DECIDE to Improve Maternal Mental Health Care Delivery

Appropriate training for perinatal mental health care is an important public health concern as mental health disorders are common pregnancy complications. Perinatal and mental health care providers report the difficulty of treating perinatal individuals due to insufficient information available regarding mental health treatment decisions, differences in beliefs and attitudes, and concerns about adverse effects on patients, such as self-harm and suicide. Effective shared decision-making skills can improve perinatal and mental health care providers' competencies to meet the unique decision needs of perinatal individuals, particularly those with mental health disorders. The proposed project titled "DECIDE to Improve Maternal Mental Health Care Delivery" aims to adapt the DECIDE Provider Training developed by Dr. Alegria and her team,1 to improve the rapid and wide dissemination and implementation of DECIDE in meeting the mental health needs of perinatal individuals. DECIDE stands for Decide the problem; Explore the questions; Closed or open-ended questions; Identify the who, why, or how of the problem; Direct questions to your health care professional; Enjoy a shared solution. The DECIDE provider training was developed based on theories of intergroup contact in social psychology and a patient-centered framework.28-30 DECIDE teaches mental health providers how to improve perspective-taking, reduce attributional errors, and increase receptivity to the client population.1,15-17 The proposed project will (1) make content adaptation (i.e., adding topical training content to fit perinatal mental health care) and process adaption (i.e., creating asynchronous training modules to reduce the burden for care providers) to the DECIDE Provider Training and (2) assess the acceptability, appropriateness, and usability of adapted DECIDE provider training for rapid and wide dissemination and implementation of DECIDE in maternal mental health care delivery.