City Research Online

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Perinatal mental illness affects one third of new and expectant mothers. Individuals from ethnic minority groups experience higher rates of mental health problems and higher suicide rates. Despite this, women from ethnic minorities-Black and South Asian women in particular-are less likely to receive support from mental health services in the perinatal period. Healthcare professionals (HCPs) who have contact with women during this period have a unique perspective, and their views may provide insights to understand and remedy this health inequality. This study aimed to identify healthcare professionals' views on the current accessibility and acceptability of perinatal mental health services, and ways of improving services by addressing the barriers for these women.

METHODS: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with twenty-four healthcare professionals who work with patients in the perinatal period. Purposive sampling was used to select HCPs from a range of different professions (including mental health staff, midwifery, primary care, social care). The data were analysed using Framework Analysis.

RESULTS: Three main themes were identified from the data: (1) lack of awareness and understanding of perinatal mental illness and service structure in both healthcare professionals and patients; (2) patients' relationships with family, friends and healthcare professionals can both hinder and facilitate access to services; (3) healthcare professionals encourage raising awareness, flexibility, developing shared understandings and questioning assumptions to improve the accessibility and acceptability of services.

CONCLUSION: Key insights into explaining and remedying the health inequalities observed between ethnic groups were proposed by healthcare professionals. Recommendations included sharing information; taking steps to ensure each woman was considered as an individual in her relationship with her culture, ethnicity and childrearing practices; and healthcare professionals addressing their possible unconscious biases through engaging in personal reflexive practices. Reasons these are currently not being implemented deserve further research, and the potential of novel roles such as peer support workers in bridging the space between ideals and practice needs further investigation.

Publication Type:	Article
Additional Information:	This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
Publisher Keywords:	Perinatal mental health, Maternity care, Healthcare professionals, Ethnicity, Medical staff, Nursing staff, Midwifery, Qualitative research, Mental health, Health inequalities
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology R Medicine > RG Gynecology and obstetrics
Departments:	School of Health & Psychological Sciences > Healthcare Services Research & Management
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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