Mental health in the United Kingdom
Agnes Hann of the National Childbirth Trust said, "These findings are shocking, and mean that thousands of women experiencing potentially serious perinatal mental health problems are not getting the support they need. Perinatal mental illness can have a severe and long-term impact on mothers, babies and families. In extreme circumstances, it can result in tragedy – suicide is a leading cause of maternal death." From roughly 10% to 20% of women giving birth experience some type of mental illness such as anxiety and depression or more complex problems like PTSD and psychosis. With about 665,000 births a year in England 66,500–133,000 women a year develop illnesses. In 2016, 13,000 women were treated by perinatal teams while 800 became inpatients. This means the majority were untreated.
Reception of Unaccompanied Minors from the Northern Triangle
Many unaccompanied migrant children endure traumatic events and violence in their home countries. The effects of those experiences take a toll on their mental health, shown in the higher rates of mental illnesses among refugee children. The anxiety and grief accumulated through those experiences, added with language barriers and difficulty in adapting to the new culture or environment, can make a child vulnerable and contribute to a poor mental state, causing a higher susceptibility to illnesses like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression. Drawn from a sample in a research study, the rates of PTSD among unaccompanied migrant minors from the Northern Triangle is 11.8%. Anxiety affected 54.4% of the children and 38.8% of the children showed symptoms of depression.