'Thousands of women will have had this - but we had no idea until we were rushed to mental wards'
‘I would see flashes out of the corner of my eye, hearing whispers, hallucinating’, says 44-year-old Hannah. ‘There was a day I was crouched in the bath like a baby, my father found me like that’, explains Karen, 63.
Karen Savage, from Salford, experienced postpartum psychosis 37 years ago, and faced electroshock therapy as her treatment – as well as a blanket of secrecy that came with having a severe mental health episode in the late 1980s. Hannah Bissett, who lives in North Yorkshire, was diagnosed some years later in 2009.
“Quickly after my son’s birth, which was not a great birth as it had been traumatic, I became very severely unwell. I was quite in denial that anything was wrong,” she says. ‘Within days of giving birth, I was having a nervous breakdown’ Although decades had passed, Hannah didn't have much more awareness about postpartum psychosis than Karen, who endured the illness in the 1980s. “I had postpartum psychosis 37 years ago,” Karen told the M.E.N.
Karen, too, experienced a host of frightening symptoms which left her family worried. “I was showing signs of euphoria, which can be normal when you're breastfeeding but I was too euphoric. I wasn't sleeping,” she continued. “Was it my fault if he wasn't, had I done something? I had a conversation with a midwife who saw what was happening and told me I needed to see a doctor.
‘When the TV was on, there were characters who were people I knew and I thought they were talking to me directly’ Karen was sent to Salford Royal Hospital, she said: “I had multiple appointments with a GP and consultants and they told me I'd have to go into hospital, had they not coaxed me in I would have been sectioned.“As I got better and remembered things, then I was more alarmed. I had been very tearful.
“Time seemed to go so fast I'd wonder where the time had gone but you don't have a concept of time. I was aware I had a baby. But I’m not aware of too much of what happened. Karen said: “I was admitted to a general psychiatric ward. I was separated from my baby and I was very poorly. ‘Back then, my treatment was electroshock therapy’ Hannah was placed into ongoing recovery with a local mental health support team coaching her through the next years. For Karen, the story of her treatment was quite different – and it’s only now that she is bravely speaking out about what mental health care was like years ago.“I was admitted, given an injection and for 12 hours, I don't know what happened.“I was put on medication and then I was given electroshock therapy.
“I started to make myself do things because I knew I’d be on my own soon. Six months on, I was getting back to my old self, but there was always that feeling of would it come back? It took me a long time to prove to myself that it wasn’t going to happen again.” “You're also trying to fit your new identity as a mum in the know. It was supposed to be a happy and joyful time.
The risk of having more children After experiencing postpartum psychosis, many families are left with the looming question of what to do about having more children. Both Karen and Hannah ruminated on that dilemma – and came out with different answers. “Either way, nobody could give me an answer whether or not it would happen again. I decided it would be selfish if I ended my pregnancy in hospital and became ill afterwards, what would that do to my child?”
“The midwives were shocked to see me back and didn't know what to do. My pregnancy was straightforward, the mental health support did come but not until later in the pregnancy - I now know that, because I was well, I didn't pass the threshold for help. “For some people, it's not worth the risk. I felt it was for me, there is help and support out there.”
“Still, you go to classes at hospitals and nobody really discusses postpartum psychosis. They talk a lot about postnatal depression, or how it’s normal to feel tearful and down, and how to look after yourself through that. But postpartum psychosis is often not mentioned. The support, along with other locations in the north west, is being given out at the mother and baby unit at Wythenshawe Hospital, which supports families where there has been mental health illness following birth.
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