Meeting of the Parliament 17 May 2018
I congratulate Clare Haughey on bringing the important topic of perinatal mental health to the chamber, and I acknowledge her significant experience and expertise on the topic. I also thank the Aberlour Child Care Trust, the everyone’s business campaign and the Scottish Parliament information centre for the briefing materials that they provided prior to the debate.
Perinatal mental health issues are estimated to affect up to one in 10 women during pregnancy. I support the call of the everyone’s business campaign for all women who experience perinatal mental health problems to receive the care that they and their families need, wherever and whenever they need it. I believe that the establishment of a national managed clinical network on perinatal mental health—the first MCN covering mental health—is a good sign of the Scottish Government’s determination to give mental health parity with physical health. Clinical networks operate in other parts of the health service and have a proven track record on driving up standards of care.
Good perinatal maternal mental health is vital in improving outcomes for mothers and their young children. Poor maternal mental health can impact significantly on child development outcomes. If untreated, it can impact on a child’s emotional, cognitive and even physical development, and although that is not inevitable, the consequences can be serious and potentially lifelong.
That is why the Government-funded MCN on perinatal mental health is so important. The MCN brings together specialists on perinatal mental health with nursing, maternity and infant mental health practitioners, who are assessing provision across all levels of service delivery, currently and in the longer term, to ensure that all women, their infants and their families have equity in access to the perinatal mental health services that they need throughout Scotland.
With all that we know about the importance of early development to a child’s life, intervention and support at the earliest possible stage can have a really positive impact, and can prevent or mitigate issues later on. I whole-heartedly agree that there is a way to go both in raising awareness of perimental—
I am sorry, Presiding Officer. I am struggling to say “perinatal mental health”. It is not an easy phrase.