Mothers on the edge

Reflections on Louis Theroux’s documentary

Over the course of 2017 and 2018 I spent a total of around 6 months in ‘mother and baby units (MBUs). An MBU is a psychiatric hospital where women can go for treatment — during pregnancy through to around the first year of the child’s life.

I thought the documentary was incredibly sensitive and I bawled my eyes out watching it, as I can empathise completely with the mothers and their families.

However, it portrays a very narrow slice of society. Also, it focuses mainly on the family unit. I will explain why I think this is a problem.

Every single family that the documentary chose to follow was generally made up of white, middle class, people.

My MBU is in East London. I also spent time in the general women’s psychiatric hospital which was largely comprised of working class women, the minority of whom were white.

While at the MBU I met many, many women (nurses, patients, doctors, family members). Some of these people included:

A Hasidic Jewish woman; a black British second generation Ugandan woman; a daughter of Somali refugees who speaks English, Dutch and Somali; an Afghani woman; an Irish Traveller woman; a Canadian woman; women with husbands, and women where the father was absent.

I met women with depression, severe anxiety, post traumatic stress disorder, anorexia.

I met women who could speak fluent English, and others I struggled to comprehend.

The night cleaner was a Jamaican grandmother called Elizabeth, who used to ask me every night how I was doing. She held my baby while I got my washing from the ward laundry.

Another woman called Sonia gave us breakfast every morning. She is being paid less than London living wage by a company called JSS, contracted to the NHS to do the cleaning and catering.

I have been treated like shit and I have been cared for deeply.

The reason I’m writing this is because post natal depression is stereotyped as a white middle class women’s problem. It’s not.

It is not possible to ‘treat’ post natal mental illness without taking into account factors such as class, race, gender, immigration status, past trauma, family dynamics.

And I haven’t even started on the Mental Health Act.

I would love to hear what other people thought about the documentary.