‘Moms supporting moms’: CU Boulder program offers new, expecting moms mental health support

Erie resident Shannon Beckner was beyond excited in May of 2020 when she discovered she was pregnant.

But, shortly after, she suffered a miscarriage. When she got pregnant again, she miscarried a second time and doctors couldn’t explain why.

“At this point, I just felt completely shattered,” Beckner said.

She had a healthy third pregnancy that resulted in the birth of her first child. Still, her previous miscarriages caused her debilitating anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder tendencies while she was pregnant.

“Not only did I feel alone because I didn’t really know anyone who had experienced a miscarriage before, but we were living in a time where we were very alone and physically isolated from each other, from my family, from my friends,” she said.

In 2022, Beckner became a peer mentor for the Alma program at the Renée Crown Wellness Institute at the University of Colorado Boulder. Alma is a research-based, peer-to-peer program for new and expectant moms who are experiencing depression, anxiety and stress.

Alma offers support to English and Spanish-speaking mothers who are experiencing depression and anxiety during or after pregnancy. It seeks to provide a solution to a shortage of mental health professionals and services across the state, especially for women of color.

“The program is about mothers supporting other mothers through perinatal depression and anxiety using skills that are scientifically supported,” Assistant Research Professor Anahi Collado said.

Depression and anxiety are some of the most common complications of pregnancy, according to the Colorado Maternal Mental Health Collaborative & Framework . Nearly 30% of Colorado mothers reported symptoms indicative of a possible anxiety disorder, and about a third of maternal deaths in Colorado between 2004 and 2013 were attributed to mental health conditions.

In the Alma program, peer mentors and mothers meet six to eight times. It’s based on peer support and behavioral activation therapy, which focuses on taking different actions to change how the mother feels. The peer and mother work together to establish activities that could benefit the mother, like going out to coffee with a friend or scheduling time to go for a walk during the day.

“What we’re finding … is anxiety, throughout the six to eight weeks, goes down, depression goes down and perceived stress goes down,” Collado said.

More than 400 mothers have completed the program since it began in 2016.

“I think the beautiful thing about Alma is it combines this idea of moms supporting moms and these really important mental health skills that are effective and can be used in really simple ways throughout everyday life,” Beckner said.

Denver resident Pia Long became a peer mentor in 2021. She had her children in the ’90s, but looking back, knows she had undiagnosed depression and anxiety as a young mom.

She wants to help people who are going through it now so they don’t have to look back in 20 years like she did.

“I love that we’re going to break the stigma, especially for women of color, to break out of that shell and get the help that they need, especially from a peer,” Long said.

Collado said there’s a large gap between the need for and utilization of mental health services for all women, especially Latinas.

“Spanish-speaking Latinas have very little access to mental health support, and we see perinatal depression extends into depression across life,” Collado said.

Sona Dimidjian, director of the Crown Institute at CU Boulder, has been doing research related to the project and behavioral activation therapy for more than 20 years. She developed Alma from her research.

“All parents fundamentally want the best for their kids, and in order to realize that, they themselves need support,” Dimidjian said.

Dimidjian is looking at what’s required to develop a robust peer-to-peer program to support new moms and parents generally in Colorado.

“We’re at a time in society and history where acknowledging that elevating and amplifying a capacity to hold one another with respect and dignity is a critical part of developing a mental health ecosystem that is going to work well,” Dimidjian said.

Beckner said the most rewarding part of the program is when a mother comments on how she feels understood or goes on an outing she never thought she could go on because of anxiety or depression.

“When we can hear that kind of feedback from moms it’s so rewarding … you feel like you’ve been able to make a difference and support a mom out there who just needed a little extra support, who needed someone who understood what she was feeling and going through,” Beckner said.

Long said most people expect to feel happy during pregnancy, but that’s not always the reality. Work, stress, conflict with a partner, health conditions and having another kid to care for are all factors that can contribute to mental health conditions. Often doctor’s appointments aren’t long enough and don’t screen for it.

“If we could just educate folks to understand what those differences are so we as the village could wrap our arms around families, I think we could really get past the stigma,” Long said. “And I do think there is a stigma.”

Organizations throughout Colorado are also adopting the Alma program. Those partners include Lifespan Local in Denver, El Centro Amistad in Boulder, Valley Settlement in Glenwood Springs, Para ti mujer in Denver and La Clinica del Pueblo in Carbondale.

New or expectant mothers looking for support can email almaprogram@colorado.edu for more information.