We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Tiffany Bishop & Whitney Coble. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Tiffany & Whitney below.
Tiffany & Whitney, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.
A risk we have has been valuing our worth and taking the initiative to step out on our own. We specialize in Black women’s mental health, and often we have to give a disclaimer of why we hold space for Black women and couples. A constant struggle is proving why Black women deserve priority in their mental wellness. Our practice addresses challenges and provides a safe place for black individuals who are not often held with open ears.
We had to learn about ourselves as therapists, Black women, and our own relationship with each other as friends and business partners in order to allow our private practice to thrive. We ground ourselves in defining our niche, serving our aligned clients, and knowing our worth as therapists.
Tiffany & Whitney , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
Raising Resilience priority is providing support for Black women and couples during their pregnancy and postpartum. We also value being able to offer reduced-fee mental health services through our previous grant funding. We started working diligently in our community by delivering essential items in person in our bi-weekly postpartum support groups; Raising Resilience looks for innovative ways to reach birthing individuals in need nationwide. Virtual support groups for perinatal, infant loss, general mental health, LGBTQ+, and teen support allow members access to a safe space to share their experiences with like-minded peers. Virtual methods of reaching clients have been fundamental during the COVID-19 pandemic, with over 3,200 clients being served virtually since 2020. As for in-person services, over 1,500 clients have visited the office to pick up supplies, attend support sessions, and receive healthcare services.
Raising Resilience serves Black women and birthing people to decrease complications in the postpartum period related to mental health. In the United States, Black women are twice as likely to develop postpartum depression as their white counterparts but half as likely to get treated. The current state of Black maternal mental health is the product of hundreds of years of social structures impacting the environments of Black people.
Raising Resilience bridges the gap between appropriate diagnosis, decreasing bias, education, and mental health services dedicated to Black women during pregnancy and postpartum. Our services and innovation app are allowing women not to navigate their postpartum period blindly, leading to more serious mental health and stress-related outcomes in their future years. The transition into parenthood doesn’t come with a handbook or resources. Still, Raising Resilience through workshops, apps, services, and community outreach using evidence-based training can provide vital resources to improve maternal mental health outcomes for Black women.
We developed a maternal mental health app this past year. Our app bridges the gap between maternal mental health and technology. We are working on launching our app launch from prototype to in the hands of families. Our app will streamline care coordination, provider directory, telehealth, courses, and real-time access to perinatal mental health screening. This program/app will offer resources to any front-line healthcare providers serving pregnant and postpartum women, including but not limited to OB/GYNs, nurses, midwives, lactation consultants, and pediatricians.
Raising Resilience also has a provider collaborative, a safe space for birth workers, medical professionals, and medical professionals to receive training in Black maternal mental health care areas.
We also have developed training proven to identify unique stressors in Black women and birthing individuals dealing with Maternal Mental Health complications. By implementing our programs and training methods into everyday practices for self-care alignment and prioritizing this method for the community we serve, the training can help those who take the training on what they can do to change the current outlook of maternal mental health in Black women and birthing individuals and understanding the social determinants of health and cultural barriers. And can demonstrate the dedication Raising Resilience provides through compassionate care and strategy for patients and providers, including mindfulness, therapy, music, and more.
Our ultimate goal is a Postpartum Care Center. This environment will nurture new mothers and parents during the postpartum period, from mental health services, lactation and feeding assistance, and baby care that allows mothers to stay overnight. We aim to fill in for “the village” that’s often not present for mothers trying to find harmony between their emotional stability and being a new mom.
We’d love to hear about you met your business partner.
We met at A&T university, also known as North Carolina Agricultural and State Technical State University. We met in our graduate master’s counseling program. At this time, we had no idea what type of therapy we wanted to go into. We also began to work together in Charlotte, NC post-graduation. We started working with children and adolescents. We learned about working with children and that parents and the adults involved in their lives often have childhood wounds that have not healed or had a challenging birthing experience that impacts them to parent in the way they would like to. We did a lot of work helping parents and caregivers work through the challenging parts of parenthood that needed to be healed. At this moment, we knew that maternal mental health for Black parents and families was imperative for the practice we wanted to build. When Tiffany became a mom and we went to our first Postpartum Support International training, it opened an entirely new world for us as therapists and the specialty we wanted to offer for the clients we wanted to serve in our practice. We have learned from each as women, a mother, and therapists throughout our journey as becoming business partners and therapists.
