Maternal six week postnatal check should assess for postnatal anxiety.

Silverwood, Victoria; Chew-Graham, Carolyn; Kingstone, Tom

doi:10.1136/bmj.m256

Maternal six week postnatal check should assess for postnatal anxiety.

Silverwood, Victoria; Chew-Graham, Carolyn; Kingstone, Tom

Authors

Victoria Silverwood v.silverwood@keele.ac.uk

Carolyn Chew-Graham c.a.chew-graham@keele.ac.uk

Thomas Kingstone t.kingstone@keele.ac.uk

Abstract

Jakes and colleagues summarise the maternal six week postnatal check.1 This is an important and integral part of primary care and presents general practitioners with opportunities to make a huge difference to new mothers and their children.

We were disappointed, however, that the article mentioned anxiety only in the context of sleep. Perinatal anxiety might affect 22% of women2—higher than the 14% often quoted for perinatal depression.3 Our work indicates that awareness and understanding of perinatal anxiety among healthcare professionals is limited, with care being fragmented and interprofessional communication poor.4

An article discussing what to cover in the maternal six week health check should have emphasised the important role of the GP in identifying postnatal mental health problems and the particular need to identify and manage postnatal anxiety.

Journal Article Type	Article
Acceptance Date	Jan 24, 2020
Online Publication Date	Jan 24, 2020
Publication Date	Jan 24, 2020
Journal	BMJ
Print ISSN	0959-8138
Publisher	BMJ Publishing Group
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Article Number	368
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.m256
Keywords	Maternal, postnatal, anxiety.
Publisher URL	https://www.bmj.com/content/368/bmj.m256
PMID	31980433