Thanks for joining us on the forum – glad to have you here. You are welcome to post 24/7 but please note that whilst we have forum moderators we will only be moderating the forum during office hours. If though you need urgent crisis help, please contact Samaritans on 116 123.
Spurgeons and Dad.Info doesn’t investigate reports of abuse or neglect. But below, you can find advice on who to contact if you have concerns about a child or young person.
Reporting a concern
It can be difficult to know what to do if you think a child is at risk. It’s important to remember that if you’ve spotted things that don’t seem right, others will have too. Speaking up can make sure that child gets help as soon as possible.
The sooner you contact your local children’s social care duty team, the quicker they can act. They’re available 24 hours a day, and can make an anonymous report if that feels safer. If a child is in immediate danger, please call the police straight away by dialling 999.
Report child abuse or neglect to your local council
Use these links to get in touch with your local council:
My wife gave birth to our first child two months ago. She's been a long-time suffer from severe anxiety, and had been taking anti-depression medication. She had to come off the meds during pregnancy since the meds weren't safe whilst pregnant. Fast-forward a year, and although she did an amazing job self-managing her anxiety through pregnancy, since she's given birth it's gone from bad to very bad. We knew she would be prone to post-natal depression, but it hit her hard. Sleep depravation brought on dark thoughts, which lead to suicidal thoughts.
So this leads to my question. If you've been dealing with a partner with serious mental health issues or severe post-natal depression, what help have you gotten? NHS resources? Outside counseling/therapy? Family/friends support?
I have been trying for years to help guide my wife towards help for the anxiety, and I think we finally got it under control before she was pregnant. But in the last few weeks I've been trying to find help mostly via the NHS, but I'm stuck in limbo. They do "workplace stress", and they will admit people to hospital with serious mental health issues, but there's very little in-between. I'm not talking about "normal" post-natal depression, I'm dealing with extreme mood swings, and worrying my wife will try and overdose on some meds lying around while I'm sleeping.
I'm trying to stop things escalating and keep my wife from having to be admitted for something more serious. So how did you get help? What help did you get?
Hi there
I'm sorry to hear about this, I suffered terribly after the birth of my first child so understand what a horrible time this must be for all of you. I coped with meds and counselling but it was almost 20 years ago and there wasn't much in the way of support available, seems like there still isn't a huge amount.
Medication options can be limited if your wife is breastfeeding but certainly worth considering to get her anxiety stable again.
I referred a friend here recently and she found them a great help, might be worth a look;
http://www.pandasfoundation.org.uk/
also MIND are quite helpful
You sound like you're being supportive and understanding which will be a fantastic help, even if you don't feel you're able to do much. It must leave you feeling quite helpless too. I hope pandas might be able to find something in your area that can help or offer support.
Best wishes to you all.
Thanks 1626, I had looked at pandas before, but there wasn't anything in our part of the country, but you prompted me to look again, and turns out a new post-natal support group was setup two weeks ago here! I appreciate the response!
We found a medication that worked and is safe during breastfeeding, and it's helped for sure, but it's only part of the solution.
I'm curious if anyone else got help via the NHS or other ways?
You're welcome. Have you considered finding a counsellor with experience of PND? The GP should be able to help with that?
Thanks 1626 I found both those links really helpful.
Me and my girlfriend have a 8 month old baby. Child birth was pretty traumatic with an unplanned c section and then our baby developed meningitis after 3 weeks. My girlfriend told me she felt down and had dark feelings and extreme tiredness after about 4-5 weeks. I thought it might have been the childbirth the meningitis experience and would pass quickly but 7 months later she still has these feelings (and have got worse). She's told me before that she thought it might be PND, and now reading those websites I'm pretty convinced it is. I wish I'd listened more earlier.... Hopefully I can support her though it looks, despite what she's dealing with she's doing incredibly well and so is our baby.