Project 2: The You and Your Baby Survey 2024: what do women tell us about their mental health around the time of birth?
Introduction
People's health and circumstances are changing all the time. Health care services go through changes too. We have been carrying out national maternity surveys every few years to find out about women's health around the time of pregnancy and childbirth, how well maternity care is meeting the needs of women, babies and families, and whether the services available need to be adapted. In addition to focusing on women's health and maternity care, we ask other questions such as how women are feeding their baby and their post-childbirth employment plans six months after they have given birth. Much of this information is not collected anywhere else so it is important to collect through our national surveys so we have good quality information directly from women to inform policy and practice. The surveys help us to see any changes in women's health and experiences of maternity care services over time. For instance, in our last survey which was during the COVID-19 pandemic, we showed a big increase in the number of women with symptoms of depression after giving birth and it is really important for us to know if these numbers are continuing to increase or not. We are planning another survey in 2024 “You and Your Baby 2024”.
Aims and objectives
A key focus of You and Your Baby 2024 is mental health because this is such an important area which has been highlighted as a priority by women themselves. We will:
- Look at how many women experience depression, anxiety and posttraumatic stress, the three most common mental health problems, and whether these mental health problems are more or less common in different groups of women.
- Compare our findings with earlier surveys to see whether the number of women experiencing mental health problems has changed following COVID-19 and lockdown.
- Look at what treatment and support women currently receive for their mental health in England and whether there are differences in what is available or what is offered to different groups of women.
Methods
You and Your Baby Survey 2024 will be similar to our previous national maternity surveys. In England there is a register of all births held by the Office for National Statistics. We will use this to select up to 5,000 women who gave birth in May 2024. Our aim is to send questionnaires to a group of women from a variety of backgrounds representing everyone who has recently experienced pregnancy and birth in England.
Policy relevance & dissemination
The findings from You and Your Baby 2024 will be used to tell us more about women's mental health and maternity care experiences over time. The findings will tell us how many women from different backgrounds and with different experiences have mental health problems around pregnancy and childbirth, what support they currently receive, and where the gaps in services are. We will write up the findings from You and Your Baby 2024 in a report which will be given to government ministers and policy makers, and made available to everyone online. This will be accompanied by a shorter summary in plain English to highlight our key findings. We will also write academic papers and reports on particular issues and these will be accompanied by plain language summaries and illustrations.
Team
Principle Investigator: Maria Quigley and Fiona Alderdice
Co-investigators: Sian Harrison
Contact: sian.harrison@npeu.ox.ac.uk
