Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he has made an assessment of the effectiveness of general practitioners in (a) identifying and (b) treating perinatal mental health problems experienced by mothers.

This Government is committed to improving perinatal mental health services for women during pregnancy and in the first postnatal year, so that women are able to access the right care at the right time and close to home. The importance of this is reflected in both NHS England’s ‘Better Births’ and the ‘Five Year Forward View for Mental Health.’

General practitioners and primary care teams have a role in supporting the identification of perinatal mental illness and treatment, and are part of an integrated pathway of services. This includes monitoring early onset conditions, providing pre-conception counselling and referring women to specialist mental health services, including Improving Access to Psychological Therapies and specialist perinatal community teams, if necessary.

The Department is investing £365 million to 2020/21 in perinatal mental health services, and NHS England is leading a transformation programme with the development of specialist perinatal mental health community services across England with their investment of £63 million between 2016/17 and 2018/19. Local teams work in close partnership with wider system partners including primary care to provide care and treatment to women with perinatal mental illness.

NHS England has also invested in multidisciplinary perinatal mental health clinical networks which include general practitioners, across the country to drive forward change, focusing on collaborative working to develop local, integrated pathways and support early identification of those at risk of mental illness in the perinatal period, to enable better outcomes for women in all communities.