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. 

APP's regional rep for London, Kathryn, recounts a very special day at the launch of Best Beginning's "Out of the Blue" film package.

"Wednesday's terrorist attack on Westminster horrified us all.  But the work of mental health campaigners goes on: we will not be stopped by extremists.  And neither, it turns out, will the Duchess of Cambridge.

As I watched events unfold on the news the night before I was sure that, after weeks of anticipation, the Best Beginnings event would be cancelled.  Surely security concerns would keep the Royals safely inside Kensington Palace?  But no.  The show went on and as a community of perinatal mental health campaigners we focused our attention firmly on the future.

We had been invited to attend the launch of Best Beginning's "Out Of The Blue" film series.  They had recently partnered with the Heads Together charity, set up by Princes William and Harry and the Duchess.  It promised to be an auspicious event.

I had first gotten involved with the project over two years ago now.  I had agreed to contribute to the films about severe postpartum mental illness, and Mother and Baby Units.  With my son (who was only around two years old at the time), I spent several hours being interviewed on camera for the films, and captured revisiting the Unit where we spent the first three months of James' life.  The subsequent editing and producing seemed to take months (if not years!) and so by the time my launch invite arrived I had almost forgotten about our contribution.  In the intervening period I had suffered relapses of bipolar depression, recovered again, learned a lot about my own mental health, trained as a Mental Health First Aid instructor, and spent two long secondments with my family in the Cayman Islands.

The gathering at the Royal College of Obstetricians & Gynaecologists beautiful Regents Park headquarters was full of perinatal mental health professionals, charity workers and families with lived experience.  And I (and the many other contributors) felt like a minor celebrity, as everyone seemed to know who I was from having seen the films!  It was great to meet  many of the other participants and their families: we came from all walks of life, and all over the country.  Our experiences covered the wide spectrum of perinatal mental illness: anxiety, PTSD, antenatal and postnatal depression, and of course postpartum psychosis.

Seven of us (along with two partners) had been asked to take part in a special support group setting.  After the Duchess's speech in the Auditorium she joined us for half an hour to hear our stories and ask questions.  Like any support group we were all there first and foremost as parents and that included the Duchess.  We supported each other to tell our individual stories and by the time HRH arrived we were in full swing.  Albeit joined by several TV cameras, photographers, journalists, and Personal Assistants!

I was asked to speak first.  Having been warned to keep things brief I gave a short synopsis of what happened to me and James, to culminate in our admission to the Bethlem MBU.  I managed to impress upon her the importance of such specialist, high quality, psychiatric care.  And how I was one of the lucky ones in the postcode lottery: I had access to this specialist care and a local MBU bed.  Asides from this intensive psychiatric care, the second part of my recovery, I explained, was about "owning" my illness and being able to talk about it with friends and family.  I had the chance to tell the Duchess how pleased I was that she and her family had started the Heads Together campaign.  With such powerful voices, they will do a lot to reduce mental illness stigma and get people talking about their own mental health.

With a final photo call and a hastily-arranged interview with a Daily Mail journalist the official day was over.  Social media had set my phone alight: but it was all worth it to have given postpartum psychosis a royal audience, and to have helped make a package of films that will educate healthcare professionals and new families for years to come."

We're delighted to announce the Allen Lane Foundation have awarded APP a grant of £6,000 towards our PP Peer Support Service. 

The Foundation funds small charities and organisations and aims to fund work which:

• will make a lasting difference to people’s lives rather than simply alleviating the symptoms or current problems
• is aimed at reducing isolation, stigma and discrimination, and
• encourages or enables unpopular groups to share in the life of the whole community

Specifically, the grant will fund a Peer Support Volunteer training workshop and additional paid hours for Peer Support Coordinators over the next 12 months, to enhance the sustainability of the service. 

We are very grateful to the Trustees of the Allen Lane Foundation for supporting our vital work. Find out more about the Foundation at their website. 

APP volunteer, Sally and her husband Jamie bravely shared their story in an extraordinarily moving BBC Radio Wales Eye on Wales episode about Postpartum Psychosis. 

Our Trustee, Professor Ian Jones also features, explaining the condition and talking about the need for a Mother & Baby Unit in Wales. APP Peer Support Volunteer Anna, who supported Sally during her recovery, talks about our online PPTalk forum and 1:1 support.

Listen to the Eye on Wales Podcast here. The story also made the BBC News homepage. 

We are so grateful to Sally and Jamie, Ian, Anna, Kayley Thomas and the Eye On Wales team for producing such a brave, sensitive and powerful broadcast. 

Sally is also fundraising for APP with  her colleague Ruth, braving a Big Welsh Swim in Padarn Lake on 22 July. You can sponsor them here.