Essex launches new specialist mental health service for mums

Essex Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust has launched its new Perinatal Mental Health Service.

The service will provide specialist community-based care for women in the perinatal period who are expecting, or are at risk of developing a serious mental health condition. Support and guidance will also be available for women with diagnosed mental illness who are considering becoming pregnant.

The service has been launched following a bid for funding from the NHS England ‘perinatal mental health community services development fund’/

Development of the new service has involved remodelling and expanding the previously existing team and establishing a new hub to cover the North of the county.

The new service will develop links across the wide range of services available to pregnant women and new mums, and will work closely with professionals as well as the Trust’s Rainbow Mother and Baby Unit, a mental health inpatient unit, to identify women who may be suitable for admission, and to support women who are leaving the care of the unit to transition back into the community.

Rina Gupta, consultant perinatal psychiatrist, said: “Our women in Essex have needed this service. With a birth rate of approximately 23,000, and around one in five women experiencing a mental health problem in the perinatal period, it is expected that there will be a large number of women and their families requiring our specialist guidance and support to steer them through this very vulnerable time. ”

Alain Gregoire, founder and chair of the Maternal Mental Health Alliance, said: “I am delighted to see that women and families in Essex will be able to access excellent specialist perinatal mental health care if they need it, and to see the long-standing and ongoing energy and commitment everyone is putting into improving care across the whole pathway.”

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This story was first published in digitalhealth.net

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