Wake up, Warrior Moms. Wake uppeople who work to prevent child abuse, people who work to prevent suicide, people who work to prevent preterm births, people who care about healthy families. Wake up, people who care about motherhood. Wake up, women of America. Wake up psychiatric professionals, nurses, OB/GYNS, pediatricians.

Here'san actual text of acommunication being sent far and wide by the very loud and vociferous opposition to the Melanie Blocker Stokes MOTHERS Act to support increased funding, education and researchfor postpartum depression (the underlining is mine):

"This MOTHER'S Act,with its innocuous sounding name will mandate
"mental screening" for Pregnant women. This will lead to many more
young mothers being labeled with fraudulent psychiatric conditions and
many of them will be put on dangerous psychiatric drugs even while
they are still pregnant.This is already happening in some states
such as New Jersey with the state legislature previously passed a
similar bill.

With your help, we were able to stop this Federal bill dead in its
tracks last year, but the drug lobby apparently never sleeps and
they got it through the House of Representatives.

Now we need some fast action from thousands of doctors and patients
across the country – in the form of phone calls and faxes to their
US Senatorsto stop this bill from passing in the Senate …"

Let's be VERY, VERY clear. There are some people who, for whatever reason, have decided to convince others that the singular purpose of the Melanie Blocker Stokes MOTHERS Act is to line the pockets of the pharmaceutical companies and drug our nation's mothers. If you think they aren't calling their Senators and Congresspeople you are mistaken. They are very convicted in their feelings and they call WAY MORE than we do.

If you believe what they are saying is true, then I'm not sure why you'd be reading this blog. Because chances are, if you read this blog, you know for a fact, as sure as death and taxes, that there is nothing "fraudulent" about postpartum depression or anxiety, postpartum OCD, postpartum psychosis, or depression and anxiety duringpregnancy. I find that deeply, completely insulting.

I'm not sure what is so difficult to accept about the idea that women who are ill with REAL illnesses need help and we need our society to take more responsibility to help them, starting with the Melanie Blocker Stokes MOTHERS Act. PERIOD.

END. OF. STORY.

Have these people not seen the research? Do they not know that women with untreated postpartum depression can go on to have chronic depression for the rest of their lives? Do they not know that women with untreated depression during pregnancy are twice as likely to have pre-eclampsia, twice as likely to have a C-section, twice as likely to have a pre-term delivery andtwice as likely to have their baby go to NICU? Do they know the odds of developmental delay for children whose mothers' illness goes on and on and on and on? Do they notknow that suicide as a result of postpartum mood disorders is the leading cause of death for women postpartum in the US?

You can sit by on the sidelines and watch them win, just like they say they did last year when the Melanie Blocker Stokes MOTHERS Act was NOT passed. You can say I signed that petition last year so I'm not doing it again. You can decide that your voice doesn't count. You can let them convince the rest of the world that the MOTHERS Act is a conspiracy to drug the mothers of the world. You can say I have too many other things to worry about. You can say they're just the fringe and that no one pays attention to them, but you'd be wrong.

I'm asking you not to. Please donot allow more women and children to suffer when it's no longer necessary. I don't care if you've never had PPD and it's not on your radar screen. Healthy women, healthy children and health families should be on EVERYONE's radar screen.

Go to the DBSA and sign the petition. http://capwiz.com/ndmda/issues/alert/?alertid=12832296

AND, email Susan Stone at susanstonelcsw@aol.com and put your name on the state-by-state list of people who endorse this bill.

AND, call AND write your Senator or Congressperson:

US Senatehttp://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

US House of Representatives https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml

AND write about the Melanie Blocker Stokes MOTHERS Actin your blog.

AND call or email every one of your organization's members today and tell them to get up and get to work for goodness sake.

AND join Postpartum Support International as it works to create more and better services and education for the women who suffer. http://postpartum.net/become-member/

The emotional health of approximately 1 million American familiesEVERY SINGLEYEAR depends on this.

Because honestly, if we can't get this one damn bill passed, how are we going to tackle the much bigger task of helping every single woman who needs help in this country? How are we going to create funding for transportation and childcare for women who can't get to their doctors because they have no car and no babysitter? How are we going to develop a network of highly trained, effective healthcare providers who are willing to treat women with no insurance? How are we going to fund more research to find out the exact causes of these illnesses so we can develop better, more pinpointed treatments? How are we going to make sure there aresupport groups in every corner of this country, no matter how urban or how rural? How are we going to educate doctors on preventing these illnesses in the first place by conducting social histories of their patients BEFORE they get pregnant?

This bill has been seven freaking years in the making. In those seven years, how much unnecessary devastation has been suffered?