A recent report estimated the societal cost of perinatal mental health problems to be £8 billion, but should we believe it? Chris Sampson advises caution.
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Lucy Simons reports on a meta-ethnography that explores what facilitates peer support for perinatal mental illness. Her key finding from appraising the review is that women who experience perinatal mental illness need support from the right sort of peer (i.e. women who have had mental distress in the context of motherhood) to make the relationship beneficial and to aid recovery.
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. Peer support has been a hot topic in the woodland recently. Although there appears to be a lack of evidence to support the clinical effectiveness of peer support interventions for people with severe mental illness, such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, it is an approach that is highly valued by many. It might be [read the full story…]
A new national survey about depression has just launched. It’s organised by an impressive group of partners, who want to improve care, support and treatment for people affected by depression. Depression affects 1 in 10 adults in any year, and can have debilitating consequences. We know that research can improve lives; improve diagnosis, treatments, care and [read the full story…]
Depression in late adolescence is a major public health concern, not least because it is strongly predictive of persistent, adult depression, which can have a severe effect on socioemotional functioning, education and employment. Increasingly, depression research is turning its attention to the matter of prevention of depression rather than exclusively focusing on treatment options and [read the full story…]
30% of domestic violence (DV) begins during pregnancy and is most prevalent within the working and lower middle socio-economic classes. It is a major public health concern and abuse during pregnancy is of particular concern due to the health risks to both mother and child. It can cause physical and psychological harm to women, and [read the full story…]
While depression is the leading cause of disability for both males and females, the burden of depression is 50% higher for females. In fact, depression is the leading cause of disease burden for women in both high-income and low- and middle-income countries (WHO, 2008). Research has shown that women with unidentified and untreated maternal depression [read the full story…]
Introduction Tackling teenage pregnancy has been high on the political agenda since 1999, when the Teenage Pregnancy Strategy was published. Teenagers who become pregnant probably need more support than older mothers-to-be. Young women often become pregnant because they come from unsupported backgrounds and have no ambition or self-belief, and where they have access to alcohol [read the full story…]
The period after giving birth to a child can be difficult for women and in the first twelve weeks after childbirth 13-19% of women will experience post-partum depression (O’Hara 1996, Gaynes 2005). Post-partum depression is bad news – not only does it increase the chance of the mother going onto develop a severe clinical depression [read the full story…]
Studies have shown that the prevalence of depression in pregnant women is 7-19%. Being depressed during pregnancy can result in preterm delivery, which can in turn lead to illness and even death of the newborn child. Researchers have struggled to single out the causes of these risks. Is it the depression, the medical treatment being [read the full story…]
