Developing peer support for families bereaved by postpartum psychosis
On 23rd June 2024, I led APP’s first training day for bereavement peer support volunteers at the Barberry National Centre for Mental Health in Birmingham.
We were joined by five new volunteers who want to use their experiences to help support other families who have lost family members to PP.
During the day we discussed the types of information, support and resources that would be useful for bereaved families. We also did some example peer support training activities. Iain (who made the documentary Irene’s Ghost about his search to understand what happened to his mother), Don (Iain’s dad), Sean, FM and Rich (whose fundraising in memory of his wife Alex is helping to fund the project) shared their experiences and suggestions for what peer support for bereaved families might look like. It was an inspiring and moving day, especially seeing peer support in action as the men connected with, and learned from, each other.
The new volunteers will help us develop web content for bereaved family members in the coming months and develop a peer support group for families bereaved by PP.
Peer support volunteer training
We also ran APP’s usual peer support training the previous day. This is perhaps the 21st or 22nd session in an established program of award-winning peer support offered online, face-to-face and in MBUs.
As always, it was wonderful to meet and train new volunteers and to be part of a very inspiring day. All seven women who attended had experience of postpartum psychosis. Many had used APP’s peer support programme themselves and wanted to volunteer now they were recovered enough to do so. One volunteer had been treated at the Barberry itself. This was her first time back here since then.
It was incredibly inspiring and informative. I came away feeling ready to be part of the APP family.
I left the training feeling so empowered, and strong. And even though I was being trained to support others it was incredibly healing for myself too.
I love running these sessions for APP and am honoured to have been working with them to train peer support volunteers for over ten years now.
