All posts by APP

Our thoughts and hearts are with the Gibson-Watt family through this dreadful time.

Postpartum Psychosis is a shocking and severe illness and much more must be done to prevent such tragedies. More research is needed to understand the causes; more must be done to inform and support families; more awareness, high quality training and compassion is needed.
 
We thank Alice’s closest friend Katie, Alice’s family, Sotheby's and the Antiques Roadshow for their support of APP in memory of Alice, raising funds to help us provide information, peer support, conduct research, campaign for better awareness, understanding, and specialist services for all that need it.
 
We wish things for Alice’s daughter could be different. Our volunteers feel this loss terribly. Many know that this story could have been theirs. We are passionately committed to working in all the areas needed to prevent tragedies occurring caused by this severe, distressing, but treatable postpartum mental illness, which affects around 1-2 in every 1000 families after childbirth. For most women and families, the outcome is positive and families recover, but the reality is that mental illness and suicide are still a leading cause of maternal death. 

If you would like to support APP, please donate to support Katie in her London Marathon attempt in memory of Alice - you can read her story here.

We are grateful that the BBC News report on Alice's inquest links to APP

Hannah Bissett, Peer Support and Regional Reps Coordinator, tells us about a busy start to the year up north. 

2017 so far has seen a real spike of APP involvement in the north, or so it feels!  After a joint training session for an Early Intervention Team in Wallasey, Merseyside with Emma Odell in February, Emma has also been busy with 2 sessions with Manchester University.  She has also made a link with the Greater Manchester & Eastern Cheshire Clinical Network, filming a patient experience video ahead of a conference in June.  I have also travelled across to film for this and we are both really looking forward to seeing the final cut.  The Network are really interested in linking further with APP in the future – watch this space…

This month I have also been to Hull, not once but twice.  The first was on 10^th March to contribute to the Institute of Health Visitors PMH Champions training, with Melita Walker.  We are hoping that this will lead to further collaboration with iHV, to share further PP stories through Expert by Experience talks. The second visit to Hull was on 24^th March, as part of a 2-day PMH conference held by the University of Hull & Humber NHS Foundation Trust.  I had an APP stand and presented my experience of PP as part of the second day.  Both were well received and further links made – perhaps even for a third trip to Hull in the not too distant future. Well, it is the European City of Culture 2017!!

My link with Leeds MBU led to a session as part of training for their team on 16^th March, together with staff who will be working on a new community perinatal team in Bradford.  As one of the areas recently successful in phase 1 of the NHS England community funding, Leeds are “buddying” Bradford in designing and training for their service. It was also good to talk to the staff there about the Yorkshire & Humber Outreach service, which launched a year ago in March 2016, and possible gaps in the Y&H area where we could do further joint work to reach other maternity and general mental health teams.

I have also been linking in with others around the country who are doing Regional Rep things for APP or are interested in getting involved, including Sally Wilson whose recent BBC Eye on Wales programme was such a powerful story, and well received. 

Now I'm officially in post I am looking forward to catching up properly with all the other Regional Reps, to hear about how APP is raising awareness and working with services in their areas. If you are interested in being a Regional Rep for APP, drop me a line: hannah@www.app-network.org

Looking ahead, I will be returning to County Durham & Darlington’s International Day of the Midwife in early May, and dropping in on the way home to “Hope” at Edge Bar, Stockton, a series of events to coincide with the Maternal Mental Health Awareness week, run by a local PMH group www.raindropstorainbows.co.uk.  

May also sees APP’s Music4Mums to coincide with World Maternal Mental Health Day on 3^rd May.  One of the events planned is with my local community orchestra in Ripon; I might even be persuaded to play, but need to get my cello in working order, as I’m very rusty these days!  More here on how you can be involved: https://www.app-network.org/m4mums

Things are going well with our Peer Support project.

The Comic Relief grant started at the beginning of March which means that Ellie and Hannah are now employed 2 days a week to manage and develop the Peer Support Project.

Our online peer support forum continues to have many active members. We also co-hosted a PND Hour twitter chat on 1^st March about postpartum psychosis, which went really well. It was amazing to have so many courageous women together talking so publicly about their experience of PP.

