Exactly two years ago to the day, Bad Education actor Layton Williams was prepping for the UK tour of hit musical Everybody’s Talking About Jamie.
06.08.2023 - 15:55 / manchestereveningnews.co.uk
‘I would see flashes out of the corner of my eye, hearing whispers, hallucinating’, says 44-year-old Hannah. ‘There was a day I was crouched in the bath like a baby, my father found me like that’, explains Karen, 63.
The eerily similar stories of two mothers, decades apart. Neither had ever heard of the condition they would soon learn they had – until they were rushed to psychiatric wards, being told they were in a medical emergency.
Almost all families will be familiar with the ‘baby blues’ which leave new mothers feeling tearful and down, some will know the grief of postnatal depression. But postpartum psychosis remains a complete unknown for so many – despite affecting some 1 in 500 births.
In years gone by, little information was available about the serious mental illness that can rapidly set in after birth. Many women have faced the terrifying signs – hallucinations, feeling manic, behaving completely out of character – completely alone, without help or knowledge of what was happening to them.
Karen Savage, from Salford, experienced postpartum psychosis 37 years ago, and faced electroshock therapy as her treatment – as well as a blanket of secrecy that came with having a severe mental health episode in the late 1980s. Hannah Bissett, who lives in North Yorkshire, was diagnosed some years later in 2009.
Her treatment was more gentle, but she still encountered difficulties trying to learn about the condition. The Manchester Evening News spoke to the two women at the forefront of the campaign to make sure other families have a better experience.
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The ‘baby blues’ are so common that they are ‘considered normal’ in the first two
Exactly two years ago to the day, Bad Education actor Layton Williams was prepping for the UK tour of hit musical Everybody’s Talking About Jamie.
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