26 September 2019
Untreated perinatal mental health problems are a significant public health concern. Economic analyses indicate that untreated perinatal mental health problems cost society £8.1 billion every annual birth cohort and that 75 per cent of these costs are as a result of the adverse impacts on later infant and child outcomes.
This briefing outlines the important role perinatal psychology plays in specialist community teams and provides guidance on the staffing levels required to meet service demands for psychological therapy and supervision of other practitioners so as to ensure a psychologically-informed perinatal mental health care pathway.
It does this by answering four key questions:
Why is perinatal psychology provision important?
What is happening in specialist community perinatal mental health teams now?
What do perinatal psychologists do?
What does good perinatal clinical psychology provision look like?