Maternal mental health and child health and development in low and middle income countries

Overview

A series of studies have demonstrated that the impact of mental health problems in pregnant women, and up to one year after childbirth, in LMICs may be different from what was known from HICs.

In view of the potential health, development, and human rights implications of recent findings, the World Health Organization's (WHO) Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse in collaboration with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), launched an initiative to understand this problem better and to identify and propose solutions to it. One of the first activities of this initiative was to convene a meeting of experts bringing together the expertise from other relevant WHO Departments and that of experts from both developed and developing countries who have been active in this area. In this publication we find a summary of the presentations and discussions that took place during that meeting, as well as its main conclusions and recommendations.