How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?
Raising Resilience started in 2018 as a local effort to bridge the gap by providing new moms with support groups and reduced-fee mental health services. In the following years, the community continued to grow, along with the services offered. From delivering essential items in person in our bi-weekly postpartum support groups, Raising Resilience looks for innovative ways to reach birthing individuals in need nationwide. Virtual support groups for perinatal, infant loss, general mental health, LGBTQ+, and teen support allow members access to a safe space to share their experiences with like-minded peers. Virtual methods of reaching clients have been fundamental during the COVID-19 pandemic, with over 3,200 clients being served virtually since 2020. As for in-person services, over 1,500 clients have visited the office to pick up supplies, attend support sessions, and receive healthcare services.
Raising Resilience serves Black women and birthing people to decrease complications in the postpartum period related to mental health. In the United States, Black women are twice as likely to develop postpartum depression as their white counterparts but half as likely to get treated. The current state of Black maternal mental health is the product of hundreds of years of social structures impacting the environments of Black people.
For Black women, the aftermath of these social structures combined with societal expectations on women to bounce back right after birth results in an incredible burden to carry when seeking help. The barriers to affordable, accessible, and culturally competent care are directly related to these social structures and societal and cultural expectations. While none of these can be overhauled overnight, we can start by providing the tools needed to seek treatment.
Enriching the mind and body with education and proper nutrition is vital during pregnancy and continues to be important postpartum. The data on postpartum illnesses is severely lacking, as 40% of women do not attend appointments.
Beyond the single postpartum appointment, patients with newborns generally visit their pediatrician more regularly than their gynecologist or family practitioner. Symptoms typically go undiagnosed during the first year postpartum ranging from insomnia, depression, and complications from procedures like episiotomies and cesarean-section incisions. Whether it is mistrust, lack of information, or lack of time, racial differences exist in how follow-up is addressed when someone is diagnosed with PPD.
There is evidence that African Americans may be less inclined to disclose symptoms due to mistrust and perceived discrimination within the medical care setting. Differences can significantly impact the kind of care given to patients and thus plays a heavy role in the mortality statistics of specific populations. Research had found that birthing experiences of minority women differ significantly depending on location: home birth vs. hospital; incidents of mistreatment were found to be more significant when women gave birth in the hospital (28.1%) vs. at home (5.1%).
This information is not presented to scare or force women to give birth at home but is necessary to highlight the reality of the system with which we live and how it can impact our life experiences. The provision of health care interpretation services, recruitment/retention of minority staff, and the employment of doctors in areas that identify with most of the patient population are all essential aspects of patient care. Doctors should be able to coordinate with community health workers and traditional healers, incorporating cultural forms of healing into the patient treatment process. Intra-personal determinants play a significant role in postpartum mental health as well.
Informed by this data, Raising Resilience bridges the gap between appropriate diagnosis, decreasing bias, education, and mental health services dedicated to Black women during pregnancy and postpartum. Our services and innovation app are allowing women not to navigate their postpartum period blindly, leading to more serious mental health and stress-related outcomes in their future years. The transition into parenthood doesn’t come with a handbook or resources. Still, Raising Resilience through workshops, apps, services, and community outreach using evidence-based training can provide vital resources to improve maternal mental health outcomes for Black women.
Raising Resilience also has a provider collaborative, a safe space for birth workers, medical professionals, and medical professionals to receive training in Black maternal mental health care areas.
The evidence-based training curricula created by Raising Resilience have proven to be a training that identifies unique stressors in Black women and birthing individuals dealing with Maternal Mental Health complications. By implementing our programs and training methods into everyday practices for self-care alignment and prioritizing this method in practices for the community, the training can help those who take the training on what they can do to change the current outlook of maternal mental health in Black women and birthing individuals and understanding the social determinants of health and cultural barriers. And can demonstrate the dedication Raising Resilience provides through compassionate care and strategy for patients and providers, including mindfulness, therapy, music, and more. The final step is to route funds to community organizations and partners dedicated to transparency and sustainably creating change.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.weareraisingresilience.org/
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/raising.resilience?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RaisingRes/
- Linkedin: raising-resilience-5a657b257
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/Raisingres
- Youtube: https://youtu.be/EvC2KhvzxLU
Image Credits
Ariel Perry Photography