Barriers for adolescent mothers
with mental healthcare needs
There are many identified barriers, independent from
childbearing, that impede access to mental health
services for adolescents; however, being a teenage
parent may heighten barriers even further. Adolescents
identify lack of confidentiality as a major
barrier for seeking health care. They are more willing
to seek care from and communicate with physicians
who assure confidentiality, and in contrast, may forgo
health care to prevent their parents from discovering
their help-seeking.5 Furthermore, the ‘standardpractice’
expectation of actual appointments versus
a walk-in format may be a barrier, as teenagers appear
to be more amiable to visits that are flexible and not
rigidly formatted, including caregivers removing
expectations of completing an intake in one visit
and allowing the teenager to tell his or her story
instead.6 Practitioners face barriers such as limited
time for office visits; lack of training in adolescent
issues; difficulties in keeping billing and medical
records confidential; and private, public and political
debates about confidential health care for adolescents.7
Beyond these barriers, problems related to
financing continue to limit many adolescents’ access
to mental health services in the USA. All of these
issues prevent numerous teenagers from seeking
care for their mental health problems during this
crucial time in their lives. This is especially problematic
for teenagers who are also challenged with
parenting young children and are faced with the
additional stressors that being a young parent entail.
Adolescent childbearing is more likely to occur
among girls and young women with lower levels
of income and education.8 Hence, these adolescent
mothers often lack socio-economic resources and
support. Additionally, adolescent mothers are dually
challenged in such as they are asked to accomplish
the developmental tasks of adolescence crucial for
their own well-being, while at the same time navigating
the challenges of parenting.9 Adolescent mothers
are twice as likely as adult mothers to experience
depression, which in turn places them at increased
risk to engage in unsupportive and even abusive
relationships, and enhances the likelihood that their
children are exposed to abuse or neglect.10 Subsequently,
children of adolescent mothers are more
likely to present later on with problems in intellectual
and psychosocial functioning.10 Given these
risks, it is imperative to implement prevention and
early intervention programmes supporting young
mothers, and if possible the young family as a unit,
during their pregnancy and their first years as new
parents.
Getting teenage mothers involved with parenting
programmes is challenging, especially as other competing
needs such as access to housing, transportation,
work or school schedule and childcare needs
may be in the forefront.3 The stigma of seeking
services may be another barrier that inhibits young
mothers from seeking services for parenting or mental
health care. Teenagers name stigmatisation such
as equating mental illness to weakness and fears of
how peers and family members would perceive them
as obstacles to seek mental health services.11 Providing
mental health services in addition to parenting
support in a primary care setting may reduce the
stigma of seeking access to psychological and psychiatric
care, thus allowing more teenage parents to
seek the treatment they need.