Mental Health support for women

A new fund is being set up to enable NHS trusts to improve mental health services to pregnant women and new mothers. Currently 40% of NHS trusts do not have any services that can offer pregnant women or new mothers experiencing depression, anxiety or psychosis any support.

During this perinatal period (from pregnancy and the first year after birth) more than 1 in 10 women develop mental illness. Suicide is also the second most common cause of maternal death, following cardiovascular disease.

To improve the perinatal mental health services the Government is committing £365m. As part of this, an initial £5m of funding is available, which will increase to £40m by 2018, to local NHS trusts to enable an improvement of services at a local level.

Chairman of the Maternal Mental Health Alliance, Alain Gregoire, commented that as the post-natal period was a critical time for mum and baby, the money “must be protected for specialised services right down to the local level – now and in the future too”.
NHS England aims to be able to support 30,000 more new or expectant mums experiencing serious mental health illnesses each year, by 2021.

For more on this story see BBC article here