“I was a resident and still had a hard time finding resources specific to mental health around pregnancy and postpartum. I started wondering: if I struggled so much, how do most women do it?”
Sipra Laddha, MD – Co-Founder, LunaJoy
In the United States, one in five women suffer from a mental health disorder in the months before or after giving birth — yet the majority never get the care they require. This harsh reality can leave families vulnerable and result in problems ranging from preterm delivery, difficulty bonding with the baby and even developmental issues for the growing child. We spoke with LunaJoy co-founder and CEO, Sipra Laddha, MD, to talk about our nation’s maternal mental health crisis, the critical need for online women’s holistic mental health counseling and resources that address these challenges, and why Lucet is the ideal collaborator for scaling accessibility.
Let’s talk about how the company came to be. What was your inspiration for founding a maternal mental health organization when you were already a practicing clinician?
I’m a reproductive psychiatrist by training, which means that I spent almost a decade prior working very closely with women who were pregnant or postpartum, but I think the origins of LunaJoy really started with my own personal journey. While I was getting my training at Emory, I was pregnant with high-risk twins. So here I was, a resident working with the pregnant postpartum population, who was then pregnant and postpartum myself. Even though I could tell you at any point in time how long my cervix was, or what the blood flow was, or where the babies were positioned, there was no regular gauging of my mental health. It just didn’t exist.
I think especially with a high-risk pregnancy, I marched through and put one foot in front of the other. My twins came at 36 weeks, and while I had a couple of complications it was nothing that I couldn’t overcome. But that first year postpartum was probably the most difficult year of my life. It’s one thing to treat patients as a clinician and to have academic knowledge — it’s something else to go through it as a mom with two babies at home and be in the depths of postpartum, anxiety and depression. I was a resident and everyone in my family is a physician, and I still had a hard time finding resources specific to mental health around pregnancy and postpartum. So, I started wondering: if I struggled so much, even with all the resources that I had, how do most women do it?
In your opinion, what are some of the shortcomings of the current maternal mental health landscape?
When we look at available data, around 85 percent of women are not getting any kind of mental health care during pregnancy and postpartum. It’s clear that we have a gap — actually more like a gaping hole — in our health care system. Sure, screening protocols have improved, but we still have this challenge where when someone screens positive for mental health symptoms, there often isn’t a follow-up action. It just sits there as information in an electronic medical record.
I often say I never really intended to launch a startup, but after seeing this issue playing out time and time again, I knew I needed to act. When my co-founder and I launched LunaJoy, we were focused on leveraging technology and using people resources appropriately to connect women with the mental health care they needed and in an effective manner. That was in October of 2021. It’s been about 2.5 years, and I think what we found very quickly is that there is a ton of need. What’s encouraging is that insurance companies are increasingly recognizing that maternal mental health is something their patients are really struggling with.
“Taking a pregnant or postpartum woman and leaving them to navigate our fragmented mental health system alone — and access treatment that is affordable and sustainable care and tailored to their needs — is simply a mountain that is much too high to climb for most women.”
Sipra Laddha, MD, co-founder of LunaJoy
What would you say is the biggest issue that you are looking to solve with LunaJoy?
Taking a pregnant or postpartum woman who’s already struggling with depression and anxiety and potentially struggling with a new infant, or multiple new infants, and leaving them to navigate our fragmented mental health system alone — and access treatment that is affordable and sustainable care and tailored to their needs — is simply a mountain that is much too high to climb for most women. With LunaJoy, we’re trying to lower those barriers to remove all the obstacles that stop women from being able to get the high-quality maternal mental health services they need and deserve.
Do you think that health plans are where they need to be in understanding why investment in this space and this patient demographic is so important?
Things have improved significantly, but I also think there has been an increase in general awareness. The good news is there is a lot more financial data that’s been published, which is very important in showing the associated costs with untreated mental health issues around pregnancy and postpartum. But when it comes to the actual people or teams who make the health plan decision around who gets covered and for what, there is still a huge lag there in understanding that care is absolutely fundamental to a woman’s health and the health of her family unit overall.
When it comes to accelerating adoption, tying it to time sensitivity is and will continue to be extremely important because there aren’t very many times in life where it is so important that you get immediate care, right? We also need to overcome the misconception that sometimes if we let time pass or don’t do anything, the mental health issue will figure itself out. What we know is that the data shows the opposite. The upside is that we are working with health plans today who are forward-thinking and willing to partner with us aggressively around this patient population now and make it a priority for these women to get into care.
A recent Policy Center for Maternal Mental Health study found that 70 percent of U.S. counties don’t have sufficient mental health resources for new mothers, a provider shortage that means many women are forced to navigate these conditions alone or go untreated. How will LunaJoy’s collaboration with Lucet have an impact on these issues?
This is an exciting collaboration for LunaJoy. When we talk about the connector in terms of care delivery, we mean the navigation process and how we build that bridge between someone needing care and someone getting care. Often the peer provider is in the middle, the one that can connect us to that patient in need — and that is exactly what this collaboration with Lucet does. It empowers us to directly connect with patients. Now when a woman is identified as needing maternal mental health services either through their health plan, another provider or through self-identification, on Lucet’s platform they are immediately able to book a direct appointment. It’s this real-time access that is a total game-changer for us and our patients.
What are the three key things about the Lucet and LunaJoy collaboration that you want people to know?
It’s so hard to identify just three! First, I would say that together we are truly breaking down barriers that have existed in maternal mental health care delivery for decades. What is very, very exciting is the immediate nature of this connection where women can instantaneously be connected to the resources that they need rather than it being over the course of weeks or months. Second, I would highlight the power of treatment specialization. Together we are eliminating instances where women are seeking treatment and being given a bunch of general resources that may or may not be good for their condition. Where we’re working with Lucet is specific to meeting the needs of pregnant and postpartum women and having an effective patient-provider fit.
Finally, it’s been really exciting to work with Lucet because they immediately recognized that there is a huge need in this patient population. Some platforms are not really interested in working with what they would refer to as a “niche population.” Women are not necessarily a priority. Our experience with Lucet has been completely the opposite, as they have made this collaboration a priority from day one. Hopefully it’s the wave of the future for maternal mental health care.
So, what’s next for LunaJoy?
It’s been a whirlwind three years and we have learned so much in the process. While maternal mental health accessibility remains our focus, pregnancy and postpartum are certainly not the only transitions that women go through. The perimenopausal population for example really does experience a lot of mental health shifts and needs more attention. The other area that we really think about is adolescence, and how tween and teenage girls’ mental health is at an all-time low. There is room for preventative work there, laying the groundwork for a solid mental health journey at every stage of a woman’s life. We’re working on building more specialized solutions for these different life transitions that women go through so they can have the care they need.
To help address the urgent need for improved maternal mental health care, we encourage you to support LunaJoy’s mission. Together, we can drive meaningful change for women and their families.
For more information or to get involved, contact [email protected].
