PPMD

The Community Counselling Centre of Nipissing, in partnership with the Thunder Bay Counselling Centre and the B’saanibamaadsiwin Aboriginal Mental Health Program, have revealed their completed Postpartum Mood Disorder Project. Linda Rankin is the Director of the Northern Ontario Postpartum Mood Disorder Strategy Project and she says the project was funded through grants from the Ontario Trillium Foundation, and the North East LHIN.

She says PPMD involves the simultaneous presentation of both anxiety and depression before or after the birth or adoption of a child, and impacts 1 in 5 mothers and 1 in 10 fathers.

Rankin says this project’s goal is to develop a strategy of how to deal with PPMD across Northern Ontario, and the project comes with three recommendations to do just that. She says the fist is to make PPMD a priority, the second is to have PPMD informed communities, and the third is to provide effective treatment.

She says they have 21 partners working throughout Northern Ontario, and have designed a Northern Ontario Advisory Council for the project.

Rankin says this strategy is the second published strategy in Canada, following Saskatchewan, and is the second PPMD project in the world that recognizes this mental illness has an impact on infant development.