For all our attention to babies, we spend remarkably little time talking about mothers.
In recent years, postpartum depression and psychosis have moved from the margins of public conversation into the mainstream. High-profile stories involving women such as Hayden Panettiere and Lindsay Clancy raised a national discussion about maternal mental health.
These two cases are extreme. Postpartum suicide or the unimaginable tragedy of a mother taking the life of her child are rare. They should not define the conversation. What is far more common, and far more often overlooked, is the broader reality of maternal mental health.
One in five women experiences a perinatal mood or anxiety disorder, making these conditions among the most common complications of pregnancy and childbirth. These challenges affect women and families every day, usually far from public view.
Moving these stories into public conversation matters. But the real test is whether that conversation leads us to support women earlier, before distress becomes a crisis.
That broader reality demands a deeper response than headlines alone can provide. Too often, we wait for warning signs to become crises, expecting mothers to recognize their own distress while caring for a newborn, recovering physically, and adjusting to one of life’s most profound transitions.
In a healthcare system increasingly focused on prevention, maternal mental health is still too often addressed too late.
There is a better way.
Since 2007, the Chava Center for Maternal Mental Health at Sheba Medical Center has grown from a program supporting families through stillbirth into what Sheba describes as Israel’s national referral center for perinatal psychiatry, receiving roughly 100 new patient referrals each month.
The center’s premise is straightforward but rarely operationalized elsewhere: maternal mental health is not an adjunct to obstetric care; it is inseparable from it.
That philosophy recently led Sheba to open a dedicated ward for women experiencing severe postpartum psychiatric conditions, including postpartum psychosis. The goal is not simply to treat women after a crisis, but to bring specialized care, early intervention, and family-centered support together when they are needed most.
It reflects a basic but overlooked truth: maternal mental illness is not a personal failing or something to be hidden. It is a medical condition deserving serious, expert, and compassionate care.
The unit was designed deliberately to avoid separating mother from infant during treatment, with rooms built for the mother, a nursery, a therapeutic garden, and dedicated space for group, individual, and family therapy. The design choice reflects a clinical philosophy as much as an architectural one: it is critical to treat the psychiatric crisis without severing the maternal bond.
The importance of this approach extends far beyond any one hospital or healthcare system. A mother’s wellbeing shapes infant development, family stability, workplace participation, and long-term community health. When a woman struggles in silence, the effects ripple through an entire family. When she receives timely support and effective treatment, the benefits ripple outward too.
Measuring health by the mother, too
There is also a broader cultural challenge.
We celebrate motherhood as one of life’s most meaningful roles, but we are far less comfortable acknowledging its difficulties. New mothers are expected to be grateful, resilient, and instinctively capable while recovering physically, sleeping little, managing hormonal changes, and caring for a newborn.
Many hesitate to seek help out of fear, guilt, or the mistaken belief that struggle reflects failure. It does not. The transition to motherhood is profound, and maternal mental health should be treated as a routine and essential part of healthcare, not a response reserved for crisis.
To be sure, healthcare systems differ from country to country. Israel’s universal healthcare system eases continuity of care, allowing providers to follow women through pregnancy, childbirth, and the postpartum period in ways that are harder in America’s more fragmented system.
But the lesson underneath the Chava Center’s model is not about financing structures. It is about priorities.
Every hospital, clinic, and healthcare provider can do more to screen for maternal mental health challenges, reduce stigma, identify women at risk, and make support available before a crisis emerges. Putting mothers at the center of care is not a principle reserved for one country; it can be embraced wherever women are having babies.
For generations, we have measured success in maternal healthcare largely by the baby’s health.
That benchmark remains essential, but it is incomplete. A healthy beginning for a child depends heavily on the mother’s health and well-being.
If the growing public conversation about postpartum mental health has taught us anything, it is that silence and stigma carry a tremendous cost. The answer is not simply greater awareness after tragedy strikes. It is building systems, communities, and cultures that recognize mothers, support them, and care for them before crisis arrives.
We know how to do this. We have the medical expertise, the clinical tools, and, increasingly, the models of care. What is needed now is the collective will to make maternal wellbeing as much a priority as infant welfare.
For babies to thrive, mothers must too.
The writer is CEO of American Friends of Sheba Medical Center, the US nonprofit supporting Sheba Medical Center, the largest hospital in the Middle East and one of the top 10 hospitals in the world.