Mental health: perinatal mental health
Perinatal mental health problems are mental health problems which occur during pregnancy or in the first year after birth. These might also be referred to as prenatal or antenatal (before birth), or postnatal (after birth) mental health problems, and can affect all parents.
Common perinatal mental health problems include:
- Perinatal depression, including postnatal depression (after birth) which is regarded as any non-psychotic depressive illness of mild to moderate severity occurring during the first postnatal year. In diagnosing depression in the postnatal period, there is a risk that normal emotional changes may be mistaken for depression or may mask depressive symptoms. Increasingly, screening for postnatal depression is being carried out across all NHS boards in Scotland using the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (1568kB), although presently data is not collected on a Scotland-wide basis.
- Perinatal anxiety
- Perinatal Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
- Postpartum psychosis (sometimes called puerperal psychosis) is a serious mood disorder accompanied by features such as loss of contact with reality, hallucinations, severe thought disturbance and abnormal behaviour. Postpartum psychosis is a medical emergency.
- Postpartum Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is an anxiety disorder and can be caused by traumatic events during labour and delivery.
The Royal College of Psychiatrists provides signposting for perinatal mental health conditions, and reports that, in the UK:
- Between 10 to 15 women per every 100 women having a baby are affected by postnatal depression
- About 1 in every 1000 women having a baby is affected by postpartum psychosis
- Around 2 in 100 women in pregnancy and 2 to 3 in every 100 women postpartum are affected by perinatal OCD.
In 2021, the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee undertook an inquiry into perinatal mental health in Scotland. Also in 2021, the Scottish Government published Perinatal and infant mental health: equalities impact assessment to review the evidence around perinatal health in Scotland.
Please note: If you require the most up-to-date data available, please check the data sources directly as new data may have been published since these data pages were last updated. Although we endeavour to ensure that the data pages are kept up-to-date, there may be a time lag between new data being published and the relevant ScotPHO web pages being updated.
