Dr Clare Dolman announced as Action on Postpartum Psychosis (APP) charity ambassador
We are delighted to announce that prominent UK women’s mental health advocate, researcher and campaigner, Dr Clare Dolman, is now an official ambassador for Action on Postpartum Psychosis (APP).
Clare recently retired from APP’s trustee board after 15 years service with the charity. She is an Honorary Fellow of Edinburgh University where she is collaborating on projects about bipolar disorder and menopause and the long-term health effects of postpartum psychosis. Affiliated to King’s Women’s Mental Health, based at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN) at King's College London, where she completed her PhD, Clare is also currently involved in research projects at Cardiff University and internationally with colleagues in the US, Denmark, Sweden and Australia. All her work is informed by her own personal experience of living with bipolar and having a postpartum psychosis after the birth of her first child.
For many of the projects she is involved with, Clare has acted as Patient and Public Involvement Lead and in 2024 she was awarded the Patient and Public Involvement Award by the International Society for Affective Disorders. She is Co-Chair of the Bipolar Commission and an Ambassador for Bipolar UK, a Trustee of the Global Alliance for Maternal Mental Health, and a Trustee of the Maternal Mental Health Alliance.
Clare joins poet, author and illustrator, Laura Dockrill; Maccabees member and record producer, Hugo White; and author and publisher Catherine Cho, supporting APP to increase national and international awareness of the illness.
Postpartum psychosis (PP) is a severe and debilitating postnatal mental illness triggered by childbirth, affecting 1200 women in the UK and up to 280,000 women in the world each year. Symptoms include hallucinations, delusions, mania, depression, restlessness, anxiety, confusion, and unusual behaviour, beginning rapidly after childbirth. While half of cases occur ‘out of the blue’ to women with no history of mental illness, women with a previous bipolar diagnosis have a particularly high risk of developing the illness.
Clare is a passionate advocate for improved care and understanding of severe psychiatric illness at times of great hormonal change for women, including menstruation, childbirth and the perimenopause. She has long campaigned for greater awareness of the link between bipolar disorder and postpartum psychosis, parity of esteem for mental and physical illness, and better official recognition of postpartum psychosis in official diagnostic systems, like DSM and ICD.
Dr Clare Dolman said: “I’m thrilled to become an Ambassador for APP – a charity I have supported from its foundation. Peer support and the importance of lived experience is at the heart of everything APP does and I’m very glad to support them in any way I can.”
Jess Heron, CEO, Action on Postpartum Psychosis said: “We are so delighted that Clare will continue her work with us in the role of Ambassador. Clare played such a pivotal role in shaping the work of our charity and has done so much to improve compassionate and effective care for women, raise awareness, and challenge the shame, stigma and misinformation that surrounds PP.”
APP is a collaboration between families with lived experience, world-leading academic researchers and specialist health professionals. APP runs an award-winning UK-wide peer support network, including a peer support forum with over 4,000 users; develops patient information; trains professionals; campaigns for better services; works in partnership with the NHS to provide direct support to women in Mother and Baby Units; conducts awareness raising media work, and facilitates research into the illness.