Mental Illness: Children

(asked on 26th April 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 identify a potential link between perinatal mental illness and emotional and behavioural problems in children.


Answered by
Jackie Doyle-Price Portrait
Jackie Doyle-Price
This question was answered on 7th May 2019

The Chief Medical Officer found in her 2014 annual report, ‘The health of the 51%: women’, that the evidence shows that mental health problems in pregnancy and the first year after birth are experienced by up to 20% of women, and if untreated, this can affect the emotional and reasoning development in their children. Perinatal mental illnesses are associated with risks of negative child outcomes, which can persist into late adolescence and adulthood. These risks are more likely in children of women with chronic mental illness or who are living in poverty. Further information is available in the report which is available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/chief-medical-officer-annual-report-2014-womens-health

In addition, the costs of perinatal mental health problems, a 2014 report by the Centre for Mental Health and London School of Economics identified that 72% of the cost of untreated mental illness relates to adverse impact on the child. This report is available at the following link:

https://www.centreformentalhealth.org.uk/publications/costs-of-perinatal-mental-health-problems

The NHS is implementing its plans to identify and treat more people with perinatal mental illnesses. The NHS Five Year Forward View for Mental Health included a commitment to increase access to perinatal mental health services to an additional 30,000 women by 2020/21. The work is underway to build capacity and capability in specialist perinatal mental health services. In April 2019, NHS England confirmed that new and expectant mothers are now able to access specialist perinatal mental health community services in every part of the country.

The NHS Long Term Plan contains an ambition to build on this with a further 24,000 women to be able to access specialist perinatal mental health care by 2023/24. Specialist care will also be available from preconception to 24 months after birth, which will provide an extra year of support.

Public Health England leads on the Improving Prevention and Population Health work stream of the National Health Service Maternity Transformation Programme. One of its priority areas is to reduce the impact of perinatal mental illness. This can be viewed at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/mat-transformation/

Reticulating Splines