Postpartum mental health — where to get help
If you are struggling, you are not failing and you are not alone. The lines below are free, confidential, and answered around the clock. You do not need to be in crisis to call one, and you do not need to know what is wrong first.
If you need help now
These lines are free, confidential and answered 24 hours a day. You do not have to be in crisis to call one.
- Emergency services911If you or your baby are in immediate danger.
- 988 Suicide & Crisis LifelineCall or text 988Free and confidential, 24/7, available in more than 60 languages.
- National Maternal Mental Health HotlineCall or text 1-833-TLC-MAMA (1-833-852-6262)Free, confidential, 24/7 support for pregnant and postpartum people and their families. English and Spanish, with interpreters in 60+ languages. Funded by HRSA.
- Crisis Text LineText HOME to 741741Free, 24/7, text-based support with a trained crisis counselor.
Support and referrals, not emergencies
- Postpartum Support International HelpLineCall 1-800-944-4773 · Text "Help" to 800-944-4773 · Spanish text 971-203-7773Information, encouragement and local referrals. ⚠ Not a crisis line — PSI states it "does not handle emergencies." Calls and texts are answered 8am–11pm EST. In an emergency use one of the 24/7 lines above.
We signpost support; we do not diagnose or treat. Postpartum depression and anxiety are common and treatable, and telling them apart from the "baby blues" is a job for a clinician who can actually assess you — not a website, and not a questionnaire.
The words people use
Baby blues is the term for the low, weepy, unstable few days that a majority of people experience after birth. It typically begins in the first days and eases within about two weeks.
Postpartum depression and postpartum anxiety are different: more intense, longer lasting, and they do not lift on their own. They are common, they are treatable, and they are not a character flaw or a parenting failure. They can also begin during pregnancy, or months after birth — not only in the first weeks.
Telling these apart is a clinician’s job, not a website’s. We are not going to give you a checklist to score yourself against, because the distinction rests on things a page cannot assess. If you are wondering which one this is, that question by itself is a good enough reason to call one of the numbers above or speak to your doctor or midwife.
It is not only birthing parents
Partners and non-birthing parents experience perinatal depression and anxiety too, and adoptive parents do as well. The lines above are for them. So are the ones for anyone worried about someone else — you can call on behalf of a person you are concerned about.
What tends to help
Talking to someone qualified, sooner rather than later. Sleep, where any of it can be found or shared out. Not being alone with it. Treatment works, including for people who are breastfeeding — that is a conversation to have with a clinician rather than a reason to wait.
If feeding is part of what is hard, that is worth saying out loud to a pediatrician or an IBCLC. Feeding difficulty and low mood feed each other, and the feeding part is often more fixable than it feels at 3am.