Blooms The Chemist on why parents’ mental health may impact their infant’s wellbeing
Blooms The Chemist Community partner, Gidget Foundation Australia, is a not-for-profit organisation providing programs to support the emotional wellbeing of expectant and new parents, including individual psychological counselling services delivered in person or via telehealth. They raise awareness of perinatal depression and anxiety through education and awareness programs for healthcare practitioners and the community.
Sally Whiting, Blooms The Chemist Pharmacist-Owner and supporter of Gidget Foundation Australia, shares her insights on why supporting expectant and new parent’s mental health and wellness is important for the long-term psychological wellbeing of their infant.
This week marks Infant Mental Health week – an important annual drive to highlight the importance of babies’ emotional wellbeing and development.
Infant mental health focuses specifically on a child’s emotional and social development from birth to age three, a key period that becomes the foundation for the rest of their life. This period defines a young child’s capacity to regulate emotions, form close and secure relationships, and to explore and learn. Understanding how to nurture infants’ wellbeing is key to helping treat the mental health issues faced by very young children and their families.
Psychologists have found that infants’ earliest relationships are critical for their long-term mental health and wellbeing.[1] When relationships are reliably responsive and supportive, they can help protect children from the adverse effects of early life stressors. Gidget Foundation Australia helps expectant and new parents to address the stressors in their own life to help support their infant’s mental and emotional wellbeing.
Some strategies pharmacists can suggest for expectant and new parents to help support their own and their infant’s mental health and wellbeing include:
Accessing support from organisations such as Gidget Foundation Australia
If you are an expectant or new parent experiencing, or at risk of, perinatal depression and anxiety, Gidget Foundation Australia recommends speaking with your GP and asking for a referral to the Foundation.
The Foundation also runs a variety of support programs for vulnerable parents. This includes free psychological support through specialist face to face and telehealth counselling services as well as group therapy. Gidget’s Bunny Book series is also a wonderful resource for new parents.
Bunny Bounces Back is the sixth book in the Bunny Books series – a special story written for children, with psychological strategies to help new parents step into parenthood happily and powerfully. The book is available exclusively for sale at Blooms The Chemist, with all proceeds donated to the Gidget Foundation Australia.
Embracing self-care
While self-care looks very different for different people, it’s really about making sure your mental, physical, emotional and social needs are being met. It’s about taking care of your whole self and setting aside time to maintain your wellbeing. This includes making sure you are getting adequate sleep (6-8 hours per night), eating nutritious food, exercising regularly, socialising with other adults and also ensuring you get enough ‘quiet time’ to yourself as well.
This doesn’t make you selfish – taking care of yourself will allow you to take better care of your family. As they say, you can’t fill from an empty cup!
Practicing mindfulness
Mindfulness is a type of meditation in which you focus on being aware of what you’re sensing and feeling in the moment, without interpretation or judgment. Mindfulness has been studied in several clinical trials, and is shown to help improve stress, anxiety, pain, depression, insomnia and high blood pressure.[2] Practicing mindfulness involves breathing methods, guided imagery, and other practices to relax the body and mind while helping reduce stress.
This can be difficult to do when you’re feeling anxious or overwhelmed. In those moments, identify the cause of your stress and see what you can do to overcome it, or acknowledge the stresses that are out of your control and try to release your worry around them.
Connect with your network
It is often said that misery shared is misery halved. One of the best ways for parents to improve their mental health is to talk to people they trust and share how they are feeling. This can often be a good way to see if others may be having similar experiences, and might give them opportunities to workshop solutions that are tried and tested. Working out time to connect with partners or other loved ones also reinforces the sense you are in it together, which is reassuring to say the least. Blooms The Chemist, Australia’s leading community pharmacy network, is a proud partner of Gidget Foundation Australia, supporting the organisation with fundraising and raising awareness for perinatal depression and anxiety. Perinatal resource hubs can be found in many Blooms The Chemist pharmacies, as well as the Bunny Bounces Book, a children’s book with psychological strategies for new and expectant parents to support their mental wellbeing.
[1] Farewell, C., Melnick, E. and Leiferman, J., 2021. Maternal mental health and early childhood development: Exploring critical periods and unique sources of support. Infant Mental Health Journal,.
[2] Wielgosz, J., Goldberg, S., Kral, T., Dunne, J. and Davidson, R., 2019. Mindfulness Meditation and Psychopathology. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 15(1), pp.285-316.
By Sally Whiting, Blooms The Chemist Pharmacist-Owner & Board Member
Image by Stephanie Pratt from Pixabay