Therapy in Ventura for Maternal Mental Health, Postpartum Depression and Parental Burnout

Parental Mental Health Treatment 

Holistic Therapy for Stress, Depression & Anxiety

Support for Parents

Therapy can help improve your mental health and parenting confidence. Working on yourself can deepen your connection with your child and help you become a more effective leader in your home. If your child is exhibiting behavioral problems, depression, or anxiety, one of the most effective ways to help them is to start with you. When you’re in a good place, the benefits spill over and positively impact the whole family. This is true for mothers, fathers, and all caregivers tasked with the enormous job of raising little humans.

Trauma Healing & Emotional Regulation

Parenting can bring up happy and upsetting memories from our own childhoods. Things we thought we’d long forgotten will come right back and may influence our behavior in ways we don’t fully understand.

Parents with histories of abuse or neglect may find they feel triggered by certain behaviors their child exhibits or certain interactions with their child. Parents with a trauma history may find they react to their children with out-of-proportion harsh responses, or they may freeze, or they may retreat, collapse, and avoid their children altogether.

Understanding yourself and your history is the strongest predictor in promoting secure attachment in your child. In other words, how you take care of yourself and strive to process your childhood story, influences your child’s psychosocial development and quality of future relationships.

I can help you build the capacity to reflect and work through your triggers. I can teach mindful parenting skills, which don’t require you or your child to be perfect. Working on yourself can benefit not only your child, but their children and their children’s children. This is what it means to “break the cycle.”

Understanding your history and vulnerabilities while learning new ways to manage your emotions and approach challenges, allows you to give your child better than you had.

Therapy for yourself is one of the greatest gifts you can give your children.

Partner with a Licensed Therapist

If you would like professional help learning new ways to be in relationship with yourself and children, I would be honored to partner with you. With skilled support you can grow into an attuned parent while promoting your child’s positive sense of self and increasing the likelihood they will seek and maintain healthy future relationships.

Investing in yourself is an investment in your whole family. Therapy can help you move forward in health and resilience.

I offer therapy to all parents, caregivers, and families.

Maternal Mental Health

Therapy can effectively treat maternal mental health disorders like perinatal depression, anxiety, obsessive thoughts and compulsive behavior. Mood changes for mothers in pregnancy, postpartum and across the developmental span are common, however some changes can significantly compromise mother and baby’s well-being and may benefit from professional help. I received training from Postpartum Support International and have supported dozens of new moms in my career.

Postpartum Depression and Anxiety

The causes of postpartum depression (PPD) and postpartum anxiety (PPA) are complex. PPD and PPA can be triggered by a combination of biological, psychological, and social factors. It’s important to view maternal mental health within the context of the environment, physical health, and social relationships.

Women with a history of mental illness are at-risk of developing a mood or anxiety disorder in the perinatal period. Additionally, women who have little social support or who experience financial insecurity, an abusive partner, a medically fragile baby, or a baby with a high needs temperament are at increased risk for PPD and/or PPA. Women who experienced a traumatic birth or separation from their baby are also at-risk for developing a postpartum mood or anxiety disorder.

How Therapy Helps with PPD and PPA

Good therapists understand the societal impact on maternal mental health and they can help families from a holistic perspective, providing resources for needs that are not exclusively psychological.

I offer a supportive environment and help with managing expectations, understanding infant development, fostering responsive parenting for secure attachments, and finding solutions to the most pressing issues. I work with mothers as they take steps towards getting rest and growing in confidence. I use empirically supported practices rooted in the upmost respect for the parent child relationship.

Evaluation and Treatment for Perinatal Mood & Anxiety Disorders

I am trained and licensed to evaluate, diagnose, and treat postpartum depression, postpartum anxiety, and postpartum obsessions. Some mental health disorders require a higher level of psychiatric care than I am not able to provide, such as postpartum psychosis.

If you or your loved one is out of touch with reality or having thoughts of hurting yourself or your baby, it’s important to seek immediate psychiatric care by calling 911 or going to the Emergency Room.

Hotlines if you suspect postpartum psychosis/perinatal mental health emergency:

If you’re in a rough season of new parenting and things are not as you as you expected, remember that it’s not your fault and with help things will get better.

  • Through the blur, I wondered if I was alone or if other parents felt the same way I did - that everything involving our children was painful in some way. The emotions, whether they were joy, sorrow, love or pride, were so deep and sharp that in the end they left you raw, exposed and yes, in pain. The human heart was not designed to beat outside the human body and yet, each child represented just that - a parent's heart bared, beating forever outside its chest.

    Debra Ginsberg