Expert care for mothers facing mental ill health

Exeter-based Grainge Architects was last summer appointed to design one of four new Mother & Baby Units commissioned by the NHS in England to allow women needing mental healthcare to stay with their babies while receiving the specialist care they need. Here, Tony Pollintine, co-owner of the practice, and the director who developed the project concept for the Devon Partnership NHS Trust’s new Mother and Baby Unit at its Wonford House site in Exeter, reports.

According to NHS England – which last September officially announced the four mental health providers to benefit from a new MBU as Kent and Medway NHS and Social Care Partnership Trust, Devon Partnership NHS Trust, Lancashire Care NHS Foundation Trust, and Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust – as many as one in five women experience mental ill health during pregnancy or in the year after birth. The wide range of conditions faced include severe depression, anxiety, and in some cases postpartum psychosis, which affects around two in every 1,000 new mothers, and is strongly associated with maternal suicide. 

NHS England said the four new Mother and Baby Units would provide inpatient support for women and their babies ‘with the most complex and severe needs who require hospital care, and who are experiencing severe mental health crisis, including very serious conditions like post-partum psychosis’