Becoming a parent and caring for a child can be one of the most wonderful, yet challenging experiences in life. These challenges can be exciting, rewarding, daunting and overwhelming and can happen throughout the parenting journey from conception, pregnancy and birth through to raising a child.
As with any other significant life event, people will be impacted and cope in varying ways. Pregnancy and parenthood can at times impact our relationships with our partners, family and friends, our physical, emotional and mental health and our overall wellbeing.
Experiences and signs you or someone you care about may need support
If you are concerned that you, or someone you care about might be struggling with postnatal depression, anxiety or psychosis and need support, please call Lifeline to speak to a trained Crisis Supporter on 13 11 14 (24 hours / 7 days) or text Lifeline on 0477 13 11 14 (24 hours / 7 days) or chat online (24 hours / 7 days). We are here to listen.
PANDA supports women, men and families across Australia affected by anxiety and depression during pregnancy and in the first year of parenthood. PANDA operates a national helpline for individuals and their families to help them recover from perinatal anxiety and depression.
Visit: PANDA
Call: 1300 726 306
Centre of Perinatal Excellence (COPE) is a not-for-profit organisation devoted to reducing the impacts of emotional and mental health problems in the pre and postnatal periods.
The Gidget Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to support the emotional wellbeing of expectant and new parents and ensure they receive timely, appropriate and specialist care.
Visit: Gidget Foundation website
Raising Children provides free, reliable and up-to-date information for parents with children of all ages to help families grow and thrive together.
At 23, artist Amanda Johnson had life all mapped out. She was married, owned her own ceramic shop and was teaching 200 students a week, firing her three kilns seven days a week and employing seven other staff. She was a successful businesswoman and artist.
She approached having children with the same confident expectation of success but instead, fell into a quagmire of self-doubt and depression. She couldn’t even paint any more. She had a supportive husband and parents and healthy children but admits at one point standing in the garden, watching them through the glass windows inside and seriously thinking they wouldn’t miss her if she left them.
Today, Amanda has become a conduit for others to open up about their depression – helped largely by a massive self-portrait which hangs in her new gallery and shows her old depressed self and her current happy one. However, she points out that depression is like dieting, you can’t just fight it for a while then presume it will stay away forever. You have to learn to manage it.