Regarding the research study by Kat Williams

[Survivedwithcolor]

I just wanted to encourage people who are using this forum to reach out to Kat Williams for her research study on using the forum to help with postpartum psychosis. I talked with Kat yesterday. She is a doctoral student in clinical psychology with Lancaster University and wants to write a thesis on whether forums like this are helpful for women who are survivors of PP. She was absolutely lovely and assured me that privacy will be protected. You will be anonymous and you can also get paid money to participate. In addition to helping her with her research you will also be helping the volunteers on this forum do their best job with making this a helpful place to come.

I'm really excited about her research because, if you weren't aware, there has been very little research done on postpartum psychosis. There's lots of research on postpartum issues and lots of research on psychotic disorders, but almost nothing on postpartum psychosis. I became aware of this last year after trying to look into some of the research myself. It isn't there. The most recent paper I could find was from 2016 and it said that as of that time there were only 30 studies in the entire WORLD on the diagnosis and treatment of postpartum psychosis. 30! In the entire world! And most of those were only studies of less than a dozen women. It's not even listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatric Disorders. It's rare, but not so rare that it's unheard of, and there are documented cases of women experiencing PP even as far back as a couple hundred years ago. It's just hard to document because it comes on quickly and it's hard to get people signed up for a research study when they're in the middle of a crisis.

Anyway I hope some of you will consider helping her with this research. It doesn't take a great deal of time and she was so nice and easy to work with. I don't know who will be selected to do it, but I know she's still hoping for some more applications. If you're interested, the flyer about it was posted on this forum a week or two ago.

[Pikorua Volunteer]

Thank you for your message! Very helpful indeed.

[MotherOfBears]

I’m signed up to talk to her 👍

I’m interested (appalled?) to hear how few research studies there are. I’d like to see a comparison with other rare disorders. I wonder if there are other more well known and well researched illnesses to compare it with

And, if my back of a fag packet calculation is correct, 1 in 1000 women have PP after birth; and 140, million births globally each year… that’s 140,000 women each and every year who get PP, 600 of those in the UK. That deserves so much more research.

How much is the work of APP about lobbying and getting funding? I have no idea how big you are, how many staff?

[Survivedwithcolor in reply to MotherOfBears]

You do have some folks researching PP in the UK medical community, and there is one hospital doing it now in the US that I know of. Unfortunately I am not eligible for either of those studies, since I am a US citizen and over ten years out from diagnosis. One of our volunteers at APP can maybe give you the contact for access in the UK. There may be newer studies than the one I found from 2016, but I was unable to find them. I’m not a mental health professional and don’t have access to all the paid medical journals. I got some help with the ones I was able to get to. If the 2016 article is correct, even if there have been newer studies there can’t be many, in 8 years. It would be interesting to compare to other rare disorders, and yet like you said there are still thousands of cases a year.

I’m glad you’re interesting in helping with Kat’s research and one thing I hope to do is start reaching out to other institutions in the US to find out what’s happening here. If what little I found is even close to accurate, it really is appalling.

[Alpav]

Thanks so much for sharing. Any chance you could add the link here? I tried searching in the forum and googling her name, but didn’t have any luck.

[Rachel_at_APP Partner APP in reply to Alpav]

Morning Alpav

Here is the post about the research study mentioned above. With best wishes,

Rachel

healthunlocked.com/app-netw...

[Alpav in reply to Rachel_at_APP]

Thanks for sharing so quickly. I’ve emailed Kat!

[Rachel_at_APP Partner APP in reply to Alpav]

Brilliant. Thank you for getting involved, it’s a really interesting research project.