Perinatal mental health

Having a baby can be joyful, exciting, and rewarding. However, it is also common for pregnant women and new mothers or fathers to experience anxiety, depression, or emotional distress. As many as one in five women experience emotional difficulties during pregnancy and in the first year after their baby’s birth. This can happen to anyone.

Vita’ NHS Talking Therapies service offers free, confidential talking therapy for people who have symptoms of anxiety or depression.

It is common for pregnant women and new parents to experience:

Low mood, sadness, and tearfulness
Anxiety, worry and tension
Irritability and anger
Difficult or unexpected feelings towards your pregnancy or baby
Poor sleep even when your baby sleeps well
Feeling unable to cope or enjoy anything
Thoughts that you are not a good enough parent
Worrying thoughts about your baby
Anxiety about labour or struggling to come to terms with a difficult labour

It can be difficult to talk about how you are feeling and ask for help. Common reasons for this are:

You may not know what is wrong
You may feel ashamed that you are not enjoying your baby or coping as you believe you should
You may worry that your baby will be taken away.

Struggling emotionally at this time can happen to anyone. It is not your fault. Asking for help doesn’t mean you can’t cope or are not able to care for your child. It’s the start of getting the right help and support to ensure you can be the parent you want to be. It is very rare for babies to be taken away from parents, so you should not worry about this. Talking Therapies offers short-term treatment to give you space to talk. These may include guided self-help sessions with a therapist, cognitive behaviour therapy, couples therapy and counselling.

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