The NHS has launched a programme that it says will ‘each year help an extra 30,000 new or expectant mums who experience serious mental ill health’.
As a first step, NHS England is launching a £5 million Perinatal Community Services Development Fund ‘to help close a wide gap in the availability of high quality care for women with severe or complex conditions’; fewer than 15 per cent of areas currently provide services to nationally recommended levels, and over 40 per cent no service at all.
The organisation said: “These specialist community services provide care and support to women with a mental illness in pregnancy or the postnatal period. They also respond to crises, aim to decrease risks to mothers and babies, and offer after-care following an inpatient stay in a mother and baby unit.”
Perinatal mental ill health’s cost to society is estimated at £8.1 billion for each annual birth cohort, or almost £10,000 per birth, while up to one in five women experience mental ill health during pregnancy or in the year after birth. Overall, £365 m has been allocated for specialist perinatal mental health services over the next five years.