Postpartum Progress (www.postpartumprogress.com), the most widely-read blog in the United States on postpartum depression, announced in early January, 2011 the launch of a new service that will help pregnant and new mothers get through the difficulty of perinatal mood and anxiety disorders.
Daily Hope is the nation’s first support service featuring once daily emails to mothers with postpartum depression, postpartum anxiety, postpartum OCD and antenatal depression or anxiety. Beginning Monday, January 17, 2011, this free service will provide encouragement from survivors, the country’s top perinatal mental health specialists and authors of the leading books on perinatal mood and anxiety disorders and parenting.
Many of the nearly one million women who suffer each year do not have access to perinatal mental health specialists or PPD support groups where they live. “I hear from thousands of mothers across the country and around the world who say that having someone to lean on who deeply understands can contribute a great deal to their recovery process,” said Katherine Stone, founder of Postpartum Progress and survivor of postpartum OCD. “I felt Daily Hope would be a great way to use technology to offer mothers encouragement from the nation’s most trusted experts on their illnesses, regardless of where they live or what type of health insurance they have. The more support we can provide to women with postpartum depression, the better, because the quicker the recovery, the less likely the illness will have a long-term impact on mom and baby.”
Contributors to Daily Hope include, among many:
• Karen Kleiman, MSW, author of “This Isn’t What I Expected: Overcoming Postpartum Depression”
• Ann Dunnewold, PhD, author of “Life Will Never Be the Same: The Real Mom’s Postpartum Survival Guide” and “Even June Cleaver Would Forget the Juice Box”
• Marlene Freeman, MD, MGH Center for Women’s Mental Health and Harvard University
• Pamela Weigartz, author of “The Pregnancy & Postpartum Anxiety Workbook”
• Susan Dowd Stone, LCSW, author/editor "Perinatal and Postpartum Mood Disorders: Perspectives and Treatment Guide for the Healthcare Practitioner"
• Janice Croze, co-founder of 5MinutesforMom.com and survivor of PPD
• “Aunt Becky,” author of the blog Mommy Wants Vodka, founder of Band Back Together and survivor of antenatal depression
• Adrienne Griffen, founder of Postpartum Support Virginia
Women interested in signing up to participate should visit Postpartum Progress to subscribe to Daily Hope.
Postpartum Progress, founded in 2004, provides the most comprehensive, in-depth and accessible information available on perinatal mental illness for pregnant women and new mothers. Having already helped more than 350,000 women and health care providers, Postpartum Progress offers an unflinching look at getting through postpartum depression, postpartum anxiety, postpartum OCD, postpartum psychosis, and antenatal depression and anxiety.
Postpartum Progress has been named one of the top 10 depression blogs on the web by Psych Central, the winner of Fit Pregnancy’s Best of the Web Awards in the Advice category, and was a runner-up in Parenting’s Must-Read Moms and Scholastic Parent & Child’s Best Parenting Blogs Awards. It has been featured on Babble, ParentDish, Café Mom, Health.com and many other parenting websites. Postpartum Progress was founded by Katherine Stone, who was named a WebMD Health Hero in 2008 and won the Bloganthropy Award in 2010 for her advocacy work for pregnant and new mothers with maternal mental illness.
Postpartum Progress the blog and Daily Hope are both offered by Postpartum Progress Inc., a newly-formed non-profit organization dedicated to vastly improving the amount of services and support available to women with perinatal mood and anxiety disorders.