Pregnant and postpartum women with depression and anxiety have a slightly better chance of getting psychotherapy these days, a new study finds. And they are paying less of their own money when they do. The changes in care and cost happened mainly after the Affordable Care Act took effect in 2014, and to a lesser extent after the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act, or MHPAEA, took effect in 2010, the analysis shows.
Both laws aimed at reducing insurance-related barriers to mental health care. Even so, only about 10% of women with private insurance who had a mental health diagnosis of anxiety or depression during pregnancy or during their postpartum year received psychotherapy in 2019 to 2020, according to the new analysis. And with 25% of pregnant women and new mothers having at least one of these mental health diagnoses in 2019, up from 14% in 2007, that means a lot of women did not get the evidence-based care that could help both them and their babies.
The findings from the Maternal Behavioral Health Policy Evaluation Study (MAPLE) are published in JAMA Network Open by a University of Michigan team. The gap between mental and physical health care closed slightly over time, and cost barriers decreased marginally." Kara Zivin, Ph.
D., lead author But these positive trends happened slowly even after insurance laws changed, likely due to a combination of a shortage of mental health care providers, underdiagnosis of pregnancy-related mental health conditions, and stigma.