Just in time for Mother’s Day 2015, Postpartum Progress is thrilled to launch its newest tool for moms: The New Mom Checklist for Maternal Mental Health Help.

The checklist was created to facilitate helpful conversation between struggling mothers and the clinicians who can assist them. It allows moms to check off a wide variety of evidence-based symptoms and risk factors that may indicate the presence of perinatal mood or anxiety disorders. The tool has a fifth grade reading level, and was developed with feedback from clinical experts and a diverse group of more than 30 survivors of maternal mental illness.

The objectives of the checklist are five-fold:

1. Empower mothers to help themselves.
2. Serve as a tool to facilitate conversations that can be difficult for mothers to start with their doctors and other care providers.
3. Reinforce the variety of recognized, evidence-based symptoms of perinatal mood and anxiety disorders to both mothers and clinicians.
4. Reinforce the variety of recognized, evidence-based risk factors of perinatal mood and anxiety disorders to both mothers and clinicians.
5. Help clinicians get a clearer picture of how to best assist their patients.

The tool also helps mothers share a more comprehensive picture of what they are going through, which can be important at a time when lack of sleep and difficulty concentrating can lead them to forget key things to share at an appointment.

Postpartum Progress will also be creating printed versions that are double-sided, with larger font, in tear-off pad form to share freely with advocacy organizations and clinicians for their use. These will be available for distribution in July 2015. A checklist for pregnant moms concerned they may have depression or anxiety during pregnancy is also on the way.

The New Mom Checklist for Maternal Mental Health Help can be downloaded for free here.

This project, and all the other advocacy, events and tools created by Postpartum Progress to help moms with maternal mental illnesses, is supported by the donations of people who donate to our annual event Climb Out of the Darkness®. As always, THANK YOU.