Dr. Margo Wrigley:

This was Covid-19 specifically. It was also after the baby was delivered. Their closest support, which might have been a mother, may have lived more than 2 km away. What we found was, and Professor McCarthy can qualify this if he wishes, that there was a huge number of women who found themselves in big trouble during Covid-19 because of this perceived and actual isolation and who ran into problems with depression and anxiety. For our part, there was obviously an impact on the services because of Covid-19 and how you could see women. We were very lucky that our programme manager was asked to lend some support to rolling out video-enabled care during Covid-19 and the early introducers of that in the mental health services were the perinatal mental health services. We were able to see some women face-to-face where necessary but video-enabled care was provided as well.