As we celebrated International Women’s Day, we pledged to revisit our #HiddenHalf campaign, to ensure new mums are getting the mental health care they need.
On Monday 8 March, we celebrated International Women’s Day (IWD).
This year’s theme was #ChooseToChallenge, as from challenge comes change. The day was a chance to reflect on women’s achievements across the globe, and consider how we can all play our part in taking action to make the world a more equal place.
To mark the day, we pledged that we would revisit our #HiddenHalf campaign.
The campaign was a response to our findings that half of women had had a mental health or emotional problem postnatally or during pregnancy.
Of these women, nearly half hadn’t had their problem identified by a health professional and hadn’t received any treatment.
After two years of campaigning, in February 2020 we succeeded in securing better six-week postnatal check ups in England, so mums with a mental health problem could access the treatment available. Find out more about the campaign and what was achieved here.
We want to make sure that funding and changes promised in 2020 are happening, and that mums are being given time to discuss their physical and mental health at the 6-week postnatal GP check.
To do this, we’re asking 1,000 mums about whether or not they had a six-week GP check, and whether they were asked about their mental health during the appointment. We’ll keep you updated with our findings.
Our #HiddenHalf campaign lobbied Westminster to make sure mums were given the time to discuss their mental health after their baby was born. Find out what spurred us into action and what we acheived.
