Maternal Mental Health Awareness Week is a week-long campaign dedicated to talking about mental health problems before, during and after pregnancy.
The week is all about:
The week is organised and led by MMHA member Perinatal Mental Health Partnership UK (PMHP UK), who launched the first-ever UK Maternal Mental Health Awareness Week in 2017.
PMHP UK is a small group of individuals, including parents with lived experience and clinicians, who came together to raise awareness of maternal mental health.
Each year, organisers PMHP UK (see website for more detail) create daily themes to help guide and diversify the conversation around maternal mental health. This year the themes are as follows:
We shared: a short animation explaining what perinatal/maternal mental health is and some key statistics | video from Dr Alain Gregoire about "what's normal" when it comes to maternal mental health | information about different perinatal mental illnesses | a clip from Beyond Baby Blues Podcast explaining the difference between 'Baby Blues' and postnatal depression
We shared a guest blog from Dr Krystal Wilkinson about perinatal mental health in the workplace and the support that should be in place for new and expectant parents.
The MMHA launched a new campaign with Grazia and The Juggle for the UK's first ever Maternal Mental Health Advocacy Day, encouraging people all over the UK to come together and use our collective voice to advocate for the mental health needs of new and expectant mothers in the UK.
We shared: a clip from Lucy Jones' 'Matrescence' examining the physical, psychological and emotional changes you go through after the birth of a child.
We also launched a new awareness campaign with Aveeno Baby, running for 8 weeks in Superdrug stores across the UK.
We partnered with Wish I'd Known to ask their parent community about moments of joy in pregnancy and parenthood. We also shared positive stories of recovery from our Lived Experience Champion Network.
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