“I thought I was dead,” she says. “And if I had already died, and didn’t exist, if I took my own life that it didn’t matter, I was dead anyway.”
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Recently, Robb recalled his wife asking to hold hands “to make sure I am real”.
Up to one in five Australian women experience depression and anxiety in the period before or after birth, and about one in 10 experience obsessive-compulsive disorder in the perinatal period, statistics from the Centre of Perinatal Excellence and the national perinatal mental health service PANDA show.
Beeston was at the high end of the mental ill-health scale and writes that, though she has adored her now primary school-aged son from the beginning, in the early days of her illness she perceived him as a mythical creature.
“I’m on my way home from work when my baby turns into a dragon. We are standing at the lights of a busy intersection, waiting to cross the road,” she writes. “It’s not the first time it’s happened.”
As well as hallucinations, Beeston was menaced by intrusive thoughts, something research shows happens to anywhere between 70 per cent and all new mothers – but is rarely discussed.
Beeston says there are many things women aren’t told before they become mothers, and the symptoms of post-natal psychosis are among them.
“Almost all mothers will have an intrusive thought about something happening to their baby, like walking down the stairs and dropping the baby, or being on a balcony and the baby falling over,” says Beeston.
“And then 50 per cent of mothers will experience an intrusive thought about actually harming their child, even though we know from a growing body of research that there is no correlation between mothers having these and actually harming their baby.”
Such jarring thoughts are incredibly distressing, she says, but mothers are not told this is so common they are likely to experience it. “Women need to be able to talk about this stuff, so they’re not suffering in silence,” Beeston says.
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“You think, ‘there’s something terribly wrong with me as a person’, and it’s only something we’re starting to talk about now. It can be a sign of anxiety or depression [both of which she had while ill] but it can be something that just exists, as well.”
Beeston says that while she was in a mother-baby psychiatric ward she tried to find a book that could help her understand what can go on with emotions and the psyche due to perinatal mental ill-health, and that her book, Because I’m not Myself You See, aims to fill the gap she identified.
Though difficult to revisit a time when her mind was unmoored, Beeston says a joyful aspect of it has been the many grateful responses she has been receiving.
“Women in other professions have written to me and said, ‘I also work in a job where you feel you can’t talk about what you’re going through’,” says Beeston. “I had a police officer contact me … I’ve had messages from doctors, nurses, other health professionals.
“People just say ‘I feel seen’, or ‘I thought it may not resonate with me [because Beeston’s illness was so severe] but I can see myself in some of the changes that come with the transition to motherhood’.”
Beeston has helped develop a free app for mothers to track their mental health and wellbeing.
Since her illness, Beeston has shifted her career, to work in research and creating online content for the Centre of Perinatal Excellence. She helped to create its free, parental mental health app, Ready to CoPE, which has had 32,000 downloads in its first six months and will be translated into 10 languages.
CoPE chief executive Dr Nicole Highet said Beeston’s book would help other women finding the transition to motherhood challenging by building understanding that mental ill-health was not unusual and can be healed.
While only 1 to 3 per cent will experience postpartum psychosis like Beeston, many women feel isolated when they have perinatal anxiety or depression and don’t feel they can discuss it.
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“One of the biggest challenges is that people feel so alone in their experiences, and that compounds what they’re going through,” says Highet. “Reading stories of other people’s experiences straight away makes them feel less alone and realise the importance of getting help.”
PANDA chief executive Julie Borninkhof said cultural norms about becoming a parent always being positive, as well as marketing and social media depictions of parenting, can create a skewed version of what to expect.
“We still hear from really functional parents who are experiencing significant distress, and they’re scared to share their story,” Borninkhof said.
“People still feel if they expose their vulnerability or express ‘poor parenting’ they’re going to have their babies taken from them.
“A lot of it is based on phenomenon of women being able to self critique and think the worst of yourself … [but] we’ve seen a significant increase in people talking about perinatal mental health and emotional health during the perinatal period, and I am really heartened by that.”
On Monday, PANDA launched its new 24/7 chatbot, which directs those needing mental health support to specific services on its website so they can get support outside business hours.
Borninkhof said the chatbot was designed to meet increasing demand for parental mental health support, and that 57 per cent of parents accessing PANDA’s mental health checklist do so after helplines close, at 7.30pm.
If you need help call Beyond Blue 1300 22 4636, Lifeline 13 1114 or PANDA 1300 726 306.
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