Seleni Postpartum Depression Screening Application

Helping women worldwide identify if they may be suffering from postpartum depression 

The issue of maternal mental health is a global one. In the United States alone, 1 in 7 women experience postpartum depression (PPD) in the year after they give birth. Suicide rates in pregnant or postpartum women are 17 times higher than those of the general female population. Maternal depression has even been found to impact children from their prenatal stages all the way into their adolescence. Despite these shocking figures, maternal mental health issues are widely underdiagnosed and undertreated in the US.

At the Seleni Foundation, we want to close the gap in knowledge on underdiagnosed and undertreated issues surrounding maternal mental health through various services like psychotherapy sessions, parent workshops, and on-site and online trainings. We operate a clinic for in-person treatment, such as counseling, and have developed an online training to educate professionals on how to identify and diagnose maternal mental health issues. Despite seeing success with these initiatives, we realize that mental health professionals need access to better tools to help diagnose PPD in mothers.

At Seleni we want to develop a web application that will screen mothers for PPD and offer them supporting resources. The questions will be developed by our clinicians and will provide feedback based on the answers provided by the user. Depending on the results of the screening, users may be recommended relevant articles, nearby clinics, or even a help hotline. Once developed, Seleni would distribute the app to professionals such as psychotherapists, psychologists, and social workers that may be dealing with mothers exhibiting signs of PPD. Through our extensive network of contacts, we could get the application into the hands of frontline workers quickly. We would plan and develop this web application with the grant from MIT Solve.

With this tool, we hope to help mothers and families better diagnose their struggles and seek help immediately. By offering the tool for free, we will be able to better support mental health professionals to correctly diagnose PPD and ensure mothers are receiving the care they need. In the future, we hope to develop more tools like this one that screen for a range of maternal mental health issues to provide even more support to mothers worldwide.

Our idea uses a new application of an existing technology. We want to make the screening application available online so that it can be accessed from anywhere in the world. The process of screening patients for mental health issues is currently done in-person which is time and resource intensive. With an online tool, these constraints won't apply, allowing this tool to scale beyond what could be accomplished without using technology.

Our screening tool will be in the form of an online web application. Before taking the survey, the application will ask questions such as the person's age, location, maternity history, etc. After taking the survey, mothers will be recommended specific wellness centers and clinics that would be most beneficial. If they are located in the NYC area, they will be directed to Seleni and possibly be given specific clinicians at Seleni. Additionally, they will also receive specific hotlines or helpful articles and books. 

We want to prototype the screening application as soon as possible and start building when we believe the project is feasible. Once a prototype is built, we will test it with a small group of participants to ensure it is working correctly and that our target audience finds it useful.

Once we receive feedback about our tool and evaluate how well it works, we think that we could expand our tool to screen for additional issues. Mothers can also suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in the case of a miscarriage or stillbirth, so a tool to screen for that disorder would be our next step.

The solution will be deployed online. It will be a standalone tool that can be distributed easily by providing the URL to clinicians and professionals across the world. The clinicians we want to share the tool with could access it with a web browser, potentially though a tablet or other device so that their patient could easily answer the questions. 

Since we have not built out our solution yet, we are unsure what the reach will be. Our clinic has helped several thousand patients in-person so far, so we are hoping to expand that number.

There are approximately 10.9 million women in the US experiencing symptoms of postpartum depression, giving us a large target audience. Our one year goal is to reach around 200,000 of those mothers, increasing to 1 million in 3 years.

As a non-profit organization, the Seleni Institute is constantly looking for opportunities to help more individuals who need access to resources that we offer. Winning a grant from Solve would allow us to expand our reach by helping us finance this tool. Additionally, gaining access to the Solve community could help us gain valuable feedback about our idea, help us refine it further, and even partner with other organizations.

A key barrier to success for our solution is building awareness that the tool exists. We have to inform both mothers and professionals that this screening application exists as a resource for them so that it will be used. The Solve community could help spread the word or introduce our team to organizations that might be able to use the tool.