New mothers with mental health likely to go undiagnosed, report shows

A report from the charity National Childbirth Trust (NCT) has found that two in five new mothers with mental health problems go undiagnosed.

The report, Hidden Half, is compiled from responses from over 1,000 women.

It also found that around half of new mothers’ mental health problems do not get picked up by a health professional and some women feel they have to ‘hide their problems’ because they see them as a sign of failure or out of fear of having their baby taken away.

22 per cent of women said they were not asked about their emotional well-being during the six week health check new mothers are given, with the appointment being ’squeezed in with checks on the baby’, leaving little time to focus on the mother.

The NCT has recommended implementing a few measures to help solve the problem of the ‘hidden half’. These include: funding the six week maternal postnatal check so GPs have more time to spend with mothers; improving guidance to GPs on best practice around maternal mental health and; ensuring NHS England and Health Education England support and invest in initiatives to facilitate and further develop GP education in the area of mental health through a range of media.

The Royal College of General Practitioners has responded to the NCT’s report. Professor Helen Stokes-Lampard, chair of the Royal College of GPs, said: “The routine six week postnatal check, offered to all new mothers after giving birth, is an important opportunity for GPs and new mothers to discuss issues around mental health and well-being – and begin to address any resulting concerns.

“But it’s incredibly hard for GPs to explore all the physical and psychological factors affecting our patients’ health within the time constraints of the consultation as it stands. We need these checks to be much longer as standard, so that we are able to give the same attention to the new mother as we do to the baby – but this needs more resources for our service, and more GPs.

“Unfortunately, offering longer appointments means offering fewer appointments, and our patients are already waiting longer than they should be for routine appointments. We need the pledges made in NHS England’s GP Forward View, including £2.4 billion extra a year for general practice, and 5,000 more GPs by 2020, to be implemented as a matter of urgency in order to address this.”

She added: “We’d like to reassure all our patients that GPs are highly trained to have confidential, non-judgmental conversations about all health issues, including mental well-being, and any concerns they share with us will be taken seriously.

“Perinatal mental health is a clinical priority for the College, and we have developed a whole range of resources to support GPs and our teams to deliver the best possible mental health care for our patients during and after pregnancy.”