A SUPPORT GROUP for women with Postnatal and Antenatal depression and anxiety in Dorset is celebrating its one-year anniversary by opening two more groups across the county.

West Dorset PANDAS, run by Bournemouth University student midwife and maternity support worker, Charlie Francis-Pape, was set up last August in an effort to support women who suffer from postnatal depression.

Charlie set up the group after she herself suffered from various forms of perinatal mental illness.

"It's estimated that one in four women suffer from Postnatal Depression, that’s more than 500 women who give birth at Dorset County hospital each year," she said. "Being depressed or anxious when you are pregnant or have a baby is so debilitating, embarrassing and you feel so alone. You think that becoming a mother will be the best time in your life but for me it was the worst."

Charlie suffered from antenatal and postnatal depression and PTSD following a traumatic labour. She also spent two months in a mother and baby unit when she was severely ill.

"I so desperately wanted to know that I wasn’t the only woman feeling like this," she said. "I was scared of being alone with my baby; I felt so guilty that I didn’t love her and felt like I couldn’t be the mother that she deserved."

The group, currently run each week at Dorchester Children’s Centre on Damers Road, has helped many women over the past year with various forms of perinatal mental illness. "It’s so incredible to see how far some of the women have come," said Charlie.

"One woman started coming when her baby was just a few weeks old. She came with her mother-in-law and didn’t want to pick her baby up, feeling she couldn’t look after her."

Now the mother is able to come on her own to the group with her baby.

Charlie has now been joined by two others who have volunteered to help run the group so that she can start groups in other localities across the county.

New groups in Weymouth and Bridport will run once a month starting in September., but, said Charlie: ‘The aim of the new groups is creative therapy. We will be having a picnic lunch and getting messy with our children. So far we are going to make slime, paint baby hand prints onto bags and enjoy sensory play."

Now she is aiming to start support groups throughout Dorset. "My aim was always to create enough groups so that women county-wide have somewhere to go to support each other and to not feel so alone," she said.

*westdorsetpandas.co.uk