Each May, the mental health community honors two important awareness initiatives. The most widely recognized is Mental Health Awareness Month, founded in 1949 to raise awareness for those living in mental institutions. The campaign has been a meaningful success, leading to important reforms that have substantially destigmatized mental health challenges and improved patient care.
It would take another 65 years to establish Maternal Mental Health Month. Initiated in 2014, the movement was built on a similarly urgent premise: mental health conditions affecting new and expecting mothers are among the most common complications of pregnancy and childbirth. When left untreated, they are a leading contributor to adverse mental health outcomes for both mothers and infants and can set in motion a cycle of harm that spans multiple generations.
Persistent Care Gaps Leave New Parents Struggling
Across the U.S., maternal mental health outcomes represent a public health crisis:
- 1 in 5 women experience a mental health condition during pregnancy or in the first year postpartum1
- More than 75% of those affected do not receive adequate treatment2
- Mental health conditions, including suicide and overdose, are a leading cause of maternal mortality3
- Significant disparities persist, with worse outcomes for women in rural communities and among historically underserved populations4
Even with these risks well documented, new and expecting mothers continue to struggle to access timely, appropriate behavioral health care. The longer care is delayed, the more severe the symptoms become.
The consequences extend beyond the mother. Children of depressed mothers are three times more likely to develop depression than children of parents without depression. When maternal depression is present before, during, and after birth, children are more likely to experience poorer social-emotional, cognitive, language, and motor development. The effects can reach beyond infancy into childhood and adolescence.
There are multiple models, when assisted by technology, that show promise in helping to improve maternal mental health outcomes.
Psychiatry Access Programs: Scaling Expertise Where It’s Needed Most
Statewide Psychiatry Access Programs expand mental health support by connecting obstetricians, pediatricians, and primary care providers with quick psychiatric consultations from behavioral health specialists. This model is both important and scalable, filling psychiatric provider gaps, particularly for mothers in rural or underserved communities with limited treatment options. The result is that more mothers receive timely care without long wait times or geographic barriers.
Programs in Kentucky (Ky-COMPASS), Arizona (APAL), and Texas (PeriPAN) are leveraging technology to extend their reach. Standardized consultation workflows, enhanced data capture, and improved coordination between referring providers and behavioral health clinicians have allowed these programs to serve more providers, and in turn, more patients.
While many state programs are still in their early years, the results are already evident. When Psychiatry Access Program leverage technology at scale, more mothers are getting help faster.
Integrating Consistent, Actionable Measurement into Clinical Workflows
One of the most persistent challenges in maternal mental health, and behavioral health more broadly, is consistent identification, measurement, and timely response to behavioral health changes. Without the right tools, clinicians may lack a complete, whole-person view of a mother’s mental health status.
Measurement-informed care (MIC) offers a realistic and scalable solution. Historically, behavioral health screening has been limited to a handful of touchpoints during pregnancy or postpartum visits. Symptoms can emerge, evolve, or intensify rapidly, creating a need for frequent, consistent monitoring throughout a mother’s care journey.
The volume of data this generates can make it administratively daunting to translate into clinical decisions. This is precisely where modern behavioral health technology platforms add value: organizing, analyzing, and surfacing patient-reported data in ways that improve both the clinician and patient experience.
Patient engagement before the first visit
Digital platforms can automatically engage new and expecting mothers before their first appointment, providing information in clear, accessible formats. They can also collect health history, social determinants of health, screener data, and more to give clinicians a richer picture of the patient before they ever meet.
Continuous tracking between visits
Through a secure web portal or mobile app, mothers can easily report symptoms, complete screeners, share daily experiences, and track medication reactions between appointments. This provides continuous insight into patient well-being throughout treatment. Information is synthesized and surfaced for the clinician before each follow-up visit, creating a standing agenda of the most important updates since the last session.
Longitudinal patient summaries for long-term maternal care
Beyond between-visit insights, technology gives both mothers and clinicians long-term views of patient progress. Longitudinal data can reveal whether symptoms have worsened or improved, flag emerging comorbidities, and identify which interventions have influenced which outcomes. For maternal care specifically, this view can highlight critical inflection points such as birth and early infant development phases.
The Path Forward for Maternal Mental Health Care
Meaningful progress has been made in the decade-plus since Maternal Mental Health Month was established. Provider awareness of maternal mental health outcomes has improved, and more pathways to treatment exist today than they did in 2014.
Technology adoption and integration represent the clearest path forward for the next decade. Wider implementation will help scale valuable models, including Psychiatry Access Programs and MCO-led initiatives, while equipping clinicians across the U.S. to deliver more precise, consistent care.
For new and expecting mothers, this translates to timely support, better care experiences, and improved outcomes for themselves and their families. That is not just meaningful progress, it is the entire goal of Maternal Mental Health Month.
Contact us to learn more how Trayt Health can support your program.
References
- Rogers A, et al. Association Between Maternal Perinatal Depression and Anxiety and Child and Adolescent Development: A Meta-analysis. JAMA Pediatrics. 2020. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7490743/
- Byatt, N., Levin, L. L., Ziedonis, D., Moore Simas, T. A., & Allison, J. (2015). Enhancing Participation in Depression Care in Outpatient Perinatal Care Settings: A Systematic Review. Obstetrics and Gynecology, 126(5), 1048–1058. https://doi.org/10.1097/AOG.0000000000001067
- Gelaye, B., Kajeepeta, S., & Zhong, Q. Y. (2022). Suicide and maternal mortality. Current Psychiatry Reports, 24(4), 239–248. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11920-022-01335-2
- Matthews, K. A., Spears, K. S., & Anderson-Lewis, C. (2025). Rural health disparities: Contemporary solutions for persistent rural public health challenges. Preventing Chronic Disease, 22, E27. https://doi.org/10.5888/pcd22.250202
- Fawcett EJ, et al. The Prevalence of Anxiety Disorders During Pregnancy and the Postpartum Period: A Multivariate Bayesian Meta-Analysis. J Clin Psychiatry. 2019;80(4):18r12527. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31347796/
