Governor Kathy Hochul released New York’s first-ever report on maternal mental health in November 2025, putting the state’s name behind a document that catalogs the perinatal and postpartum mood and anxiety disorders facing pregnant New Yorkers and lays out recommendations to address them.

The report was developed by the state Office of Mental Health, which convened a workgroup under a FY 2024 budget initiative. The group drew on subject-matter experts and on people with lived experience to explore what Hochul’s office described as the complex issues facing vulnerable and underrepresented pregnant New Yorkers — and to recommend ways the state could do better.

Money behind the recommendations

The report did not arrive as a stand-alone document. Hochul paired it with funding secured in the FY 2026 state budget to expand the psychiatric collaborative-care model — an approach that embeds behavioral-health support into obstetric and primary-care settings. The budget funding will support up to 17 awards statewide to bring that model to OB-GYN and family-medicine practices, helping them increase perinatal depression screening and treatment.

Separately, the Office of Mental Health made $850,000 available to help OB-GYN and family-medicine practices provide behavioral-health support to their patients — a step the agency tied directly to a recommendation in the report. The collaborative-care expansion is framed explicitly as a tool to decrease racial disparities in maternal mental health care, an area where outcomes for Black and other patients of color have lagged.

Part of a broader maternal-health push

The maternal mental health report fits inside a wider set of state moves on maternal and infant health. New York’s first-in-the-nation paid prenatal leave policy took effect Jan. 1, 2025, giving employees an additional 20 hours of paid leave for prenatal care on top of existing sick leave. The state has also established Medicaid coverage for doulas, created a statewide doula directory, and extended postpartum Medicaid and Child Health Plus coverage from 60 days to a full year following pregnancy.

Taken together, those measures reflect a strategy that treats the year around childbirth — not just the delivery — as the window where intervention matters most. Maternal mental health conditions, including perinatal and postpartum depression and anxiety, are among the leading complications of pregnancy and a recognized contributor to maternal deaths, many of which occur in the postpartum period.

Why mental health, specifically

By singling out mental health for its first dedicated report, the state acknowledged a piece of the maternal-mortality picture that physical-health interventions alone don’t reach. Perinatal mood and anxiety disorders are common and frequently go unscreened and untreated, particularly among lower-income patients and patients of color who face the steepest barriers to care. Embedding screening and treatment into the OB-GYN and family-medicine visits that pregnant patients already attend — the heart of the collaborative-care model — is the report’s central practical bet for closing that gap.

To complement the report’s release, the Office of Mental Health hosted virtual roundtable discussions aimed at reducing the stigma around maternal mental health and surfacing the support programs available to pregnant and postpartum New Yorkers.

What’s next

The funded collaborative-care awards give the report’s recommendations a concrete first deliverable: up to 17 practices statewide adding behavioral-health capacity, with the $850,000 OMH pool helping practices build that support. Whether the model scales beyond the initial awards — and whether it measurably narrows the racial disparities the state has flagged — will be the test of New York’s first maternal mental health report as more than a document.

Verification

Frequently Asked Questions

What did New York's maternal mental health report do?
Released by Governor Hochul in November 2025, it is the state's first-ever report on maternal mental health. It details the challenges pregnant and postpartum New Yorkers face — particularly perinatal and postpartum mood and anxiety disorders — and offers recommendations for improvements statewide.
What funding came with it?
As part of the FY 2026 state budget, funding will support up to 17 awards statewide to expand the psychiatric collaborative-care model at OB-GYN and family-medicine practices. The Office of Mental Health made $850,000 available to help practices add behavioral-health support.
What is the collaborative-care model?
It integrates behavioral-health support into primary and obstetric care, helping practices increase perinatal depression screening and treatment — an approach the report ties to reducing racial disparities in maternal mental health care.
Who produced the report?
The state Office of Mental Health convened a workgroup under an FY 2024 budget initiative, gathering input from subject-matter experts and people with lived experience to develop the recommendations.