Maternal Mental Health Matters

May is mental Health Awareness month. The World Health Organisation estimates that about 16% of pregnant women and 20% of women who have just given birth experience a mental disorder, primarily depression. In Ireland, that translates to one in five women, who will suffer from a depressive disorder during our pregnancies or postnatally.

A depressive disorder includes ante and postnatal depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, binge eating, tokophobia, which is an extreme fear of childbirth, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and postpartum psychosis.  Pregnancy and childbirth can exacerbate the symptoms of mental illness for women with a pre-existing condition and increase the risk of a recurrence of symptoms.

Maternal metal health plays a significant role on foetal development – chronic stress in pregnancy is associated with more premature births.  Birthing outcomes are affected – a 2012 study in the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology showed that fear of childbirth is associated with longer and more challenging labours and a higher risk of emergency caesarean sections.  A mother’s mental health effects the formation of positive emotional health and attachments, the physical and social development of infants and healthy family relationships.  Women who experience loss or whose babies are admitted to neonatal intensive care, are at increased risk of postpartum mental illness. Birth-related PTSD occurs in around three percent of women following natural birth and six percent of women following emergency caesarean section.

Recently we held our first “Birth Circle” at the Baby Room.  The idea was to facilitate safe, supportive discussion about our birthing experiences, to share laughs and tears and hugs and tea and chat through some of the big emotions that pregnancy and birth elicit.  What emerged from the gathering of 15 women was that a lot of us carry war wounds. A lot of us are fearful about birth. Our birth experiences go on to influence so many other things in our parenting journey – our sex lives, our anxiety levels, our physical health, our confidence levels, our feelings of empowerment.  We also discussed the lack of supports available for new mother’s, many who are recovering from major abdominal surgery, are just expected to get up and get on.
 
For some of us, simply requesting a copy of our hospital or home birth notes and working through those will help to process some of the events that transpired.  Requesting a meeting with hospital staff is also a good way of addressing any outstanding issues and having unanswered questions answered. There are two particularly fantastic organisations helping to deal with maternal mental health and birth trauma.

Nurture Charity provide timely, affordable, nationwide counselling & supports. There are no waiting lists.  Tara Killen of MindfulBirth.ie is a birth trauma therapist, offering free online Trauma Recovery Programmes for Moms, including PTSD and PND screening tools.

Our Pregnant and Parenting in Carlow Facebook page, also aims to provide local, peer to peer support and information.  Anyone interested in our next get together will get information there or on The Baby Room page.

This May let’s share the message that maternal mental health matters.