BeLieVE, Let’s Kill Stigma Together

Hello we are BeLieVE.BeLieVE is a student led organization from the Ann Richards School for Young Leaders.We are a group of well rounded, intelligent and creative individuals that want to help raise awareness about adolescent mental health as it relates to pregnancy. The members of our company consist of Bella T, Lilly A, Vanessa M and Enalisa B. When constructing our company’s name BeLieVE, we decided to use the first initials of our names B,L,V and E,  to assemble the word believe. Since we are the founders of the company,our initials are capitalized making the company name BeLieVE instead of Believe.

The organization that we are partnering with is called Pregnancy and Postpartum Mental Health Alliance of Texas. The purpose of the Mental Health Alliance of Texas is to inform mothers, loved ones, and professionals about the mental health side of pregnancy and postpartum. The website gives mothers information about things like postpartum depression and who and what is the there to help you. The website gives loved ones information on how they can help the mothers, and the website gives information to professionals about resources, and how to become a PPHA (pregnancy and postpartum health alliance). This organization serves anyone who has anything to do with pregnancy and postpartum like mothers, loved ones, and even professionals.

The problem that we are dealing with is that Texas currently has few to no low-cost programs for educating health care providers and community members about perinatal mental health. Meaning that healthcare providers and community members are uninformed about the risks of perinatal mental health in adolescents mothers. According to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services,Texas is number 3 out of 51 states (including the District of Columbia) for pregnancy in teenaged girls from 15-19 years of age. As of 2011, 42,748 teenage girls between 15-19 have been pregnant. On average about 500,00 adolescent girls, from 15-19 years of age, give birth to a child each year. Despite having information on teen pregnancy in Texas, there is none on the mental health of adolescent mothers.

As young girls we are interested in organizing and promoting perinatal mental health in adolescent mothers. About 500,000 adolescent girls close to the age of 15-19 years of age give birth every year, these girls have limited amount of resources and information based on perinatal mental health. The reason BeLieVE is interested in solving this problem is due to the close age of these mothers and us members, we can try and find a solution that can help them as well as raise awareness of perinatal mental health in adolescent mothers. Not only should this benefit the adolescent mothers but it should affect other age groups of mothers. This should be promoted because educating this topic can reduce the number of births in adolescent mothers.

We as society create so much stigma around mental health which encourages a lack of knowledge in this topic. We are here to stand up to the stigma for the better. When there is a stigma around mental health it becomes harder to discuss therefore people do not really look for information and they are less likely to look for help. The Pregnancy and Postpartum Mental Health Alliance is there as a resource to help moms, and everyone get the help and information they need.