News

Experiencing perinatal mental health difficulties can be unexpected, traumatic, isolating and unwanted. An estimated 1 in 5 women will experience perinatal mental illness.

In the week of World Mental Health Day, our Perinatal Mental Health Service is pleased to reveal its new support booklet. Service users past and present have shared their experiences in ‘Stories of Hope’. The book is designed to help others who might be struggling.

The Trust runs the Perinatal Mental Health Service. It launched 10 years ago after local mother, Angela Harrison took her own life. She died 4 months after the birth of her daughter.

Sadly, help from family, friends and colleagues were not enough to save Angela. The lack of services, information, and support available to people in the perinatal period was clear to her husband Anthony. This led him to set up the Angela Harrison Charitable Trust to support families in a similar position.

Anthony and the Angela Harrison Charitable Trust were key to establishing the Cornwall Perinatal Mental Health Service.

The team specialise in the assessment, diagnosis and treatment of women affected by a moderate to severe mental illness in the preconception, antenatal and postnatal period. They promote wellbeing during pregnancy, prevention of relapse and offer mental health birth planning.

In 2023, the Trust celebrated 10 years since the launch of the service. As part of the celebration event, and to mark the special occasion, service users past and present shared their perinatal journey by telling their story for inclusion in a booklet.

Ruth Marsden is operational lead for the Perinatal Mental Health Service. She says the book aims to offer hope for the future to families using the service.

“We wanted to create something that could benefit future service users.

“The celebration event was a good opportunity to reflect on what the team have achieved and who they have helped. The stories of hope are important to show people coming into the service what they might expect. We hope that it will give them real hope for their future.”

Kelly from Newquay is mum to 7-year-old Ava and 4-year-old Sonny. She was treated by the Perinatal Mental Health Service and features in the Perinatal Stories of Hope booklet.

“It was important to share my story at the perinatal birthday event. I suffered anxiety and low mood whilst pregnant with my son. The team helped my family and I throughout such a challenging time, and again once I had my son.

“At first, I felt a lot of shame for feeling how I did, but the team taught me that it is OK to not be OK. I wanted to let others know that recovery from perinatal mental illness is possible. It is nothing to be ashamed of. I want my story to offer hope to anyone going through something similar.”

The Perinatal Mental Health service offers a broad multi-disciplinary team. It includes mental health professionals, peer support workers, health visitors and midwives.

Additionally, the service has recently developed a Perinatal Loss and Trauma Team. It offers psychological interventions to women and birthing people.

The team help people who have experienced loss or trauma during their pregnancy or birth. These people may have previously fallen through the net for mental health support. Ruth Marsden added: “The stories of hope are a way of reaching out. If you are a new or expectant parent, it can be difficult to share how you are feeling. Having mental health problems is not your fault. Help is available. We want people to know that they are not alone.

“We are proud of the variety of the stories. Some people who have used our service were willing to share their personal photos. They wanted the stories to be meaningful to the people reading them.”

Hard copies of the Stories of Hope booklet are available upon request.