Improving Perinatal Mental Health HIT review for 2017-18

Dr Jonathan Evans and Inge Shepherd, Directors of the Improving Perinatal Mental Health Health Integration Team (IMPROVE HIT), give
an update on progress in 2017-18.

The specialist perinatal mental health service, which the
IMPRovE HIT supported to obtain funding, has now been running for over a year.
The University of Bristol’s evaluation of the service began last summer and
will continue until spring 2019. We will be looking at mechanisms to embed this
evaluation function into the specialist team, to allow them to continuously
evaluate progress and effectiveness. A bid for the second wave of funding is also
underway.

We have begun to look at the pathways in place for women
experiencing less severe common mental health issues, with a focus on
depression and anxiety. Colleagues at Bristol, North Somerset and South
Gloucestershire Clinical Commissioning Group are working with us on this and we
hope to have identified our areas to target in the coming months. We are also contributing
the recommissioning process for Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT)
services.

Our work to increase women’s engagement with Children’s Centres has
been successful, with a system up and running to register all women during
their pregnancy. We are looking to assess the impact of this on perinatal
mental health. We have produced DVDs to publicise the importance of the Children’s
Centres, which have had positive feedback. Dr Rebecca Pearson, who leads the universal
prevention work stream, held a public engagement event in February to publicise
the work that’s going on in perinatal mental
health.

We have had a productive year in terms of obtaining research
funding for HIT-related projects. Rebecca is leading a project on mental health
intergeneration transmission, which has been awarded funding from the European
Research Council of €1.3 million and Dr Jonathan Evans has been awarded funding
of £250k from the NIHR to compare psychological treatments for prenatal
depression.

Our teaching and training workstream has continued to offer
specialist training and advice in perinatal mental health and we recently
supported a new course, development of the strategy and support for health
visitor training. We have continued our work with local charities Bluebell,
Mothers for Mothers and Rockabye and we continue to seek other collaborations
with the voluntary sector, with a focus on engaging with fathers.