Mental Health and Pregnancy

In this film, you will see and hear people talking about their experiences of mental health problems during and after pregnancy. Researchers from the Canadian Health Experiences Research Group, at St. Mary’s Research Centre and McGill University, interviewed 21 people in Quebec and Ontario. We asked them about, for example, the challenges they encountered, what sorts of supports were helpful, as well as about what could be improved. This film presents key themes that were important to these pregnant and birthing people with examples from their stories. We hope that by listening to these them, people might reflect on their own experiences as a patient or someone who cares for someone with these problems, including friends, family and healthcare professionals, and help ‘trigger’ ideas about what could be done differently to improve the lived experiences of those with perinatal mental health problems.

Our sincere thanks to all the people who participated in this study.

We welcome feedback from anyone using this film, to know how and where it was viewed, and if it was helpful in some way.

We are grateful to the Royal Bank of Canada Foundation for providing financial support for this study.
This research is part of the Canadian Health Experiences Research Program: https://healthexperiences.ca/

Credits

• Susan Law, PhD – Principal Investigator and Director, Canadian Health Experiences Research Program
• Ilja Ormel, MPH – Research Program Coordinator
• Sandra Palaez, PhD, Linda Rozmovits, PhD, and Ilja Ormel, MPH, who conducted the qualitative interviews; and to Linda and Ilja who contributed to the analysis
• Joel Montanez, PhD – Researcher, St. Mary’s Research Centre & Clinical Psychologist, Institut de réadaptation Gingras-Lindsay de Montréal who led the production of the trigger film, with the support of Nicolas Gulino for editing and subtitles, as well as Oscar Salazar Varela for original music composition and performance
• Isabelle Crépeau and Celine Bailey, for expert translation of all materials from English to French and French to English
• Hannah Schwartz, MD FRCPC, for expert clinical advice
• Stephanie Babinski, MPA, MA, for support with the preparation of the manuscript on this study
• Donna Plett, MSc, for support as a research assistant and contributions to the analysis
• Arachna Lakhanpaul, Trillium Health Partners – Institute for Better Health, Knowledge Translation team, for web support