Lincolnshire Website Expands To Support Maternal Mental Health

Valuable information aimed at new mums in Lincolnshire supporting good maternal mental health is now available online.

A dedicated section to maternal mental health has been developed as part of the Lincolnshire Healthy Families website, ensuring facts and advice can be accessed whenever it is needed the most.

The website includes information about antenatal depression and anxiety, postnatal depression, fathers and depression, where to seek help and other helpful resources for maternal mental health.

To help provide support through shared experiences, the website features real life stories from mums who have had their own struggles with maternal mental health. One of those stories comes from Lincolnshire mum Emma, who shares her experience with postnatal depression in one of the website case studies.

Emma speaks about her struggle with postnatal depression and how her health visitor played an essential role in providing her with much needed support. Emma said: "I feel blessed I had the support that I got, when I got it. There is no way I would have felt that I could have come out the other side of it without the support that I had."

"My health visitor was worth her weight in gold. She never ever turned me away, was at the end of the phone whenever I needed her and I knew that I could come to her for anything - which was invaluable, without a doubt."

Anita Wood, Locality Lead at LCHS, said: "Welcoming a baby into your family is a time of great excitement, but for some it can also be very overwhelming. We want to help ensure mums understand the importance of taking care of their mental health and where they can seek help should they need it.

"The maternal mental health section of our Lincolnshire Healthy Families website has been developed using the knowledge and experiences of our health visitors, with the support of the specialist community perinatal mental health teams. We hope it encourages more women to have the confidence to speak up if they feel they need support."

For more information, visit www.lincolnshirehealthyfamilies.nhs.uk/maternalmentalhealth