Stephanie Trethewey thought she was prepared for life on the land as a mother. She’d grown up in the city and “cut her teeth” as a reporter in the television industry – and then fell in love with a farmer.
But when Trethewey and her husband, Sam, moved from inner-west Melbourne to rural Tasmania in July 2019 with their six-month-old son, Elliot, she says her mental health “really took a bit of a dive”.
“I felt really alone,” she says. “I went into it not really knowing what I’d signed up for.
“I suppose for me it was an absolute shock and a baptism of fire.”
As the founder and chief executive officer of Motherland, Trethewey says the stats in the bush around postnatal depression “are alarmingly higher” than we think and know.
According to a Monash study published in the Australian Journal of Rural Health, rural women with depressive disorders are more likely to experience significantly higher parenting stress due to limited access to specialist services.
The study, which compared perinatal wellbeing of women living in metropolitan areas with those in rural regions, recruited more than 800 participants across Victoria and WA.
The women were followed through the perinatal period, from early pregnancy to 12 months postpartum.
Lead researcher and a perinatal psychiatrist at Monash, Prof Megan Galbally, says it is apparent there are huge disparities and challenges in accessing services for women in the perinatal period across rural communities.
She says the prevalence of depressive disorders does not differ across rurality but there are alarming differences such as access to specialists services.
“Women who met the criteria for a depressive disorder had significantly higher parenting stress when they lived in these regional and rural communities,” she says.
“That’s really concerning to me because we also found that they had lower access to parenting activities.”
For Trethewey, the reality of life on the land “solo parenting” was really difficult and frustrating.
Like most farmers, her husband was working seven days a week and she was alone with a six-month-old baby and no family, friends or support nearby.
“Overnight, I lost my village,” she says. “Tassie is not even that remote, but for me you may as well have dropped me in the middle of the desert.”
“I thought if they say it takes a village to raise a child, then where the hell is mine?” she said. “And that was the moment when Motherland was born.”
Trethewey was named the 2022 AgriFutures Rural Women’s award winner for her work in providing services, resources and virtual communities for mothers in regional locations.
She says no matter where you live in rural Australia there is not enough access to services and the waitlists to see a mental health professional are “ridiculous” and “completely unacceptable”.
Last year, she waited two months to see a psychologist who only visits her general practice once a fortnight, to be told they’d accidentally booked the appointment under podiatry, not psychology.
“So I had to basically like reschedule and I never ended up going,” she says. “I did speak to a telehealth counsellor who I’ve worked with and has really helped.
“I don’t have postnatal depression now like I have in the past but because of my history I know that it’s important that self-care should include mental health.”
Galbally says although the data was limited to two states, the study definitely indicates a national trend and was designed to gauge a better understand of the experiences faced by rural mothers across Australia.
“We wanted to determine whether distance from a city or town exacerbated these problems and impact on emotional wellbeing in new mums.”
She says despite the fact “a fairly substantial number of women are giving birth in rural communities”, there is almost no mention of rurality in the national perinatal mental health guidelines.
“And there was no mention about how you might adapt care that really is about metropolitan settings to these [rural] communities.”
Approximately 15-20% of women in Australia are affected by perinatal depression or anxiety.
Trethewey says Motherland was not designed to help in a mental health capacity but by default it has by reducing social isolation.
“I think a lot of rural women just want to be seen and want to feel heard.”
She says of the 268 responses so far to Motherland, which remains open, 69% answered “yes” to the question asking if they had suffered from some level of postnatal depression or postnatal anxiety.
“That’s three and a half times the national diagnosed average,” she says. “But there are so many women suffering in silence, so many mums that don’t go and seek help.
The NSW president of the Country Women’s Association (CWA), Joy Beames, says the Monash study is very important in raising the very real issues new mothers in rural and regional NSW face in accessing mental health support.
“The situation is really dire for many communities and at a time that should be happy and rewarding, many rural and regional women are suffering through a lack of access to services and mental health professionals.”
In Australia, support is available at Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636, Lifeline on 13 11 14, and at MensLine on 1300 789 978. In the UK, the charity Mind is available on 0300 123 3393 and Childline on 0800 1111. In the US, Mental Health America is available on 800-273-8255
