Two years after giving birth, “Mary,” a patient at El Camino Hospital, suffered from anxiety, mood swings and disturbing thoughts.
Luckily, the hospital had a program in place for mothers like her. After receiving counseling several times a week, plus medication and other psychological treatments at the hospital, Mary was able to return to her normal life and full-time job.
Medical staffers at the hospital’s Maternal Outreach Mood Services program say postpartum depression, a severe emotional stress after giving birth, occurs in 15 to 20 percent of women.
“The person feels so drained, they can do so few tasks,” said Dr. Nirmaljit Dhami, the program’s medical director.
Doctors and therapists with the program see up to nine patients at a time, all suffering from symptoms they say are common during or following pregnancy. Women can start feeling postpartum depression up to two years after having babies, and normally come to the program because they are having trouble sleeping, low on energy and experiencing bad moods and apathy toward activities they once enjoyed.
The Maternal Outreach Mood Services program is only starting its second year and is a rarity — one of only two similar centers in the nation, and the only one of its kind on the West Coast. Staffers say they have women from all over the Bay Area coming to the center for comprehensive services they cannot get elsewhere. Some travel from as far as Livermore, and lead therapist Kris Peterson said these patients just want to feel like themselves again.
“They might have suffered for a long time,” Peterson said. “There is a sense that you are not yourself any more.”
After being screened, women come in as often as two or three times a week for group, individual and couple’s counseling, and work with Dr. Dhami to find the appropriate medications. Since they see patients so often, Peterson said, the medical staff “would like to prevent hospitalization,” but there is an inpatient unit for those needing it.
There are fewer than 10 patients at a time, and because of this Dhami said it is easy to offer individualized, flexible treatment plans, and provide services such as hospitalization.
“We try to keep fewer patients,” Peterson said. “We want it to be safe.”
The program, a collaboration of El Camino’s Maternal Child Health Services and Behavioral Health Services, opened its doors a year ago after physicians, community members and hospital staff formed a task force to build the center and serve “this underrepresented community,” Peterson said.
“There were not a lot of direct services for these women,” she noted.
The program is currently located next to the main entrance of El Camino Hospital, but is moving off campus to Grant Road in April. Barbara Mocnik, who oversees the program, said the center serves patients from 15 countries and six continents.
Currently, all patients are insured. Mocnik hopes that in the next five years the program can find grants to start serving the uninsured as well.
“It would be fabulous if we would be able to expand to other women,” she said.
For a phone screening or more information about the program, call the center at (650) 988-7841.
E-mail Casey Weiss at cweiss@mv-voice.com
