Saving Mothers' Lives: - Public Health Agency for Northern Ireland

It is still evident that there is a lack of distinction between mental health problems and mental illness, a
lack of knowledge about the different types of mental illness and the distinction between mental illness
and substance misuse and on occasion learning disability. This lack of differentiation led, on many
occasions, to referrals to the wrong services and women not receiving appropriate care. Amongst those
women who died from the physical consequences of psychiatric disorder it was evident that symptoms of
physical illness were wrongly attributed to psychiatric disorder and states of distress or confusional states
misidentifi ed as functional psychiatric disorder. These fi ndings would suggest that there is a need for basic
psychiatric education to be included in the curricula for midwives, obstetricians and GPs and for psychiatric
teams and drug addiction services to have a greater understanding of the physical problems that pregnant
and recently delivered women may face.
As in the last Report all those involved in the care of pregnant and postpartum women should be reminded
that physical illness can complicate or present as psychiatric disorder. Great care should be taken not to
attribute physical symptoms to a psychiatric disorder without appropriate investigations.
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