Obamacare Boosted New Moms' Access to Mental Health Care

• August 12, 2024
• Dennis Thompson HealthDay Reporter

Pregnant women and new moms have better access to treatment for mood disorders, thanks to Obamacare, a new study finds.

More women received treatment for their pregnancy-related depression or anxiety after the Affordable Care Act (ACA) went into effect in 2014, researchers reported Aug. 9 in the journal JAMA Network Open.

However, researchers said more can be done to improve treatment for conditions like postpartum depression.

About 10% of women with private insurance received therapy in 2019-2020 for pregnancy-related anxiety or depression, a slight increase over pre-ACA numbers, researchers found.

Unfortunately, about 25% of pregnant women and new mothers suffered from a mood disorder in 2019, researchers noted.

That means many women did not get the mental health care that could help them and their babies, said lead researcher Kara Zivin, a professor of psychiatry, obstetrics and gynecology with the University of Michigan.

“The gap between mental and physical health care closed slightly over time, and cost barriers decreased marginally,” Zivin said in a university news release.

This slow increase in treatment following the ACA is likely due to a combination of factors, including a shortage of mental health providers, under-diagnosis of pregnancy-related mood disorders and stigma against seeking therapy, Zivin said.

“In this high-risk population, and in the context of what we know about the impact of mental health conditions on maternal mortality, many people get missed,” Zivin noted.

“Even among the 50% of women with depression and anxiety diagnoses who attended psychotherapy during this study period, individuals on average only had one visit,” Zivin added.

For the study, researchers analyzed the impact of two national laws on women’s access to mental health care – the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act (MHPAEA) in 2010 and the Affordable Care Act in 2014.

Both laws included provisions requiring insurers to cover mental health care at the same level as physical health care, and to treat mental health as an essential benefit, researchers said.

The research team examined data from more than 716,000 women between the ages of 15 and 44 who gave birth between 2007 and 2019 in the United States, for a total of more than 837,000 births. All were covered by a private health insurance plan at least a year before and after they gave birth.

Women’s chances of getting therapy began to rise after the MHPAEA, and increased even more after the ACA was passed, results show.

However, researchers noted that the new study doesn’t include women covered by Medicaid, who account for 42% of births in the United States. It also doesn’t include women who didn’t use insurance to pay for their therapy.

Zivin noted that the data cover the period prior to the pandemic, and that increased telehealth coverage might have further improved women’s access to therapy.

For example, women in areas with severe shortages of mental health providers might now have better access to therapy through telehealth, Zivin said.

More information

The National Institute on Mental Health has more on pregnancy-related depression.

SOURCE: University of Michigan, news release, Aug. 9, 2024

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