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A qualitative comparison of experiences of specialist mother and baby units versus general psychiatric wards

BACKGROUND: Mother and baby units (MBUs) are an inpatient mental health service where women experiencing acute severe postpartum psychiatric difficulties can be admitted with their babies. They are currently viewed as best practice in the UK and elsewhere. However, as service provision is fragmented...

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Autores principales: Griffiths, Jessica, Lever Taylor, Billie, Morant, Nicola, Bick, Debra, Howard, Louise M., Seneviratne, Gertrude, Johnson, Sonia
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6916441/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31842836
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12888-019-2389-8
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author Griffiths, Jessica
Lever Taylor, Billie
Morant, Nicola
Bick, Debra
Howard, Louise M.
Seneviratne, Gertrude
Johnson, Sonia
author_facet Griffiths, Jessica
Lever Taylor, Billie
Morant, Nicola
Bick, Debra
Howard, Louise M.
Seneviratne, Gertrude
Johnson, Sonia
author_sort Griffiths, Jessica
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Mother and baby units (MBUs) are an inpatient mental health service where women experiencing acute severe postpartum psychiatric difficulties can be admitted with their babies. They are currently viewed as best practice in the UK and elsewhere. However, as service provision is fragmented, some women residing in areas without MBUs are admitted to acute general psychiatric wards without their infants. This study aimed to compare qualitatively experiences of these two service types from the perspectives of women and clinicians. METHODS: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with fifteen women who received treatment for perinatal mental health problems on a general psychiatric ward and/or MBU in England. Two focus groups were also conducted, one with MBU staff (n = 11) and one with acute ward staff (n = 6). Data were analysed thematically. RESULTS: Women generally preferred being co-admitted with their baby to an MBU over lone admission to a general psychiatric ward. Women and clinicians felt that MBUs provided more perinatally-focused, family-centred care, and were better-equipped to meet women’s needs. General wards were reported by women and staff to lack the necessary facilities and expertise to support perinatal women adequately, while separation of mothers and babies was often experienced by women as traumatic and detrimental to recovery. However, some areas for improvement were also identified across both service types, particularly relating to difficulties transitioning home post-discharge, inadequate support for family members, staffing issues and access problems (with MBUs). CONCLUSIONS: Findings suggest that specialist perinatal inpatient care is considered preferable to generic care in the perinatal period from both service user and staff perspectives. Increased collaboration between perinatal and non-perinatal services could help improve perinatal expertise on general psychiatric wards, while further expansion of perinatal services (e.g. to cater for women currently considered too high risk for MBUs and for those discharged from inpatient settings) could tackle other shortfalls in care.
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spelling pubmed-69164412019-12-20 A qualitative comparison of experiences of specialist mother and baby units versus general psychiatric wards Griffiths, Jessica Lever Taylor, Billie Morant, Nicola Bick, Debra Howard, Louise M. Seneviratne, Gertrude Johnson, Sonia BMC Psychiatry Research Article BACKGROUND: Mother and baby units (MBUs) are an inpatient mental health service where women experiencing acute severe postpartum psychiatric difficulties can be admitted with their babies. They are currently viewed as best practice in the UK and elsewhere. However, as service provision is fragmented, some women residing in areas without MBUs are admitted to acute general psychiatric wards without their infants. This study aimed to compare qualitatively experiences of these two service types from the perspectives of women and clinicians. METHODS: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with fifteen women who received treatment for perinatal mental health problems on a general psychiatric ward and/or MBU in England. Two focus groups were also conducted, one with MBU staff (n = 11) and one with acute ward staff (n = 6). Data were analysed thematically. RESULTS: Women generally preferred being co-admitted with their baby to an MBU over lone admission to a general psychiatric ward. Women and clinicians felt that MBUs provided more perinatally-focused, family-centred care, and were better-equipped to meet women’s needs. General wards were reported by women and staff to lack the necessary facilities and expertise to support perinatal women adequately, while separation of mothers and babies was often experienced by women as traumatic and detrimental to recovery. However, some areas for improvement were also identified across both service types, particularly relating to difficulties transitioning home post-discharge, inadequate support for family members, staffing issues and access problems (with MBUs). CONCLUSIONS: Findings suggest that specialist perinatal inpatient care is considered preferable to generic care in the perinatal period from both service user and staff perspectives. Increased collaboration between perinatal and non-perinatal services could help improve perinatal expertise on general psychiatric wards, while further expansion of perinatal services (e.g. to cater for women currently considered too high risk for MBUs and for those discharged from inpatient settings) could tackle other shortfalls in care. BioMed Central 2019-12-16 /pmc/articles/PMC6916441/ /pubmed/31842836 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12888-019-2389-8 Text en © The Author(s). 2019 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research Article
Griffiths, Jessica
Lever Taylor, Billie
Morant, Nicola
Bick, Debra
Howard, Louise M.
Seneviratne, Gertrude
Johnson, Sonia
A qualitative comparison of experiences of specialist mother and baby units versus general psychiatric wards
title A qualitative comparison of experiences of specialist mother and baby units versus general psychiatric wards
title_full A qualitative comparison of experiences of specialist mother and baby units versus general psychiatric wards
title_fullStr A qualitative comparison of experiences of specialist mother and baby units versus general psychiatric wards
title_full_unstemmed A qualitative comparison of experiences of specialist mother and baby units versus general psychiatric wards
title_short A qualitative comparison of experiences of specialist mother and baby units versus general psychiatric wards
title_sort qualitative comparison of experiences of specialist mother and baby units versus general psychiatric wards
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6916441/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31842836
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12888-019-2389-8
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