Rhode Island Black Maternal Mental Health: Action Planning; The Conversation Continues 2024
Let’s design and create a safe maternal mental health care community care community

Our goal is to provide action planning collaboration based on the 2023 Black Maternal Mental Health Summit. We aim to create opportunities for cultivating, creating, and designing a safe Black Maternal Mental Health care community. These sessions will enhance participants' knowledge, increase awareness around current systems of care, contemplate innovative designs for those systems yet to be established, policy improvement, and engagement with community leaders, stakeholders, and members. We aim to focus on improving maternal mental health outcomes for Black and Brown birthing people.

Learning Objectives: 

• Effectively communicate with patients and families using sensitive, non-judgmental language, and recognize the emotional impact of illness on patients and families. 

• Understand that the most common mental disorders (depression, anxiety, and substance abuse) are often co-morbid with other chronic diseases and impact course, severity, and clinical outcome. 

• Recognize the signs and symptoms of Perinatal Anxiety Mood Disorders (PMADS) such as major depression, bipolar illness, and anxiety 

• Identify the risk of and protective factors of an individual patient’s potential risk for subsequent depression.

• Identify the risk and protective factors of the impact of depression on the patient’s level of function.

• Recognize that depression can be diagnosed and often treated by licensed therapists and non-psychiatrists.

• Develop PMAD resource material and appropriate referrals to provide patients and families