PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
Pregnancy: Mental Health (30 October 2017)

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if he will make an assessment of the implications for his policies of the findings of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists report, Maternal mental health - Women's voices, published in February 2017, that states that only seven per cent of women with pregnancy-related mental health challenges, such as post-natal depression, will receive the specialist care they need.

Asked by:
Rachael Maskell (Labour)

The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists’ report makes it clear that there are improvements that need to be made in access to perinatal mental health services.

This Government recognises that there is work to be done to improve perinatal mental health services for women during pregnancy and in the first postnatal year, so that women are able to access the right care at the right time and close to home. To this end, the Department is investing £365 million between 2015/16 and 2020/21 in perinatal mental health services, and NHS England is leading the transformation programme to ensure that by 2020/21 at least 30,000 more women each year are able to access evidence-based specialist mental health care during the perinatal period.

Answered by:
Dame Jackie Doyle-Price (Conservative)
6 November 2017