Developing peer support for families bereaved by postpartum psychosis On 23rd June 2024, I led APP’s first training day for bereavement peer support volunteers at the Barberry National Centre for Mental Health in Birmingham. We were joined by five new volunteers who want to use their experiences to help support other families who have lost family…
I’m very pleased to report that Luna Foundation’s project in Kent and Medway has been highly commended in the Kent Mental Wellbeing Awards. The panel was ‘extremely impressed’ at the work Luna has delivered in Kent and Medway to improve the support for children and young people bereaved by suicide and ‘the amount of hard…
New review How to Help Someone After a Miscarriage has been reviewed in the British Journal of Psychiatry’s Bulletin. You can read the review here. Foster’s own difficult experience combined with her commitment to representing the views of the many women who have experienced miscarriage lends a personal and empathetic quality to the advice provided…….
Would you like to play a key role in improving support for young children bereaved by parental suicide? Losing a parent or carer to suicide during childhood can have a devastating and long-term impact on a young person’s mental health. Research has shown that children who are bereaved by parental suicide when aged between two…
My biggest worry is not piles, or stretch marks. It’s losing my baby again. Do you want to ‘end’ or ‘delete’ your pregnancy? There’s a picture in an app on my phone of a tiny embryo. Apparently, my baby is the size of a peach. Their tiny heart is beating fast. Except it isn’t. I’ve…
18 years ago a doctor prescribed me antidepressants as if they were painkillers. I’ve tried to reduce my dose or come off them many times since. Now I think I’m stuck on them for life. Usually I’m OK with this. But sometimes it feels quite scary. Yesterday I heard a radio report about a new…
Today is the start of Baby Loss Awareness Week 2019. A week to remember babies who were lost in pregnancy, during birth or soon afterwards. I wanted to write something in honour of little Sprout whom we lost in August. Sprout was only on the brink of being – a seven-week-old embryo whose heart had…
I’m writing this to make sense of how I felt yesterday. I’m sharing it because I’m sure I’m not alone. Parenting is really hard and parenting with mental health problems can sometimes be a real struggle. Like many of us, I’ve managed mental health problems most of my life. Mainly eating problems, anxiety and depression….
The WRISK project is a collaboration between the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (bpas) and Heather Trickey at the School of Social Sciences at Cardiff University. They are aiming to draw on women’s experiences to understand and improve the development and communication of risk messages in pregnancy. They asked me to blog about my experience of…
In 2015 I did Veganuary. Controlling my food intake and restricting or cutting out certain foods contributed to a return of disordered eating problems. Food and eating – or not eating – took over my thoughts. Despite moving away from a completely vegan diet, I continued to restrict my food and purge through exercise. I…
A few weeks ago I saved an article about Instagram from the Guardian’s website – Instagram is supposed to be friendly. So why is it making people so miserable? It struck a chord because I was feeling uncomfortably aware of the disconnect between how my life looked on my Instagram account and how it really felt….
Last week Oaklan and I went on an adventure to London for the launch of the latest version of Mind’s flagship booklet ‘Understanding mental health problems’. I wrote this when I was pregnant and it was great to see it finally published. It’s the first title to be published in the new full colour format –…
Oaklan came on the 5th October. He’s almost eleven weeks now and things are slowly starting to feel a little easier. I’m still pretty tired – and I’m writing this with him feeding on my lap – so please excuse any typos, half-formed ideas or clumsy phrasing. I wanted to get down some thoughts about…
I’m really chuffed to be able to share that both Mind and the Miscarriage Association received awards at the British Medical Association Patient Information Awards 2017 for information and that I researched and wrote. The awards aim to ‘encourage excellence in the production and dissemination of accessible, well-designed and clinically balanced patient information’. They look for…