

Today we’d like to introduce you to Lexie Belle.
Lexie, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
Before going into therapy, I worked with community agencies serving underserved families. The longer I worked with these families, I realized the services we were providing would only act as band-aids.
I learned the only way to affect long-lasting change was to get to the root of the issues that brought these families into community services, to begin with through the help of counseling.
I decided right then I wanted to have the greatest impact possible in my community, and that was going to be as a counselor. I earned my graduate degree in Counseling Psychology and went right to work in the community.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
After a few years of working as a counselor with community mental health agencies, I married my amazing husband and started a family of my own.
After the birth of my children, I knew the focus of my counseling work needed to change. I am a two-time survivor of postpartum depression and postpartum OCD. At the time, there were few, if any, counselors/psychiatrists in our area who knew how to help postpartum moms manage what I was facing as a result of pregnancy and birth.
After some time, and finally finding the right help, I knew I never wanted another mom, or mom-to-be, to feel ignored, lonely, unheard, misunderstood, or confused if I could help. And I knew there HAD to be a way I could help. I started reading everything I could get my hands on regarding postpartum depression, went through training after training (they didn’t teach this in grad school), and read all the valid research I could find.
Then began my journey of creating Her Hope Behavioral Health. A place for parents (birthing parents and their partners/spouses) and parents-to-be, to heal, to learn that how they are feeling is meant to be shared with others who can help and that they are not alone in this journey of parenting and healing.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
Her Hope Behavioral Health was South Florida’s first behavioral health center dedicated to women’s mental wellness and perinatal mental health. In 2020, I recognized other parts of Florida were severely underserved when it came to perinatal mental health and wellness. So, I decided to bring Her Hope to North Florida so that my team and I could continue to provide access to the same care available to our patients in South Florida.
My team and I work hard to provide hope and healing to birthing persons, their partners/spouses, and women in all stages of life from adolescents through menopause. We specialize in working with parents-to-be (non-birthing partners need support too) and postpartum people struggling through depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, OCD, pregnancy loss, infertility struggles, stillbirth grief, and birth trauma.
We help birthing persons and families in the conception/birthing stage of life all over the state of Florida online through telehealth, and in our offices in Aventura, FL, Delray Beach FL, and Jacksonville, FL. The best part of our work is the time we spend helping our patients build community and get the most support they can while they grow and heal.
What sort of changes are you expecting over the next 5-10 years?
My hope is in the next 5-10 years conversations surrounding perinatal mental health would become part of the gold standard of care for birthing families all over the United States.
There are some pretty exciting shifts in thinking surrounding perinatal mental health as of late.
We are seeing increased access to perinatal mental health care (we still have a lot more work to do here) and increased efforts to train and certify counselors (and other birth-workers) to specialize in perinatal mental health.
Contact Info:
- Email: info@herhopebehavioralhealth.com
- Website: www.herhopebehavioralhealth.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/herhopebh
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/herhopebh
Image Credits
Erica J. Photography