"For some women, it's not just wanting to scream into a pillow every now and again, it's feeling suicidal every day, having intrusive thoughts of harming yourself or your child, fearing sleeping in case they die in their cot and it's your fault, or not leaving the house because you simply cannot put one foot in front of the other."
"Accessing NHS perinatal mental health care was nigh on impossible, and it stops when your baby turns one. The NHS often farms you out to third-party providers, who will then triage you from the minimal notes from your 10-minute GP consultation, which can either get lost in the system or so delayed that you give up chasing them because you're so depressed, alongside trying to keep another human alive, that it feels impossible."
"It is a stain on our country that from prenatal to postnatal care, we seem to fail women at every point of their motherhood journey. We owe women greater awareness of the full extent of birth, motherhood and everything in between, that extends beyond meaningless expressions such as motherhood is like going to the moon, so we can equip ourselves, our partners, the NHS and wider government policy as a whole."
Motherhood is not uniformly positive; early parenthood can involve suicidal feelings, intrusive thoughts, fear of sleeping, and inability to leave the house. Traumatic births and neonatal intensive care experiences can produce post-traumatic stress disorder and persistent complex mental health problems. Accessing NHS perinatal mental health services is extremely difficult, provision often ends when the baby turns one, and care is frequently outsourced to third-party providers. Outsourced services may triage on minimal GP notes, become lost or severely delayed, and overwhelm already depressed parents who are caring for an infant. From prenatal to postnatal stages, systemic failures leave many women without adequate support, demanding greater awareness and policy response.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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