\n<\/p>\n
We were glad that the story of Kimberley Nixon was highlighted in your article and commend her openness about the devastating nature of perinatal OCD (\u2018This is so taboo\u2019: Kimberley Nixon on the hell of perinatal OCD \u2013 and how she survived it, 28 April). Experiencing vivid unwanted intrusive thoughts, images and urges of accidentally or deliberately harming your infant can be hugely distressing, isolating and often misunderstood. Intrusions and compulsions can take, or indeed steal, hours a day, and can make women feel as if they are the worst mothers possible.<\/p>\n
In severe cases, women can feel that ending their lives is the only course of action. We have been activists and researchers in perinatal OCD for 20 years and are aware of the issues of\u00a0lack\u00a0of recognition, misdiagnosis, inappropriate safeguarding procedures being activated and difficulties in accessing effective therapy.<\/p>\n
We must not ignore the long-term suffering, and the impact of missed diagnoses and inopportune signposting to services. While progress has been made since the expansion of perinatal mental health services in 2014, Kimberley\u2019s difficulty in accessing timely evidence-based intervention is still not exceptional.<\/p>\n
Given that potentially 7% of women are affected in the postpartum period, screening for OCD at the six-week check and signposting to\u00a0services could prevent unnecessary suffering. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, you can call or text the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org<\/p>\n Have an opinion on anything you\u2019ve read in the Guardian today? Please <\/em><\/strong>email<\/em><\/strong> <\/em><\/strong>us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our <\/em><\/strong>letters<\/em><\/strong> section.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We were glad that the story of Kimberley Nixon was highlighted in your article and commend her openness about the devastating nature of perinatal OCD (\u2018This is so taboo\u2019: Kimberley Nixon on the hell of perinatal OCD \u2013 and how she survived it, 28 April). Experiencing vivid unwanted intrusive thoughts, images and urges of accidentally<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":49092,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[4051,20638,24357,4805,418],"class_list":{"0":"post-49091","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-failed","9":"tag-ocd","10":"tag-perinatal","11":"tag-pregnancy","12":"tag-women"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49091"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49091\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/49092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Fiona Challacombe<\/strong>
Associate professor of clinical psychology, University of Oxford; patron, Maternal OCD<\/em>
Diana Wilson and Maria Bavetta<\/strong>
Co-founders, Maternal OCD<\/em><\/p>\n