I’m trying to find out about different treatment options when it comes to PP. please let me know if you were treated in the community and / or had a mixture of MBU support (a short stay) followed by care in the community. Please also let me know if you were sent an AMHP to see you at home when you initially started to have symptoms. I’m really keen to understand what alternative treatment I could have received rather than being sectioned and transported against my will to a mother and baby unit (which only perpetuated my symptoms of feeling unsafe).
many thank
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GemmaPorter
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Hope you’re ok and you’ve had a good day. APP has undertaken various pieces of research over the years collaborating with the experts in the field of treatment for Postpartum Psychosis.
You can read lots about the recommended treatment on our website (link below).
I know for me, personally, experiencing PP was hugely traumatic and I think whichever treatment route I’d have ended up down - I would have experienced the same impact and trauma. As would my family. My mind / me lost somewhere completely, temporarily yes, and with the support I did get better.
We know that PP should be treated as a medical emergency as the symptoms can change rapidly. I personally feel hugely grateful that action was taken so swiftly, my family not waiting to see if I’d get better, or if another sleeping tablet might just help me sleep at home. A 999 phone call to the emergency services in desperation was absolutely the right thing for me personally, as was an admission to the MBU. It doesn’t bare thinking about how very different things might have been, had that phone call to 999 not been made.
I’m so sorry to hear that you feel the treatment you received however, only perpetuated your symptoms. I can imagine that feeling to be very difficult to then understand the treatment you received and the rationale behind it.
What I do know from personal experience is that PP is fraught with many complications in terms of post the acute illness; trying to comprehend what had happened. I know for me, it took several years to maybe find a way of “making sense of”, “coming to terms with”, and even maybe finding a bit of peace with what had so sadly happened to me and our family.
Take a look at our webpage as I say, which details treatment and support. Do take care reading and please do get in touch again if we can help you further.
I think it is pretty standard to be hospitalised for PP treatment. The few people I know who had PP besides myself were all in an MBU.
Like you, I was sectioned even though I do not believe I was a danger to myself or others, meaning I did not have selfharm ideation nor did I think about harming my baby. However, psychosis is a very serious condition and health workers need to start from the assumption that we may harm someone, including ourselves. No matter how small that chance is, it is there. The psychosis could escalate very rapidly; it can be very unpredictable.
Even if you are not violent in any way, there is still the possibility you could harm yourself. I know I was very confused, and before I was sectioned, while I was alone on the street, I crossed the road without looking and was almost hit by a car.
Even though I hated being sectioned, and being in the hospital with so many different staff added to my paranoia and confusion, it was unfortunately the only thing that could have been done.
In general, medicine operates with the principle "better safe than sorry", and sometimes use this principle to justify over-intervention, even though I believe this can cause more harm than good. Unfortunately it is a difficult balance, and in terms of psychosis, it is even harder. For example, you could be concealing your thoughts about hurting your baby, and even though that outcome is rare, it is something that must be avoided at all costs.
I do agree that being sectioned is not something that should be done lightly. And even though it was the right thing to do in my case, it might not have been in yours.
I am sorry about what happened to you, and I hope you can one day find peace with your experience.
Thanks so much for your message. I do hear what you’re saying about the risks involved with PP, but I don’t understand how sectioning someone and stripping them of their liberty removes the risk of something happening. Nobody told me formally that I’d been sectioned, no on read me my rights and because I’d been sectioned I had to be transported in a bus to the MBU rather than my family being allowed to drop me off. It just added so much to the trauma and a delusion that I was being trafficked started after I was taken in the middle of the night in the bus. By a group of very large and scary looking men, only the one female who was very judgmental of me, so I didn’t warm to her. When I was dropped off in my room, one of the bus drivers gave me a fist pump…!!!! I was honestly in shock when he did that. I seriously felt like no body had a clue what I was going through…
In my case, I shouldn’t have been sectioned. I was early on in my psychosis, and hadn’t become fully delusional yet (until I was mistreated so badly at A&E) and I had even packed a suitcase and taken it with me to the hospital, I wanted and needed help that badly. And I recognised that I needed help and even agreed to go to the MBU! Sectioning someone that is agreeable to admission is an abuse of the Act in my opinion. It should only be a last resort when they can’t persuade the person to accept treatment any other way.
It just felt like a witch hunt. And I wasn’t even interviewed by the AMHP, he spoke to my parents only so basically sectioned me based on collateral information, which I’m pretty sure is illegal!!!
That that sounds highly against protocol. Let us know the outcome of your complaints, and hopefully the field or the people involved in your case learn from this.
A blanket sectioning for PP should not be the way to act, and cases should be assessed individually.
I'm Jenny, one of the peer support coordinators at APP. I just wanted to write and say I'm sorry to read about your experience of being sectioned and the impact this has had on you.
I had PP in 2012. I was admitted to an MBU voluntarily so don't have experience of being sectioned, though I know a lot of women with PP are admitted under a section. I remember being lucid enough to agree to go to the MBU, although I didn't really understand what an MBU was (at the time I just thought if someone could observe me for a day and tell me I was 'doing everything right', I'd be fine) - I tipped into full psychosis not long afterwards so am sure I would have needed to be sectioned if I'd not already agreed to go.
It sounds like it would be helpful for you to understand the process the hospital went through in your case, and I hope that by challenging this as you are doing, and via the mediation you have requested, this will be possible and will bring you some peace. I'm sure your story will be very powerful when the Trust hopefully looks at any learning from this. I previously worked in an NHS commissioning organisation and they would share patient stories at the Trust Board meetings, I think this was probably the most important and impactful part of the agenda.
I do understand the anger you are feeling and hope there are some positives that can come from this for future patients in a similar situation. I hope, too, that sharing experiences and connecting with others here is helpful in this journey of recovery we all travel down 💜
Take good care and know we're always here to listen.
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