As always, I just wonder how difficult finding and gaining access to such a psychiatrist would be for the average person. I was literally suicidal and barely functioning after having my first kid, and unfortunately I did not have the resources I have now and was being seen in a community clinic for primary care. I called them and they to…
As always, I just wonder how difficult finding and gaining access to such a psychiatrist would be for the average person. I was literally suicidal and barely functioning after having my first kid, and unfortunately I did not have the resources I have now and was being seen in a community clinic for primary care. I called them and they told me they couldn’t get me into any therapist for 9 weeks. I ended up going to urgent care and they still didn’t give my a psych referral but told me to try matching with a therapist through my work’s EAP.
It’s an unfortunate irony that finding a mental health provider is incredibly difficult and takes the kind of executive functioning skills and resources that people in a crisis most lack.
Yes, this is a huge problem. It's hard to find someone if you don't live near a city, and many reproductive psychiatrists do not take insurance. They have a rare speciality, so they can afford it. I am lucky that I lived in a major city, and I was able to find someone through a university.
I had suicidal prenatal depression that seemed to be triggered by, of all things, asthma. That is, we eventually realized during my first pregnancy that the times when hurling self and the poor unborn one with the misfortune to have me as a mom off a cliff seemed like a good idea corresponded with my lung function deteriorating into the "yellow zone" or worse. I also had weird rheumatic problems pre- and post-partum thanks to a congenital thing diagnosed only after my first kid.
Both hospital systems I received maternal care through are reputed to be excellent, and both *can* give excellent pre- and post-natal care (psychiatric care tends to be self-pay but affordab-ish). I got some excellent care, but also some crappy care -- including enough episodes of simply not being believed or my basic comfort and function not being valued "because the baby should still be OK" that I stopped wanting to go back.
Any interruption to continuity of psychiatric care can blow it all to hell, in my experience, risking whoever you redo intake with trying to rediagnose you with red herrings that have already been ruled out.
One of the benefits of consolidated hospital systems with electronic medical records should be that Provider A within the system shares your whole chart with Provider B, so that if you have conditions C, D, E... every provider is alerted to all of them, so that the Specialist in C doesn't have to assume a complaint is caused by C when it's fairly obviously attributable D.
Yeah, no. Especially, it seems, not where psychiatry is concerned. I had some good care, then lost it during COVID because the provider left the system. I would describe re-intake as positively demeaning to me as a patient and mom as well as unmedical (seeming lack of awareness of the basics right at the top of my chart!).
Despite aspirations to world-class pre- and post-natal care for moms, including psychiatry, in these hospital systems, resources have simply been too strained since COVID to deliver.
As always, I just wonder how difficult finding and gaining access to such a psychiatrist would be for the average person. I was literally suicidal and barely functioning after having my first kid, and unfortunately I did not have the resources I have now and was being seen in a community clinic for primary care. I called them and they told me they couldn’t get me into any therapist for 9 weeks. I ended up going to urgent care and they still didn’t give my a psych referral but told me to try matching with a therapist through my work’s EAP.
It’s an unfortunate irony that finding a mental health provider is incredibly difficult and takes the kind of executive functioning skills and resources that people in a crisis most lack.
Yes, this is a huge problem. It's hard to find someone if you don't live near a city, and many reproductive psychiatrists do not take insurance. They have a rare speciality, so they can afford it. I am lucky that I lived in a major city, and I was able to find someone through a university.
I had suicidal prenatal depression that seemed to be triggered by, of all things, asthma. That is, we eventually realized during my first pregnancy that the times when hurling self and the poor unborn one with the misfortune to have me as a mom off a cliff seemed like a good idea corresponded with my lung function deteriorating into the "yellow zone" or worse. I also had weird rheumatic problems pre- and post-partum thanks to a congenital thing diagnosed only after my first kid.
Both hospital systems I received maternal care through are reputed to be excellent, and both *can* give excellent pre- and post-natal care (psychiatric care tends to be self-pay but affordab-ish). I got some excellent care, but also some crappy care -- including enough episodes of simply not being believed or my basic comfort and function not being valued "because the baby should still be OK" that I stopped wanting to go back.
Any interruption to continuity of psychiatric care can blow it all to hell, in my experience, risking whoever you redo intake with trying to rediagnose you with red herrings that have already been ruled out.
One of the benefits of consolidated hospital systems with electronic medical records should be that Provider A within the system shares your whole chart with Provider B, so that if you have conditions C, D, E... every provider is alerted to all of them, so that the Specialist in C doesn't have to assume a complaint is caused by C when it's fairly obviously attributable D.
Yeah, no. Especially, it seems, not where psychiatry is concerned. I had some good care, then lost it during COVID because the provider left the system. I would describe re-intake as positively demeaning to me as a patient and mom as well as unmedical (seeming lack of awareness of the basics right at the top of my chart!).
Despite aspirations to world-class pre- and post-natal care for moms, including psychiatry, in these hospital systems, resources have simply been too strained since COVID to deliver.