Strengthening perinatal mental health

This roadmap aims to ensure women receive the support they need and to improve perinatal mental health care. It finds that one in five women will experience mental health issues during pregnancy and up to a year after birth, ranging from anxiety and depression to more significant illness. Furthermore, suicide remains one of the leading causes of death in new mothers up to the first year after giving birth. It highlights how few of the women who died because of poor perinatal mental health actually received a formal mental health diagnosis despite reported symptoms.