What Is Perinatal Mental Health?
The perinatal period, which includes fertility struggles, pregnancy and the first year after birth, can bring a wide range of emotions. While it is often imagined as a joyful time, many people experience distress, anxiety or low mood during these stages. These feelings can be confusing and isolating, especially when they differ from expectations.
Perinatal mental health difficulties can include:
- Stress and emotional impact of fertility challenges or treatment
- Low mood, sadness or loss of interest in usual activities
- High levels of worry, panic or intrusive thoughts
- Feeling detached from your baby or anxious about bonding
- Guilt, shame or self-criticism around pregnancy, birth or parenting
- Distress linked to pregnancy loss, miscarriage or birth trauma
- Struggles with changes in identity, body or relationships
These experiences are common and do not mean you are failing. With the right support, recovery and healing are possible.
How Can Therapy Help?
Therapy provides a confidential and compassionate space to process the many challenges that can arise before, during and after having a baby. It can support you in:
- Making sense of the thoughts and feelings you are experiencing
- Coping with fertility difficulties or the emotional impact of treatment
- Processing birth trauma, miscarriage or pregnancy loss
- Managing anxiety, low mood or intrusive thoughts
- Building self-compassion during the challenges of parenthood
- Supporting bonding and connection with your baby
- Navigating changes in identity, body image and relationships
What Approaches Might Be Used?
Our psychologists draw on a range of evidence-based approaches to support perinatal and fertility-related mental health, including:
- Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT): helps address unhelpful thinking and behaviour patterns that maintain anxiety or low mood
- Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT): supports reducing guilt and shame, and developing a kinder inner dialogue
- Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT): helps connect with personal values and take steps forward even in times of uncertainty
- Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR): particularly effective for processing traumatic experiences such as birth trauma or pregnancy loss
- Internal Family Systems (IFS): explores the different parts of you — such as anxious, critical or grieving parts — and works to bring balance and understanding
Your therapist will work collaboratively with you to choose the approach, or blend of approaches, that feels right for your circumstances.
Is Therapy Right for You?
Therapy may be helpful if you are:
- Coping with fertility difficulties or treatment and feeling overwhelmed
- Experiencing low mood, anxiety or intrusive thoughts in pregnancy or after birth
- Struggling to bond with your baby or worried about your relationship with them
- Processing miscarriage, stillbirth or birth trauma
- Feeling guilt, shame or self-criticism around your journey to or through parenthood
- Managing the emotional impact of changes in your identity, relationships or body
- Wanting a safe and supportive space to explore your experiences of fertility, pregnancy or early parenthood
At Seven Lion Yard, we are sensitive to the complexity of this stage of life. Our goal is to offer thoughtful, evidence-based and compassionate support, helping you find resilience, connection and hope in the face of challenge.
