BU Psychology lecturer to discuss perinatal mental health in Parliament
BU Psychology lecturer Dr Andrew Mayers will be in Parliament to discuss the economic and social costs of perinatal depression.
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Andrew, who is also a Director of charity Pre- And Postnatal Depression Advice and Support (PANDAS), will join mental health professionals and MPs in the House of Commons to discuss the findings of a new report into the economic impact of perinatal depression.
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The report, which is part of the Maternal Mental Health Alliance鈥檚 (MMHA) Everyone鈥檚 Business campaign, found that perinatal mental health problems carry a total economic and social long-term cost to society of about 拢8.1 billion for each one-year cohort of births in the UK.
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It also found that the NHS would need to spend just 拢337 million a year to bring perinatal mental health care up to the level recommended in national guidance.
Andrew, who is a member of MMHA through his work with PANDAS, said: 鈥淢ost of us working in the field had an idea of the impact - it made sense that if we spent money on maternal mental health services, we could save a lot more longer term.
鈥淏ut we had no idea that the figure would be so phenomenal, nobody did.鈥�
He added: 鈥淲e have two aims in presenting this report to MPs 鈥� firstly, to help them persuade the government that we need to make this a funding priority, but also that they then can use their power at a constituency level to make sure these services are being provided locally.鈥�
听The report also found that perinatal health services across the country are patchy 鈥� with around half of cases going undetected, and many unable to access appropriate support services.
Andrew has been given funding to provide training for multi-agency health professionals on perinatal mental health issues which will cover topics like diagnosis, symptom recognition and treatment of conditions like postnatal depression, postpartum psychosis and maternal OCD.
