Certainly, one of the things that we notice within the area of perinatal health is that there is so much focus on the infant, which obviously is terribly important, but the focus on the infant sometimes comes across in such a way that a woman, the birthing parent, is no more than a vehicle to producing a healthy child. The woman, herself, is not perceived as having authentic and independent needs separate from the needs of the child. Mental health is a really great example of that, because we're so focused on infant development.
For example, it would be very difficult, I think, to get a lot of attention for mental health difficulties of the birthing parent, the mother, if there were no implications for fetal development, because there's such an orientation around the infant. When you talk about prenatal education around mental health, this is one of the issues for me, personally, because this is my area of work.
When we talk about postpartum harm thoughts, most parents, most pregnant people, have no idea that this can happen to them. Part of the reason for that is once it does, they're terrified to tell anyone in case somebody reacts in such a way as to take their child away. They think they're demonic. We've had people come to us in the lab saying they tried to give their baby up for adoption, because they were so afraid of these thoughts, or they became suicidal, because they were afraid of these thoughts.
Had they received education prenatally around these mental health concerns, even tip sheets or fact sheets, it would have made a difference to them going into this experience, and kind of knowing what's coming.