Many years ago, I worked with a lady who developed psychosis after the birth of her baby. Each day her husband brought the baby to the acute psychiatric hospital where she was being treated. Although we found a quiet space for the family to be together, I can’t think of a more inappropriate environment for a woman to care for her child and develop her identity as a new mother.
According to the Maternal Mental Health Alliance, 10-20% of women experience a mental health problem during pregnancy or in the year after giving birth. If left untreated, the effects of perinatal mental health problems can be devasting for the woman, her infant and family. Maternal suicide remains the leading cause of death in the first postnatal year.
Fortunately, provision for women experiencing perinatal mental health problems has improved since my early days of practice. Over the past four years there has been significant investment from NHS England to ensure women can access specialist perinatal mental health support quickly and closer to home. Similar developments are taking place in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The good news for our profession and more importantly for women and their families is the increased number of specialist perinatal occupational therapy posts. More women can now benefit from the unique skills and expertise that occupational therapists offer.
But creating a new role and identity within an established multidisciplinary team isn’t without its challenges. Occupational therapists who attended an RCOT networking day in March 2019 said that limited awareness of their skill set plus uncertainty about which assessment tools and interventions to use meant they were being pulled into more generic work. This was frustrating for practitioners and meant the occupational needs of women with perinatal mental health problems and families were not always being met.
Funding from Health Education England (HEE) has helped us address these challenges. In March 2019 RCOT was commissioned by HEE to develop a ‘blended training programme’ to provide occupational therapists with the knowledge and confidence to meet the occupational needs of women with perinatal mental health problems. The training package includes an e-learning course and a series of regional workshops which were held in November and December 2019.
The programme was developed with a Reference Group of occupational therapy experts. Members include therapists working in in-patient and community perinatal mental health teams, people who were relatively new into post and those with more experience, someone with lived experience of perinatal mental health problems, and experts in child development, research, and management of perinatal mental health services. All are passionate about their work and keen to ensure occupational therapists have the skills and confidence to work in this specialist area of practice.
Working with a Reference Group ensured the new training programme is relevant and firmly grounded in contemporary clinical practice. Group members provided content and case studies for the e-learning course and regional workshops, and identified useful links and resources. They also provided example answers for the interactive activities within the e-learning programme so participants can check their understanding. But the learning isn’t all one way and Reference Group members have also benefitted from being involved.
Watch these short films to find out how.
Developing a blended training programme in partnership with HEE and with the involvement of a Reference Group has been a new way of working for RCOT. I couldn’t be prouder of the final product. Why not try the e-learning programme or become a member of our new Perinatal Clinical Forum, part of the Specialist Section Mental Health to see for yourself?