City Research Online

Abstract

Background: Women from Black and South Asian backgrounds with perinatal mental health difficulties face significant barriers to accessing healthcare. Clinical guidelines recommend that services collaborate with families, as they not only influence women’s decisions to seek help and engage with care but also serve as a vital source of support. However, family members’ experiences in providing this support remain poorly understood. This study aims to address this evidence gap.

Methods: Individual semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with family members of Black and South Asian women who had experienced moderate to severe perinatal mental illness. The interviews explored the family members’ experiences, the personal impact of their relative’s condition, and their perspectives on accessing help and support. Interview transcripts were analysed using framework analysis, by a multidisciplinary team including psychiatrists, psychologists, methodologists, and people with a lived experience of perinatal mental illness.

Results: Fifteen family members of women with perinatal mental illness were interviewed; twelve husbands and/or partners, and three Mothers and/or Mothers-in-Law. Three themes were identified: (1) Recognising and understanding their relative’s perinatal mental illness was important to make sense of the situation (2) High emotional cost of supporting a relative with perinatal mental illness and (3) Varied experiences and expectations of services, with opportunities for improvement. Family members described how their relative’s illness had a pronounced negative impact on their own physical and mental health and wellbeing, and on relationships within their families. Whilst many family members felt listened to and well supported by services, several barriers that prevented or delayed getting professional support were identified. Families would value improved communication, more information and proactive care from perinatal mental health services.

Conclusions: This paper offers valuable insights into perinatal mental illness for Black and South Asian women from a family perspective. Despite individual experiences being varied and wide-ranging, the suggestions for service improvement were congruent and often repeated, indicating a widespread need for a greater awareness and wider support for the family members of women in perinatal services, who are often struggling themselves.

Publication Type:	Article
Additional Information:	This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, 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 you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. 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-nc-nd/4.0/.
Publisher Keywords:	Perinatal mental illness, Mental health, Family, Carers, Carer wellbeing, Ethnic minorities, Framework analysis, Qualitative study
Subjects:	R Medicine > RA Public aspects of medicine > RA0421 Public health. Hygiene. Preventive Medicine R Medicine > RC Internal medicine > RC0321 Neuroscience. Biological psychiatry. Neuropsychiatry
Departments:	School of Health & Medical Sciences School of Health & Medical Sciences > Healthcare Services Research & Management
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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