at the heart of Hastings Old Town
New NICE Guideline For Antenatal and Postnatal Mental Helath
In December 2014 the long waited update of CG45 was published. The major significant points are
- a recognition about the uncertainty of the effect of treatment with medication in pregnant and breastfeeding women.
- acknowledgement that psychological help should be offered as an alternative or in conjunction with medication as the threshold for using psychotropic drugs to control anxiety and or depression is very much higher in pregnancy and in breast feeding.
This is a challenge since access to prompt psychological help in the NHS is limited and mostly does not take into consideration the very specific issues of emotional wellbeing in pregnancy and the postnatal period. To see the whole or shortened version click the link below.
https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/cg192
To see what services should provide click the link below
http://pathways.nice.org.uk/pathways/antenatal-and-postnatal-mental-health
To read about women’s opinions click on
Midwives and Perinatal Mental Health
The cost of perinatal mental health
The cost of Perintal Mental Health
Click above to know more about the financial and human cost of not addressing issues in Perinatal mental health
Does an internet quiz help to identify problems ?
Answering a quiz like this can be the first step to realising that the feelings you might have are those experienced by other women.
The main problem with these questions are that having a baby is such a unique situation that all the usual stressors which point towards anxiety or depression are just a normal part of new motherhood.
The issue is when these feelings don’t fade into the background; they become larger than anything else going on in life.Life then becomes filled with these feelings and there is no room for anything else.
NHS announce £450 Million for therapies
NHS England aims to provide £450 Million to improve access to psychological therapies Unfortunately we are still reliant on a very restrictive list of NICE recognised talking therapies and an emphasis on short term help. Time limited interventions do work well for some people but as we are all individuals access to the help we need may mean a little bit more time than is offered !!