Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an assessment of the implications for his policies of the conclusions of the June 2017 National Childbirth Trust report entitled The Hidden Half: Bringing postnatal mental illness on a lack of support for new mothers with mental health issues.

The Department is aware of the National Childbirth Trust’s ‘Hidden Half’ report and campaign, which are making an important contribution to the debate around the need to develop and improve perinatal mental health services.

The NHS Long Term Plan includes a commitment for a further 24,000 women to be able to access specialist perinatal mental health care by 2023/24, building on the additional 30,000 women who will access these services each year by 2020/21 under pre-existing plans as set out in the Five Year Forward View for Mental Health.

Specialist care will also be available from preconception to 24 months after birth, which will provide an extra year of support.

General practitioners and primary care teams have a crucial 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.

Over £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.