Binto | Women’s health supplements

Right out of nursing school I worked on a postpartum unit.

Every mother got the same piece of paper before discharge. Ten questions. Circle the number that best describes how you’ve felt in the past seven days. We collected it, we charted it, we sent her home.

That was years ago. That same form is still what most women get today.

Here’s the problem - the form was never really the point. It’s the box we check so we can say we asked. We hand it to her on day two, before most of what we worry about even begins, and then we send her home for six weeks with nobody checking on her at all.

Her baby gets six appointments in the first year. She gets one.

That is not a screening tool problem. That is what it looks like when a system does not take women’s mental health seriously. We have known for decades that the postpartum period is one of the highest-risk windows in a woman’s entire life, and we still built the care around the baby and left her to figure it out.

Postpartum psychosis is part of what gets missed. It affects 1 to 2 in every 1,000 births, comes on fast in the first weeks, and it’s a psychiatric emergency, not a rough patch. And the part that matters most: a woman in it often does not know she is sick. She cannot self-report her way out of it. Which means the people around her have to know what they’re looking at, and almost nobody teaches them.

The Lindsay Clancy case should be a wake up call for all of us. Not because it’s rare and horrifying, but because of everything it exposed about how little has changed.

If you are pregnant or postpartum, or you love someone who is, save these:
Postpartum Support International — 1-800-944-4773, call or text
National Maternal Mental Health Hotline — 1-833-TLC-MAMA, 24/7
Suicide & Crisis Lifeline — call or text 988

And if you have a history of bipolar disorder, or a family history of postpartum psychosis, tell your OB before you deliver. It’s the single highest risk factor and it’s the conversation most likely to get skipped.

Share this with a partner, a mother, a friend. Especially a partner.

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