Perinatal mental health problems
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Useful resources for families
- Tommys: Provide expert, midwife-led advice for parents before, during and after pregnancy, working together towards safer, healthier pregnancies.
- The National Childbirth Trust: The UK’s leading charity for parents, provide advice, support and help form networks for new parents.
- Baby Buddy: free multi-award-winning, interactive pregnancy and parenting app, provides support and information to expectant and new parents.
- Home-Start: is a local community network of trained volunteers and expert support helping families with young children through their challenging times.
- Nottinghamshire Country Council Children Centre Services: provides early help and targeted services for parents to be and families with children under five years old.
- Small Steps Big Changes: A programme of activities designed to give every child the best start in life.
- Twins Trust: Twinline is Twins Trust’s listening service for parents of twins, triplets and more. All the calls are answered by volunteers who have multiples themselves. Twinline is open Monday to Friday 10am to 1pm and from 7pm to 10pm. 0800 138 0509, alternatively email asktwinline@twinstrust.org.
- DadPad app - Essential guide for new dads: is an easy-to-use APP developed by dads for dads, with lots of invaluable information and details on local support groups and service providers. Its aim is to help fathers prepare for family life and addresses the mental health issues which can affect new parents.
Perinatal mental health problems
A 'perinatal' mental health problem is one that you experience any time from becoming pregnant up to a year after you give birth. This may be new mental health problem, or an episode of Something you've experienced in the past.
We know that mental health problems are really common in the perinatal period. At least 1 in 5 women are going to experience mental health problems in the perinatal period. For some women, this might be in the form of feeling more worried or anxious about different things in their lives. Others might become low or depressed in mood. Women do recover from mental health problems in the perinatal period and for a lot of people, that happens when they are able to access some help. There is a variety of help available.
Our primary message to you is, you are not alone.
Our team offer specialist perinatal mental health assessments, which focuses on both the needs of mother, baby and family. This will include discussion around options of treatment for women suffering mental illness such as:
- depression
- anxiety
- OCD
- post-traumatic stress disorder
- bipolar affective disorder
- post-partum psychosis.
For women that are planning a pregnancy that have a current mental health problem, we can offer advice alongside your current care package about the kinds of support that could be available to you in a pregnancy and after the birth of your baby. Once you become pregnant, we will often work alongside your current care provider (if you have one) to make sure your changing care needs are met – thinking about you, your baby and your partner/family.
There are lots of resources on the internet about perinatal mental health problems.
The links below are to some trusted sites:
- Mental health in pregnancy | Royal College of Psychiatrists (rcpsych.ac.uk)
- Postnatal depression | Royal College of Psychiatrists (rcpsych.ac.uk)
- Perinatal OCD | Royal College of Psychiatrists (rcpsych.ac.uk)
- Postpartum psychosis | Royal College of Psychiatrists (rcpsych.ac.uk)
- Perinatal and postnatal mental health - Mind
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