Postnatal Depression

(asked on 9th May 2018) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the implications of the report by the National Childbirth Trust entitled Hidden Half: bringing postnatal mental illness out of hiding, published in June 2017, for his Department's policies on (a) funding for GPs to carry out appropriate postnatal checks, (b) commissioning of research into the effect of such mental illness on outcomes for children and (c) better diagnosis of such mental illness; and if he will make a statement.


Answered by
Jackie Doyle-Price Portrait
Jackie Doyle-Price
This question was answered on 16th May 2018

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 Department is investing £365 million to 2020/21 in perinatal mental health services. This investment will ensure that at least 30,000 more women each year by 2020/21 are able to access evidence-based specialist mental health care during the perinatal period.

The National Childbirth Trust ‘Hidden Half’ reports calls for all new mothers to have the full appointment for their six week post-natal check with their general practitioner (GP). All GP practices are expected to provide maternity medical services for their registered patients. GPs are paid to provide these services. Practices may however exceptionally choose to opt out of providing such services, for example on workload grounds. Practices which choose to opt out will relinquish a proportion of their global sum income – currently 2.1%. It is the responsibility of the lead commissioner locally (NHS England or clinical commissioning groups under delegated agreement) to ensure the patients of opted out practices can continue to access these services e.g. commissioning the service from a nearby alternative practice.

The Children and Young People’s Mental Health Green Paper, published in December 2017, has proposed to commission further research into interventions that support parents and carers to build and/or improve the quality of attachment relationships with their babies. Further analysis will also be considered in areas such as supporting healthcare professionals to understand the importance of healthy, low-stress pregnancies and healthy childhoods.

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. Targeted funding of £1.2 million was provided in 2017 to enable the training of primary care, maternity and mental health staff to increase awareness and skills related to perinatal mental health.

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