Postnatal Depression
(asked on 23rd January 2019) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to improve the quality of data on the number of women diagnosed with post-natal depression.
NHS Digital and NHS England are working to improve the quality of data on the number of women diagnosed with post-natal depression by improving the Maternity Services Dataset (MSDS) and the Mental Health Services Dataset (MHSDS).
The MSDS currently only collects information on whether or not the recommended questions for the prediction and detection of mental health issues were asked at a mother’s antenatal booking appointment. The new version of the MSDS (due to commence in April 2019) will expand on this by including questionnaires such as the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale, to improve the detection and prediction of mental health problems.
Information about specialised perinatal mental health services is captured within the MHSDS, including the recording of a post-natal depression diagnosis.
NHS Digital published linked data between the MSDS and the MHSDS for the first time in June 2017 to support improvement in the identification of women in the perinatal period in secondary care. This identified a number of data quality issues which are being addressed via the cross arm’s length body programme of work aiming to improve the quality of mental health data collected within the MHSDS.
Monthly data quality reports are also published showing provider level data validation of selected key data items in the MHSDS. These reports are available as part of the Mental Health Services Monthly Statistics available at the following link: