Perinatal mental health overview

Episode 5,   Apr 29, 2019, 08:22 AM

This podcast looks at NSPCC’s two services, Pregnancy in Mind and Baby Steps, and how they support parents with their perinatal mental health problems.

During the perinatal period, from pregnancy up to a year after birth, women and their partners can be affected by a number of mental health problems. These can include anxiety, depression, eating disorders, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

The NSPCC runs two services that support parents with their mental health, Pregnancy in Mind (PiM) and Baby Steps. In our fifth podcast, we speak with Louise Harrington, Development and Impact Manager and Victoria Joel (Tori), Implementation Manager about preventative mental health services and perinatal educational programmes. 

Find out why parents might be referred to these types of services, how they engage with families to provide the right support and what provisions are currently available to parents outside of the NSPCC.

We end the podcast with a discussion about how the child is kept at the centre of the programmes and how this is managed in cases where babies are yet to be born.

Read the podcast transcript on the NSPCC Learning website.

💬 About the speakers

Louise Harrington is a Development and Impact Manager at NSPCC and works on developing Pregnancy in Mind, amongst other services. Louise’s background and expertise lies in evaluation, research and service development in the field of children, families and communities, with a specific focus on early intervention and preventative approaches within the early years.

Victoria Joel is a trained midwife who works with vulnerable families; in particular, her work has focused on attachment-based interventions and reflective functioning. Victoria is the Implementation Manager for Baby Steps at the NSPCC and seeks out new partners to adopt and deliver Baby Steps and supports organisations that use the service.

📚 Related resources

> Learn how Pregnancy in Mind is supporting parents' mental health during pregnancy

> Learn more about parental mental health problems


Intro/outro music is Lights by Sappheiros