A Co Tyrone woman who set up a charity which has helped hundreds of mothers suffering from postnatal depression has opened up on her own experience.
Una Leonard set up Support 2gether in Omagh thirteen years ago after finding there was nowhere to go and little to no understanding about the illness.
After the birth of her first child sixteen years ago, Una said she was consumed by feelings of guilt and anxiety.
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“I felt hopeless, I felt helpless. I was consumed with guilt. I felt as though I was not seen or heard as a mother,” Una told Belfast Live.
“I was consumed with that anxiety and fear of not being a good mum, and it just completely disempowered me.
“I didn’t know what was wrong with me so I didn’t have the language to communicate it, I felt I had no voice.
“I just got on with it, but nobody on this planet should just get on with this. The older generation used to say to just get on with it, but does that help you?
“I wanted to be a mummy so much, we tried for so long to get pregnant and when we did, I embraced the pregnancy.
“But the world after that was completely different. The love for my daughter was there but it was buried deep down. Am I doing this right? How can I help her? You start to think is she better off without me?
“I didn’t sleep because of the fear of something happening to my baby.”
After receiving support from her sister Brenda, the siblings came to the realisation that there wasn’t enough support for mothers who were going through the same thing as Una.
“Whenever I started to recover from my illness we sat down together and looked at how we would start a charity because it couldn’t just be me who was suffering like this," she said.
“We searched around our area and across the whole of Northern Ireland and there was just nothing.
“There were people suffering in silence and there was nothing for them. The illness had that overcast illusion about it because people didn’t have the knowledge.
“We started a support group here in Omagh, for mothers to come and realise they were not alone.
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“It went from a monthly support group to a support organisation. It gives people that opportunity to be honest and say they are struggling.”
Una added official figures on how many mothers suffer from postnatal depression are vastly under reported. Around one in ten mothers are diagnosed with the illness but she says there is still a stigma around speaking about it and getting help.
“We know the statistics are under reported, we have women that come to us having never spoken to their doctor about this,” Una said
“We’re still not doing enough for the mothers and fathers, and for their families. We are noticing that more mothers in our area here in Tyrone and Fermanagh are becoming problem aware, which is a positive thing.
“This is a treatable illness, but it needs to receive treatment. It doesn’t discriminate and it doesn’t care if you come from money or you come from nothing.
“I’d say to anyone who has these feelings to go and see your GP or a health visitor, come and speak to us because that’s the only way to get better.”
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