Maternal Mental Health of Refugee and Asylum Seekers in the UK — Five Key Findings

Thank you Dee, for this brilliant piece of article. It put some light on another important group of refugees and asylum seekers, whose mental well-being is often overlooked: migrants mothers.

Although the mental health of refugees and asylum seekers has received much attention in the media, academia and from community-based organisations, women’s maternal mental health-related illnesses are an under-researched area. In her 2014 Race Equality Foundation Briefing Paper “The maternal mental health of migrant women”, Zahira Latif writes, “There are currently no national statistics which show rates of maternal mental health related illnesses among women in the United Kingdom”.

Studies of postnatal depression for migrant women are few, and those on maternal mental health-related illnesses for women refugees and asylum seekers are even fewer. This remains so despite the fact that migrant women have higher fertility rates and will be one of the main users of maternity services in the future. The paper explores female migration to the UK, why migrant women use maternal mental health-related services less than other women and current maternal mental health service provision.

The needs of migrant women in relation to maternal mental health provision are complex and diverse. Super-diversity is a catch-all term that describes the increasingly diverse populations of large cities as a result of migration from a greater range of countries, says Sarah Spencer, Senior Fellow and former Deputy Director at COMPAS. It may include nationality, country of origin, language, ethnicity, immigration status, gender, faith, sexuality, disability, and socio-economic status. In her report Zahira Latif explains that the existing evidence suggests that in the case of the maternal mental health of refugee and asylum seekers, super-diversity, the gendered persecution they have experienced and social isolation due to forced migration all contribute towards maternal mental health-related illnesses in these women, and low service uptake.

Maternal mental health service provision for refugees and asylum seekers and other migrants needs to be further explored to address these inequities.

The key findings of Zahira Latif’s Briefing Paper are:

1.  Pregnant and early postnatal migrant women are a heterogeneous and far more diverse population group than has previously been experienced.

2. Migrant women experiencing maternal mental health-related illnesses face practical barriers and cultural factors which may prevent them from seeking help.

3.  Maternal mental health-related services tend to be focused on helping migrant women to overcome practical barriers — language difficulties in particular — and risk obscuring cultural factors and attitudes to mental health.

4.  Further research is urgently needed to acquire accurate data on the needs of the newer migrant population which can then inform the development of appropriate services as well as culturally competent care.

5.  Maternal mental health practitioners will need to acquire new knowledge and skills in order to deliver effective services to a super-diverse cohort of pregnant and early postnatal migrant women.