to have their mother. Everyone realizes the gravity of this issue at hand, and this will make a healthier America and healthier communities for everybody if we just do what we should be doing, and that is to take care of our pregnant and postpartum moms and their families 100%.

Speaker 1: 16:45

Can you share a little bit about the Moms Act, because I'm really excited about that. I was a VA nurse for over a decade and we do know military veteran their spouses. That is a huge risk factor here when we're talking about maternal mental health and they, you know they're serving and protecting our country and their family sacrifices. It's the least we could do I think too as well is to recognize a great risk factor and treat them. So what is the Moms Act and how can we help champion that for you guys as well?

Speaker 2: 17:13

Oh, I really appreciate the support that you've given to your community, your service to our country, you understanding the issue you're absolutely right about. It's the least we can do and that me coming from a military family, I find that to be very tough to think about, that we have continually had to go back and patchwork services for our families and those who serve, but this is the right thing to do. We know that women are enlisting in the military at higher rates than men. We know that there are disparities in overall maternal health care for women of color and it's Black women that are enlisting in the Army at the highest rates right now in our military and it affects the family health and wellness If there's a husband who's deployed while the mom is pregnant or has a newborn back home. We need to look at this as a readiness issue as well as a family health issue, and the Moms Act was something that was included in the National Defense Authorization Act last year addressing maternal mental health in the US military for serving and spouses and families out. Okay, there is an awareness campaign component to let individuals know that. As we just talked in the beginning of this segment, it's the number one complication of all pregnancies. It is the leading cause of maternal mortality and it should be destigmatized. Everyone should know what this is, just like we know about perinatal diabetes or gestational diabetes or not smoking or not drinking when you're pregnant. This is exactly the same, if not more important because it is happening to more people. Important because it is happening to more people.

Speaker 2: 19:06

We're looking at comprehensive reporting due back to Congress to talk about the challenges that have been found in getting these services to individuals in the military and how to improve those services.

Speaker 2: 19:16

There was a GAO report that came out in May of 2022 that showed that 36% of military screened positive for maternal mental health complications. That is egregious. That is easily 15% higher than what we see in the quote-unquote civilian population. We're also looking at inclusion of pregnancy and pregnancy loss as qualifying events in TRICARE and making those necessary enrollment changes at the health care plans. It wasn't part of the Moms Act but that was part of maternal health services that were included. I know you're very aware of that and just looking to bake in maternal mental health care services into the group care model for individuals who are pregnant and postpartum on the bases in their care, and it's available, it's ready. There are programs out there that are already working with the military and we are asking hey, let's add this education and these resources in to make sure that our military families are taken care of and that they are able to deploy, they are able to relocate, they are able to stay healthy and whole.

Speaker 1: 20:36

I love that For our listeners who want to get involved with Maternal Mental Health Alliance. They want to start advocating. Where can you tell them to turn? Where are some resources to equip them and really have their voice be heard?

Speaker 2: 20:52

We're founded on advocates myself being one, adrian being one we know what it's like to be in the trenches. We are your voice in Washington. We are connecting advocates with their federal representatives on Capitol Hill, and now we're going to start going back to our roots and that's grassroots getting those meetings with offices back home. These are programs that are going to help their constituents be healthy, and we see programs like you're running in Alabama what that effect is on constituents in our elected officials' backyards. People need to understand the impact of not having support systems, what that looks like for families that are suffering from this. So I will say please join us, come to MMHLA, come sign up for our newsletters. We're going to be rolling out an amazing, amazing long-term advocacy platform for 2025. We need your voice more than ever.

Speaker 1: 22:02

We'll love that. We'll link all that and make sure to share that with our moms and our listeners. But, jamie, before you go, I want to ask you a question, and this is something we ask all our guests. What is something? Now you know you have teenagers. You're now a teenage mom. What is something you wish you would have known about motherhood, that you know now, that you could go back and tell yourself in the very beginning of your journey.

Speaker 2: 22:28

It's funny. Part of my concern when it was spinning was are the babies getting enough sleep? Are they okay, you know? Am I? Am I a good mom? Are they going to be all right? You know what if I stop breastfeeding? What if they're on for all these things, guess what, they are fine. We're the ones that need the support, and really be as kind to yourself, sarah, if you were to call me and tell me you were having these struggles.

Speaker 2: 23:00

I would be so empathetic and loving and want to tell you you're going to be okay and you're doing all the right things. We to ourselves are so damaging in our own self-talk and our expectations of what we think are supposed to be as a mom. It's a temporary time. It's a very tough time to the best mom, to your child, and this is a tough season to be in. But the seasons do change.

Speaker 1: 23:28

Yeah, yeah, that's beautiful. That's wonderful. Jamie, we appreciate your voice. We know you guys are fighting for us and we're happy to join in and we'll keep you posted. But listeners, I will link everything to get in touch with Maternal Mental Health Alliance to follow them, support them and cheer you guys on. But I hope this conversation has encouraged you, like it has me, that you matter, there is help and there are so many other women who are fighting for you. So fight for yourself, too, by realizing you matter. Thank you, jamie.

Speaker 2: 23:56

Thank you very much.

Speaker 3: 24:01

Maternal Mental Health is as important as physical health. The Preview Alliance podcast was created for and by moms dealing with postpartum depression and all its variables, like anxiety, anger and even apathy. Hosted by CEO founder Sarah Parkhurst and licensed clinical social worker Whitney Gay, each episode focuses on specific issues relevant to pregnancy and postpartum. Join us and hear how other moms have overcome mental health challenges, as well as access tips and suggestions on dealing with your own challenges as moms. You can also browse our podcast library and listen to previous episodes at any time. Please know you're not alone on this journey. We're here to help.