The Australian Association of Psychologists (AAPi) is calling for perinatal women to be able to access 40 rebated psychology sessions per year through Medicare.
Those in need of mental health support are currently only provided ten rebated sessions per year, which AAPi Executive Director Tegan Carrison says is inadequate to support women experiencing perinatal anxiety and depression (PND).
“For anyone with serious/complex problems, research shows that 40 sessions are considered the optimal level of treatment,” Carrison said.
“Our psychologists working closely with perinatal women are reporting that their clients are being forced to stretch out their sessions.”
Carrison says the impacts of PND can include anxiety, symptoms of post-traumatic stress related to childbirth experiences, adjustment to parenthood, changes in partner relationships, difficulty bonding with the infant and suicidal ideation.
Emphasising the need for 40 psychology sessions to be accessible to perinatal women, she adds that “these kinds of issues require ongoing psychological care that cannot be properly managed in a short space of time.”
Principal psychologist at Brave Psychology in Wollongong and a member of AAPi, Alysha-leigh Fameli, echoes the need for women experiencing PND to have more than ten sessions.
She says women in the postpartum phase are more vulnerable and at high risk of suicide ideation.
So, if a high risk mother goes to a session once a week to manage her mental health, “the 10 sessions are gone in the space of two and a half months– which is just too short of a time frame”,” said Fameli, adding that “at the end of those 10 sessions, they are often still at high risk.”
“Some Primary Health Networks do offer mental health support programs for perinatal women with around 12-18 rebated sessions, but this is still radically insufficient,” she said.
Fameli would like to see funding directed towards perinatal interventions because she says “significant mental health issues in the mother will also have an impact on the infant”.
“[The infant] can display stress, disturbed attachment, it can affect their cognitive development and physically, their gross motor development.”
“There’s this huge ripple effect which is going to last generations by not intervening with support at this early stage, which is a cost effective way of preventing this from occurring.”
Dr Heather Mattner, an Adelaide perinatal health psychologist who sees women at the extreme end of PND, points out that rebated perinatal psychological support only being accessible via GP is also a problem.
She would rather see a voucher system introduced, which would give all pregnant women up to 20 rebated psychology sessions as a package, for during and following pregnancy.
“This system would enable a woman to go directly to a psychologist rather than going through a GP, saving critical time and money, and anyone with a formal diagnosis could then access an additional 20 extra sessions as required,” Dr Mattner explained.
“Perinatal women waste precious time trying to get an appointment with a GP if they’re struggling in early pregnancy, have mental health challenges during mid to late pregnancy or are distressed postnatally with a baby, or have lost a baby.”
“We have to change what we are doing with perinatal women, because PND rates are not reducing, women and their families continue to suffer and research is not having a dramatic impact – so we must focus on early intervention to make a much-needed difference.”