Petition Requesting Perinatal Depression Funding

MEDIA RELEASE

UNDER EMBARGO UNTIL 3:00AM FRIDAY 12TH MAY

PETITION PRESENTED TO PARLIAMENT FOR MOTHER'S DAY REQUESTING EARLY INTERVENTION FUNDING FOR MUMS WITH PERINATAL DEPRESSION

Maternal Care Action Group (MCAGNZ), spokeswoman Kristina Paterson is delivering apetition on the steps of parliament at 2:30pm today for Mother’s Day (May 14th) requesting funding for new mothers to receive help for anxiety or depression. Minister of Health Dr Jonathan Coleman was unable to accept the petition his office said, but Ms Paterson has requested five minutes of his time at 1:30pm today so that she can explain the reason for the petition.

Deputy Leader of the Labour Party Jacinda Adern has agreed to accept the petition, and will be presented with a large Mother's Day card displaying photographs of some of the women and their children whose stories will be included. A gift will also be presented and inside, the words "Designate Funding in the 2017 Budget for Postnatal Depression Early Intervention."

"For the 10,000 mothers that will not fit Maternal Mental Health criteria this year to receive funded holistic treatment for perinatal depression, and the 7,500 mothers that will experience a significant delay in diagnosis this year - this would be a welcome Mother's Day present that they desperately need."

Ms Paterson herself explains that she was one of those women that fell through the cracks of the system. She experienced 18 months of undiagnosed and untreated antenatal and postnatal depression and anxiety: "In my first trimester I told my midwife 'I think I'm at-risk of developing postnatal depression.' I had a number of risk-factors including a previous episode of clinical depression, but my midwife never once screened me or asked about any of my symptoms. By my third trimester I had seen the backup midwife when she was away, who said that I should request a referral to Maternal Mental Health. I did request a referral, and my midwife agreed, but I discovered in my last week of pregnancy that she never referred me.

"Support during labour and postnatally was very very poor, and that led to me asking for a new midwife. My new midwife gave me the Postnatal Depression Edinburgh scale to fill in, but she never requested it back off me and I didn't want to have PND, so I didn't want to remind her. In fact, there was no health professional that ever asked me about how I was doing in myself or screened me for depression at any point. It wasn't until things were extremely bad when my baby was 9 months old that I finally went to the doctor and he diagnosed me with postnatal depression. By that time, my energy was so terrible that it took all my willpower just to get off the couch and attend to my baby's needs. I was utterly exhausted and overwhelmed. I would beg my husband to stay at home from work because I didn't know how to cope with a little baby on my own with this overwhelming anxiety I felt. After that, the only real help available to me was prescription medication. I had to pay for my own counselling and there was just nothing else out there for me."

The consequences of Ms Paterson's experience contributed to the breakdown of her marriage and had a significant impact on her son's health. With a passion to prevent this from happening to other mothers, Ms Paterson founded the not-for-profit organisation Mothers Helpers - a service with the intention of helping women recover from mild-moderate perinatal depression who would not meet Maternal Mental Health criteria . "Just because a woman has mild-moderate depression or anxiety does not mean that she's not at-risk of suicide or doesn't experience suicidal thoughts, or that her attachment to her child is not affected."

In 2015 Mothers Helpers conducted a survey of 100 mums nationwide who had experienced Perinatal Depression. The results showed gaps in education, assessments, screening and treatment. Like Ms, Paterson, two-thirds of mums had experienced significant delays in the identification and diagnosis of perinatal depression. "I knew that there were gaps in the system, but I didn't know that the experience I had with my midwife where there was such a long delay in getting help - was not an isolated case. I was really shocked at the extent of it."

A Registered Nurse, Paterson pursued a Not-for-Profit Management Graduate Diploma and a Masters in Applied Social Work. She also developed a Recovery Programme based on the application of researched approaches that were shown to assist in recovery from depression and anxiety. The result was that more than 65% of women attending the 12-week programme had no depressive symptoms by the end of the course, and all attendees had an average of 51% improvement in depressive symptoms. In the last two years, Ms Paterson has taken the results of the programme to the Ministry of Health, District Health Boards and Primary Health Organisations seeking funding so that she could help the women who were falling through the cracks in the system. All were supportive of her work, but they just did not have the money in the budget.

Maternal Care Action Group and the 4,000 people that have signed the petition are requesting that funding is dedicated to address the delays in diagnosis and to provide services like Mothers Helpers that are showing good recovery outcomes.

“If we continue to neglect the health needs of these 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. The economic cost of that is far greater than any spending we will do in intervening early.”

ENDS

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