L

Lord Winston (Lab)

Speaking in the House of Lords on 2 September 2026

Debate

Childbirth-related Post-traumatic Stress Disorder

Contribution

My Lords, I think the noble Baroness is referring to a paper by Susan Ayers, who has studied this for many years. It is certainly not a new problem. In the literature, there are over 700 papers on post-traumatic stress disorder in childbirth and another 1,700 papers on it during or in childbirth. This is a long-standing problem. It is not always serious, but when it is then it needs to be taken very seriously. Most cases are relatively trivial and the national incidence is about 3.17% of women in childbirth. This is something we can handle. As the paper by Susan Ayers correctly points out, we could do something much better in primary care in this situation. I hope the Minister will take this on board.

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