Each year, tens of thousands of British mothers emerge from childbirth carrying invisible wounds that the healthcare system is not yet equipped to see. A University of East Anglia research team has found that birth-related PTSD — affecting roughly one in twenty postnatal women — is routinely missed or misnamed during the very appointments designed to catch it. In a country where suicide remains the leading cause of death among women in the year following pregnancy, the cost of this diagnostic silence is not abstract. The researchers are calling not merely for better tools, but for a reckoning
Thousands of UK mothers may have undiagnosed birth-related PTSD, UEA study warns
Suicide remains the leading cause of death among women six weeks to one year after pregnancy in the UK, with researchers describing documented deaths as the 'tip of the iceberg' of maternal mental health crisis.