Description
The women’s mental health program within the UAMS Psychiatric Research Institute is designed to help pregnant women or three months postpartum women with opioid use disorder.
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Transcript
We run a program for pregnant and postpartum women with opiate use disorder. Pregnant women who have an addiction to pain medications — whether that be street drugs, heroin or even prescription pills — we started a program to help them. They can also have an addiction to other substances such as alcohol, marijuana and methamphetamines. It doesn’t have to be directly opiates, but the majority of our patients are addicted to opioids.
In the program, we accept any woman who is currently pregnant or up to three months after they deliver — so, up to three months postpartum. And they can be in our program up to one year postpartum.
The program focuses on identifying not only substance use disorders and addressing those but also identifying any mental illness that is happening: depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). We also recognize those and treat that as appropriate.
Patients in the program get not only medication management — if they need it, with a psychiatrist, a physician — but they also get group therapy. That is a very valuable part of the program because the women are a lot of the peer support in the program with other women who are pregnant or postpartum going through the same things. We also have individual therapy available if needed. And we also have a peer support specialist who has been instrumental in our program as well. And she’s available 24/7 for these women to call if they’re in crisis or they’re feeling like using.
I used to think that I was providing the great service to the patients, but if we actually talk to the patients, they’ll tell you that group and that support that they get from the other women in the program, as well as the peer support specialist, is the most valuable part of the program.
We work alongside UAMS Health obstetrics here, but we do have patients who come to our program who do not get their obstetrical care — or their care for their pregnancy — at UAMS Health. We have patients that come from outside of Little Rock. They come from all over the state. If they want to get care, we will work with their obstetrician.
We also provide some telemedicine services. So if a woman lives in Fort Smith or Fayetteville, and that is too hard to drive all the way down to UAMS once a week, we do offer services through telemedicine, which is kind of like FaceTiming with your doctor. But they’ll get the therapy services there locally, and we provide the medication services through telemedicine. And right now we’re doing that with two programs. Most of them are through Fort Smith. If you live somewhere else in the state, though, and you’re pregnant and you don’t know where to go, if you simply call us, we will try to find somewhere locally. Or you’re more than welcome to come to our program here.
