Professor Veronica O'Keane:

Another member also asked about that and I forgot to answer. Margaret Oates was the tsar of perinatal psychiatry services in the UK in 2002. At that time, suicide was the leading cause of maternal mortality there. As Deputy Murphy rightly said, that was due to post-partum psychosis, which is a very malignant disorder.

It occurs in the few days following the birth of a baby. It occurs in one in 200 live births. The woman becomes very psychotic very quickly. It is considered to be a psychiatric emergency. Unfortunately, some women do not present and they kill themselves. Sometimes they kill their babies as well, very unfortunately. There was a year when maternal mortality from psychosis was the leading cause of maternal death but, to the best of my knowledge, in more recent years it has been cardiac disease that has been the leading cause of maternal death. Psychiatry and suicide is up there among the top three. It is second or third, but not the leading cause, to the best of my knowledge.