Vu-An Foster is the executive director of Life After 2 Losses, in Montclair, New Jersey.
Jessica M. Harrison is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, University of California San Francisco (UCSF), in San Francisco, California.
Health Aff (Millwood). 2021 Oct;40(10):1592-1596. doi: 10.1377/hlthaff.2021.00805.
Diagnoses of depression, anxiety, or other mental illness capture just one aspect of the psychosocial elements of the perinatal period. Perinatal loss; trauma; unstable, unsafe, or inhumane work environments; structural racism and gendered oppression in health care and society; and the lack of a social safety net threaten the overall well-being of birthing people, their families, and communities. Developing relevant policies for perinatal mental health thus requires attending to the intersecting effects of racism, poverty, lack of child care, inadequate postpartum support, and other structural violence on health. To fully understand and address this issue, we use a human rights framework to articulate how and why policy makers must take progressive action toward this goal. This commentary, written by an interdisciplinary and intergenerational team, employs personal and professional expertise to disrupt underlying assumptions about psychosocial aspects of the perinatal experience and reimagines a new way forward to facilitate well-being in the perinatal period.
对抑郁症、焦虑症或其他精神疾病的诊断仅捕捉到围产期心理社会因素的一个方面。围产期损失；创伤；不稳定、不安全或不人道的工作环境；医疗保健和社会中的结构性种族主义和性别压迫；以及缺乏社会安全网，这一切都威胁着分娩者及其家庭和社区的整体福祉。因此，制定与围产期心理健康相关的政策需要关注种族主义、贫困、缺乏儿童保育、产后支持不足以及其他结构性暴力对健康的交叉影响。为了充分理解和解决这个问题，我们使用人权框架来阐明政策制定者为何必须朝着这一目标采取渐进的行动。这篇评论文章由跨学科和跨代际的团队撰写，利用个人和专业知识来打破对围产期经历心理社会方面的假设，并重新构想一种新的前进方式，以促进围产期的健康。