We have started planning our training for new Peer Support Volunteers which will take place in June. We have a list of people who are interested in being peer supporters. They include people who are already contributing a lot to our online forum, and also several people who have accessed our one to one peer support, so have lived experience of being supported themselves.

Ellie has begun developing a pilot face to face peer support group for women who have had PP who live in Sussex. Ellie is collaborating particularly with the Sussex Early Intervention in Psychosis team  and Ellie and two women who have had Postpartum Psychosis have met two times already. The meetings are very informal. We also have more women who are interested in joining the group so it looks likely to grow. This is a really exciting development in our Peer Support Project  and we hope to facilitate more face to face peer support in two other areas of the UK, yet to be decided. 

Ellie, Hannah and Jess are busy developing the project plan as well as putting monitoring and evaluation in place for Comic Relief. We are also submitting another application to the Big Lottery, in an attempt to secure further funding for this vital work. 

Congratulations to APP Media Volunteer, Katy Chachou, who pulled out all the stops to get her story told in a sensitive, informative and positive way by the Daily Mail.

APP was contacted by freelance journalist Jane Feinmann following the paper's recent report on the tragic case of Alice Gibson-Watt. 

Katy and her husband George were interviewed for the piece and a photographer sent to get pictures of mother and daughter today. Katy even agreed to be contacted while on holiday abroad to make the article happen.

Also included are some great quotes from APP Chair, Giles Berrisford, alongside informed comments from perinatal mental health experts Dr Judy Shakespeare and Dr Carrie Ladd from the Royal College of General Practitioners. 

It's a great piece combining a traumatic personal experience with expert opinion. It demonstrates that PP can happen to any new mother but that full recovery is possible. We hope it will help raise awareness of PP among a large and new audience. Happily, the online article also carries a link to APP's website at the foot and embeds our stigma-busting video. 

Huge thanks to Katy and Giles for their excellent work! 

The Royal College of General Practitioners has launched a new Perinatal Mental Health Toolkit designed to support GPs and other healthcare professionals as a go-to collation of resources that could support them to deliver the care their patients with perinatal mental health conditions need. 

But the Toolkit isn't just for GPs. It contains plenty of patient and even partner resources including APP's Insider Guides and Peer Support Service. 

Dr Carrie Ladd, RCGP Clinical Fellow for Perinatal Mental Health, and lead on the PMH toolkit, said it "has been developed in consultation with women who have had perinatal mental health problems, and we hope it will give them the confidence to approach health professionals, and be better informed about their choices and what they should expect."

APP Chair, Dr Giles Berrisford gave a keynote presentation at the launch talking about NHS England's strategy for transforming perinatal mental health. Following the hashtag #PMHtoolkit on Twitter showed how positively the Toolkit is being received and a sense of optimism about the future of perinatal mental health services. 

Find out more, take a look at the Perinatal Mental Health Toolkit on the RCGP website. 
 

We are pleased to announce that APP will continue to host the successful Everyone’s Business Campaign on behalf of the Maternal Mental Health Alliance (MMHA), following the award by Comic Relief of a grant of £750,000 for the next phase of the campaign.

The Everyone’s Business campaign calls for all women throughout the UK who experience perinatal mental health problems to receive the care they and their families need. The grant will enable the MMHA, supported by APP, to sustain and build on the momentum of the first phase of the campaign. A recent independent evaluation shows that over the past three years the Everyone’s Business Campaign has made a significant impact in six key areas, including enabling perinatal mental health to become a political priority and strengthening the case for improved perinatal health services. 

Dr Jess Heron, Director of APP says, ‘Action on Postpartum Psychosis is delighted to have been asked to continue hosting the Everyone’s Business Campaign. We have been pleased to play our part in the campaign’s success so far and very much look forward to working with MMHA to help deliver the next phase. The campaign is absolutely vital and has already had a real impact to women and families. Crucially, for families affected by Postpartum Psychosis, it is changing national consciousness of the importance of access to good maternal mental health care. There is still much more to do over the coming years and this would not be possible without Comic Relief’s support.’