Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department plans to take to raise awareness of mental health challenges experienced in pregnancy and the first postnatal year.

Promoting good maternal and perinatal mental health is a key priority for this Government, with its importance reflected in the Five Year Forward View for Mental Health.

The Department is investing £365 million from 2015/16 to 2020/21 in perinatal mental health services, and NHS England is leading a transformation programme to ensure that by 2020/21 at least 30,000 more women each year are able to access evidence-based specialist mental health care during the perinatal period.

A key element of the programme is to increase awareness and skills across the workforce, supporting better identification of perinatal mental illness, early intervention and consequently improved recovery rates. In addition, there are over 570 perinatal mental health visitor champions. Their role is to support health visitors with the identification and management of anxiety, mild to moderate depression and other perinatal mental disorders, and knowing when to refer on.