Experiences of maternity care in New South Wales among women with mental health conditions

Corscadden, L., Callander, E.J., Topp, S.M., and Watson, D.E. (2020) Experiences of maternity care in New South Wales among women with mental health conditions. BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth, 20. 286.

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Abstract

Background: High quality maternity care is increasingly understood to represent a continuum of care. As well as ensuring a positive experience for mothers and families, integrated maternity care is responsive to mental health needs of mothers. The aim of this paper is to summarize differences in women's experiences of maternity care between women with and without a self-reported mental health condition.

Methods: Secondary analyses of a randomized, stratified sample patient experience survey of 4787 women who gave birth in a New South Wales public hospital in 2017. We focused on 64 measures of experiences of antenatal care, hospital care during and following birth and follow up at home. Experiences covered eight dimensions: overall impressions, emotional support, respect for preferences, information, involvement, physical comfort and continuity. Multivariable logistic regression was used to compare experiences of women with and without a self-reported longstanding mental health condition.

Results: Compared to women without a condition, women with a longstanding mental health condition (n = 353) reported significantly less positive experiences by eight percentage points on average, with significant differences on 41 out of 64 measures after adjusting for age, education, language, parity, type of birth and region. Disparities were pronounced for key measures of emotional support (discussion of worries and fears, trust in providers), physical comfort (assistance, pain management) and overall impressions of care. Most women with mental health conditions (75% or more) reported positive experiences for measures related to guidelines for maternity care for women with mental illness (discussion of emotional health, healthy behaviours, weight gain). Their experiences were not significantly different from those of women with no reported conditions.

Conclusions: Women with a mental health condition had significantly less positive experiences of maternity care across all stages of care compared to women with no condition. However, for some measures, including those related to guidelines for maternity care for women with mental illness, there were highly positive ratings and no significant differences between groups. This suggests disparities in experiences of care for women with mental health conditions are not inevitable. More can be done to improve experiences of maternity care for women with mental health conditions.

Item ID: 63617
Item Type: Article (Research - C1)
ISSN: 1471-2393
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Copyright Information: © The Author(s). 2020 Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License,which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you giveappropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate ifchanges were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commonslicence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commonslicence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtainpermission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visithttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to thedata made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
Additional Information:

A version of this publication was included as Chapter 8 of the following PhD thesis: Corscadden, Lisa (2020) Disparities in experiences of access to care for Australians with mental health conditions. PhD thesis, James Cook University, which is available Open Access in ResearchOnline@JCU. Please see the Related URLs for access.

Date Deposited: 08 Jul 2020 05:38
FoR Codes: 42 HEALTH SCIENCES > 4203 Health services and systems > 420305 Health and community services @ 30%
44 HUMAN SOCIETY > 4407 Policy and administration > 440706 Health policy @ 20%
42 HEALTH SCIENCES > 4206 Public health > 420606 Social determinants of health @ 50%
SEO Codes: 92 HEALTH > 9204 Public Health (excl. Specific Population Health) > 920410 Mental Health @ 20%
92 HEALTH > 9205 Specific Population Health (excl. Indigenous Health) > 920507 Womens Health @ 40%
92 HEALTH > 9202 Health and Support Services > 920299 Health and Support Services not elsewhere classified @ 40%
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