20th October 2014
The Institute of Health Visiting (iHV) welcomes the new influential report ‘The costs of perinatal mental health problems’ released today by the London School of Economics and Centre for Mental Health.1
According to the new report, perinatal mental health problems carry a total economic and social long-term cost to society of about £8.1 billion for each one-year cohort of births in the UK. However the report also finds that the NHS would need to spend just £337 million a year2to bring perinatal mental health care up to the level recommended in national guidance.3
Dr Cheryll Adams, Director of the Institute of Health Visiting, said: “This influential report brings this incredibly important area of healthcare into much sharper focus. Health visitors make up the largest public health workforce. Through their delivery of services to every family with pre-school children they are the best placed public health professional group to identify, manage and provide early support for mothers and fathers with mild to moderate perinatal mental health problems and to seek early specialist help for those with more serious conditions.”
The new report is part of the Maternal Mental Health Alliance’s #everyonesbusiness campaign (www.everyonesbusiness.org.uk), which calls on Governments and local health commissioners to ensure that all women throughout the UK who experience perinatal mental health problems, receive the care they and their families need, wherever and whenever they need it.
Launching officially in Parliament on Tuesday 21st October, the report finds that the costs of mental health problems among women in pregnancy are far greater than previously thought; the cost to the public sector of perinatal mental health problems is five times greater than the cost of providing the services that are needed throughout the United Kingdom.
Health visitors have always made a huge contribution to supporting mother and families with perinatal mental health illness. They have a unique and privileged role with families as support and relationships are often built up over a number of years – families engage with their health visitor whilst expecting their first child and continue to receive support until their youngest child enters school. For example, for a family with three children who are born two years apart, this could mean a health visiting relationship of ten years.
To ensure that health visitors are more confident and competent in identifying, managing and referring perinatal mental health illness, the Department of Health commissioned the iHV to develop perinatal mental health training for health visitors. Since 2013 the iHV has trained over 400 perinatal mental health champions. These champions have been supported by the iHV to cascade this vital training to the health visiting workforce across England – currently over one third has received this training.
The iHV training empowers, invigorates and builds the confidence of health visitors in the area of perinatal mental health. It reinforces evidence-based practices such as the Solihull approach, cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT), solution-focused therapy, motivational and promotional interviewing, sleep hygiene and active listening skills. With these skills and resources and, if adequately resourced, health visitors will be well-placed to identify potential perinatal mental illness and to initiate help at each contact point they have with families in the universal care pathway. There is a need to encourage mothers to feel confident in disclosing how they are feeling to their health visitor for them to be able to offer this help. There are many types of help that can be offered, professional and non-professional, it is for the mother to decide which may suit her circumstances.
Dr Cheryll Adams added: “This new report is a seminal piece of work and we really hope that it will result in a much clearer understanding of why it is so essential to invest in very early years universal and specialist services to reduce the impact of these debilitating conditions and improve later health and wellbeing, for not only the mother but also her children. At the iHV, we will continue to encourage mothers to contact their health visitor if they feel they may be suffering from postnatal depression, anxiety or other mental conditions.”
ENDS
For more information on health visitors and perinatal mental health training, please contact:
- Julie Cooper, Communications and Marketing Manager at the Institute of Health Visiting on 07508 344716 or [email protected]
For all media enquiries about the report, including interview requests with women who have experienced mental health problems during and after pregnancy, please contact:
- Maria Bavetta, Everyone’s Business Campaign, on 07807 130878 or [email protected]
- Andy Bell, Centre for Mental Health, on 07810 503638 or [email protected]
Notes to editors
About ‘The costs of perinatal mental health problems’ report
[1] The costs of perinatal mental health problems report is available online Monday 20th October 2014 http://www.centreformentalhealth.org.uk/costs-of-perinatal-mh-problems and http://www.lse.ac.uk/LSEHealthAndSocialCare/aboutUs/PSSRU/home.aspx
The report was produced by the London School of Economics and Centre for Mental Health for the Everyone’s Business campaign led by the Maternal Mental Health Alliance and funded by Comic Relief.
[2] This figure is based on a calculation for England (£280million) which translates into an estimate for the whole of the UK and is equivalent to spending an extra £407 per child born each year across the UK
[3] National Guidelines: The Royal College of Psychiatrists CR88 2000; The Women’s Mental Health Strategy 2002; The Scottish Maternity Framework 2002; The Children and Young People’s NSF Maternity Standard 11 2004; NICE Guidelines on Antenatal and Postnatal Mental Health Care 2007; The Confidential Enquiries into Maternal Deaths 2011; NICE Guidelines Caesarean Section 2011; The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists’ Guidelines on Management of Women with Mental Health Issues during Pregnancy and the Postnatal Period (Good Practice No 14) 2011; The SIGN Guidelines 2012; Joint Commissioning Panel for Mental Health, Guidance for Commissioners of Perinatal Mental Health Services 2012.
In line with national guidelines, a specialist community perinatal mental health service should be multi-disciplinary and feature a consultant perinatal psychiatrist, specialist psychological treatment for the mother and for her relationship with her baby, as well as formal links with local GP, health visitor, midwife and IAPT or equivalent leads and relevant services in the community and voluntary sectors.
About the Institute of Health Visiting
- The Institute of Health Visiting is A UK Centre of Excellence supporting the development of universally high-quality health visiting practice. It was launched on 28th November 2012 to promote excellence in health visiting practice to benefit all children, families and communities.
- The aim for the iHV is to raise standards in health visiting practice, so improving public health outcomes for all children, families and communities.
- For more information go to ihv.org.uk
- Follow the Institute of Health Visiting on Twitter @iHealthVisiting and Facebook
