Mums Suffering Due to Poorly Funded Mental Health Service

New Mums Suffering Due to Poorly Funded Mental Health Services

Maternal Care Action Group (MCAGNZ), is delivering a petition to parliament this month on Mother’s Day (May 14th) requesting funding for new mothers to receive help for anxiety or depression. Up to 97% of new mothers with depression or anxiety do not fit Maternal Mental Health criteria at their local District Health Board and MCAGNZ spokesperson Kristina Paterson is saying the lack of funded services means that there are delays in identifying and holistically treating depression and anxiety and few affordable options available to women.

“Not only does this mean an increase in severity of her illness and risk of suicide for a woman experiencing depression, but it also puts her child at more risk of mental health issues, learning difficulties, addictions and delinquency.”

West Auckland mum Bridget Baker was diagnosed with Postnatal Depression and Anxiety when her second child was three months old, but when she looks back, she realises she had been experiencing anxiety since her pregnancy with her first child 18 months prior to diagnosis.

"I was just constantly exhausted, anxious and irritable. I loved my son dearly, but found it very difficult to enjoy life and felt quite isolated, and even resentful. I felt like I was failing because these feelings were completely opposite to what I had read and imagined motherhood to be like."

"Neither my midwives or Plunket were appropriately trained to identify my symptoms. Furthermore, Plunket's screening questions were very vague and did not sufficiently identify mothers like me with Postnatal Depression."

When Ms Baker was finally diagnosed, she accessed support from Mothers Helpers - a not-for-profit organisation providing a recovery programme for mothers who do not fit Maternal Mental Health criteria: "The recovery course took a holistic view on how best to recover. It was incredibly informative and provided me with the knowledge to make small but major changes in my life and thinking. It had a huge impact on me."

Mothers Helpers' holistic recovery programme has shown to successfully assist more than 65% of attendees to fully recover from Postnatal Depression, with an average of 51% improvement in depressive symptoms. The charity recently announced that despite their best efforts, they had not been successful in securing Government funding for their programme, and this meant they were going to have to privately charge their clients.

Ms Paterson of MCAGNZ says that maternal mental health has been neglected for a very long time and it needs to be addressed: "There are gaps all the way through the system - from lack of education through to poor identification of antenatal and postnatal depression. When we know the lasting impact untreated depression and anxiety has on an entire family, it just beggars belief that we have no funded holistic services for up to 97% of these women."

MCAGNZ has a petition appealing for perinatal depression and anxiety to be better addressed in this year's budget by increasing funding of primary care services and better resourcing midwives through training. They are calling for all those that would support more funded holistic services for women like Bridget Baker to sign their petition, which can be found at this link: https://our.actionstation.org.nz/p/fundpnd
ENDS

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