The Department of Health of Torrevieja has launched a new perinatal mental health unit for the multidisciplinary management of mental health, both maternal and newborn.
Given its high complexity and repercussion in the medium and long term, specialists deal with the evaluation, diagnosis, treatment and follow-up of maternal mental disorders from the preconception period, pregnancy, lactation and puerperium, as well as the mental health of the newborn born and the quality of the mother-child bond.
The USMP team is made up of professionals from different disciplines around perinatal mental health, to respond to the needs of mothers with mental disorders and promote the cognitive, psychomotor, affective and social development of their babies.
It involves the coordinated work of more than twenty specialists from the services and areas of Psychiatry, Gynaecology-Obstetrics, Psychology, Sexual and Reproductive Health, Family and Community Medicine, specialized nursing (midwives and mental health nurses), and Service areas. Social and early attention.
The Unit works in a coordinated manner through two parallel lines of intervention, on the one hand, actions aimed at promoting and preventing the mental health of pregnant women and/or future mothers. And, for its part, the individualised intervention of those women in whom a mental health problem and/or risk of pathology linked to the fetus has been detected.
Nereida Bautista, Psychiatrist of the Department of Health of Torrevieja, affirms that “the perinatal period is a stage of the vital cycle of the woman of high vulnerability for the beginning, relapse or recurrence of any mental disorder. Perinatal mental disorders have a prevalence of around 25%, and are associated with complications in the course of pregnancy, in obstetric and neonatal outcomes, in the mother-child bond, and in the neurodevelopment of the newborn. Currently, only 20% of perinatal depressions receive adequate treatment”, she explains.
Perinatal Mental Disorders (PMD) have been highlighted, in recent years, as an important public health problem, due to the impact they have on the health and quality of life of women and their children in the short and long term. It is estimated that 1 in 5 women will have a mental disorder during pregnancy and/or postpartum, with depression being the most frequent complication of pregnancy.
