A call to action – normalize not penalize mental health care for all healthcare workers – especially for birth workers!
Childbirth is a seminal time where the birthing person needs support, care, and compassion to have a positive birth experience. Caring for pregnant people can be psychologically taxing. Not all births end in a healthy mother and baby, yet, our society shies away from discussion about the 1/4 pregnancies that end in loss, the highest maternal mortality rate of any developed country, and the racial and socioeconomic disparities in infant mortality and perinatal outcomes.
In order for birth workers to offer compassionate care, they need to heal their own nervous system from numbness, hypervigilance, and heartache that accumulate on the job. Numbness might show up like being cold to you during your birth or loss because a part of them is dissociating or keeping them distant to protect their hearts from the wrenching grief and pain in a system that allows little time to process these emotions. Hypervigilance might show up when a provider acts like it’s an emergency, rushes interventions without taking time to fully explain procedures and ask for consent, or becoming emotionally dysregulated and talking to you from a place of fear or panic instead of staying calm and collected. This can result in their patients feeling rushed, alarmed, and emotionally neglected, which can lead to traumatic memories of their birth or PTSD.
The heartache keeps piling up if providers don’t have a chance to process and release the burden, and can lead to burnout and serious mental health problems. Tragically, healthcare worker suicide rates are far too high, with physician suicide at the highest of any profession. Unfortunately, there is significant stigma in the medical field around treatment for mental health concerns. Doctors risk losing their license for seeking mental healthcare, which can force them to seek treatment incognito or avoid care all together, sweeping significant symptoms under the rug. Institutions need to normalize not penalize mental healthcare for providers. Exposure to trauma, intense pressure to perform, and a grueling work schedule is part of their job, it makes sense they would need support. Let’s give providers the support they deserve so they can give us the care we deserve.
What can we do?
Start with healing yourself. Healing has a ripple effect. When you heal yourself, your self-compassion and love radiates out to positively affect your interactions with your family, your friends, your workplaces, your communities, your city, your nations, and your world. When you heal yourself, you help to heal the world. Healing yourself is a radical act.
Want to do more? Leading expert on physician suicide Dr. Pamela Wible has ideas. Read more on her blog.
Seeking Help
If you or someone you love is experiencing a mental health crisis, help is available 24/7 at the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, Crisis Text Line, and Maryland Crisis Hotline, and Dr. Pamela Wible offers a free confidential doctor suicide helpline.
If you are looking for support from someone who “gets it,” I offer therapy and birth story processing for birth workers with a confidential, private-pay option. Healing is possible.
I offer a free consult to see if you feel like working together is the right fit. Click contact me to set up a time to talk. Birth matters. Thank you for doing this important work. ❤
