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Mental health

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How much in depth assessment for ADs - PND?

5 replies

Corilee2806 · 09/09/2021 13:43

Hi all, hoping someone with more experience can help, will try and keep this brief as I’m exhausted and can’t think straight. Have 7 month old and 2.9 year old, have struggled with anxiety and low mood since not long after baby was born, surviving on broken sleep since and exclusive BF which I feel is draining the life out of me. DS is gorgeous but a hard baby. Have spoken to GP several times - always rushed phone calls - and feel completely fobbed off. Started with silver cloud online CBT but this felt generic and unsuited to an exhausted new mum with no time or energy to go through the self taught course. Spoke again to GP a month ago, he said I probably just needed sleep and medication wouldn’t help. A month later and things feel worse and I scored high on the depression and anxiety assessments - spoke again to different GP and he said would you like ADs, I’ll check which ones are suitable for breastfeeding. I thought really he should tell me if i do have PND and if I should take them! Then yesterday he called me to say all meds safe for BF and basically asked me which ones I would like, which just doesn’t feel right. He clearly has no knowledge of mental health and i don’t want to take medication if it’s not right for me. Saying that I feel absolutely awful and desperate to try anything to feel better.

I opted for sertraline (tried citalopram about 6 years ago and it didn’t agree with me) - should I just take them? I feel like they just didn’t know what else to do with me and didn’t want to listen to my concerns.

OP posts:
Corilee2806 · 09/09/2021 18:43

Can anyone help, please? Is this the best place to post?

OP posts:
CorrBlimeyGG · 09/09/2021 18:53

Sertraline is fine to take while breastfeeding.

GPs don't generally diagnose mental health conditions, they'll treat the symptoms that you describe. They're following the normal treatment pathway for low mood and anxiety.

What help are you looking for? Mental health services are woefully underfunded and for less complex presentations, what you describe is normal. If you need more, can you afford to go private?

CorrBlimeyGG · 09/09/2021 18:54

(There should be more help for everyone that needs it, but for that you'll need a different government.)

Corilee2806 · 09/09/2021 19:08

That all makes sense and completely get it re mental health under funding. I guess I just expected a bit more of an in depth assessment from my GP and a bit of understanding which is probably too much to hope for. My surgery is notoriously bad for dealing with post natal health issues though so…

OP posts:
CottonSock · 09/09/2021 19:11

Sertraline was great for my PND x2. I did get some side effects, which was sweating more. I know other people on it that get none even at double the dose I took..

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