HEALTHALLIANCE-CLINTON HOSPITAL - Key Persons

Job Titles:

• Health and Wellness Information

Jennifer Ford's two girls, Addison and Mckinley, are now 11 and 9. She's a real estate agent and the entire family tends to their farm in Oakham, Massachusetts where visitors can buy Thanksgiving turkeys and Christmas trees. From her own experience, Ford has developed a broader view of mental health care and when and for whom it should be applied. "The advice I'd give to medical professionals: mental health care in general should be preventative. Start with a person in childhood, just like we do with vaccines. Provide routine mental health check-ins as that individual grows, and throughout the teen years. And have social workers in the practice and involved in all the cases, for evaluation and prevention. We should never have to fix people once they're broken," she said. She believes the stigma surrounding mental health conditions would be reduced if, from a young age, people learn that this care is considered just as important by the medical community as any other treatment now provided as a matter of course. After her battle with postpartum depression, Ford also offers advice to mothers that Byatt and Moore Simas would second. "Moms who are struggling while caring for a child - understand that you can't pour from an empty cup. You have to take care of yourself, too. A healthy baby comes from a healthy mom."

Job Titles:

• Chairman of Obstetrics and Gynecology
• Chairman, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology

Moore Simas is Chair of Obstetrics and Gynecology, UMass Memorial Health and Professor of Obstetrics & Gynecology, Pediatrics, Psychiatry, and Population & Quantitative Health Sciences, UMass Chan Medical School. She was MCPAP for Moms' founding Obstetric Engagement Director and now serves as its Obstetric Engagement Liaison. Byatt is a perinatal psychiatrist with Women's Mental Health Services at UMass Memorial Medical Center and Executive Director, Lifeline for Families Center and Lifeline for Moms Program, Department of Psychiatry, UMass Chan Medical School and Professor of Psychiatry, Obstetrics & Gynecology, and Population & Quantitative Health Sciences, UMass Chan Medical School. Byatt is the founding Medical Director of MCPAP for Moms and its current Director of Research and Evaluation. Together they founded the Lifeline for Moms program. (See sidebar: "Resources for Learning About and Integrating Perinatal Mental Health into Practice" with details about accessing the programs and their related efforts.)