Let's Talk

It's been a long while since I last posted. I blame the dreaded sleep regression - more on that in another post though! For now, I'm going to be looking back and picking up where I left off which was in October/November time.

My GP, on my request, referred me to the Perinatal Mental Health Team who then bounced me back and told me to self refer to Healthy Minds (previously Let's Talk). I only had to wait a week and in the meantime, had to complete a questionnaire to assess my mood. I was shocked to receive a letter from the NHS a few days later with the results: Severe anxiety and severe depression. 

I should be clear; at no point have I received a diagnosis of PND. I know I have it, but no GP has actually said those words to me. The support for and understanding of this illness, in Herefordshire at least, is severely lacking and this was evident through the CBT I received which was not tailored to my illness. It involved a weekly phone call with a therapist and, to be honest, I didn't find those calls overly helpful although by the end of the 8 sessions, the depression was lifted to "mild" and the anxiety to "moderate", so I suppose something must have worked! I think perhaps face to face sessions would have worked better for me. I appreciate that the therapist was trying to get me to approach negative thoughts in a different way, but that didn't address the grip of physical anxiety that I was in. Nor did it address the pure fear that I felt back then, and still do, to a degree because I didn't really understand what was happening to me or if I would ever be me again.

What I really wanted to do was talk about my illness. What led to it, how to tackle it, would I recover from it. But CBT doesn't work like that. At one point, she suggested I sign up to the Open University or learn a new language. Good luck doing that with a newborn!

On a positive note:

I am grateful for the fast referral and there are some techniques, such as activity planning, that I found useful. It also killed some time and made me feel as though I was still "in the system" and being treated.