Maternal Mental Health Awareness Week: What It Is and Why It Matters

Every year in the first week of May, Maternal Mental Health Awareness Week invites the world to look honestly at the mental and emotional lives of mothers — during pregnancy, after birth, and across the full arc of the perinatal period. In 2026, the week runs from 4 to 10 May, with World Maternal Mental Health Day falling on 6 May. This year's theme, A Decade of Voices, marks ten years of the campaign and centres something that research and lived experience both confirm: women do not feel listened to when it comes to their mental health.

At Parts of Us Counselling, this week matters enormously to us. Because in the rush of congratulations and newborn photographs, in the cultural emphasis on new babies rather than new mothers, the interior life of a woman becoming — or continuing to be — a mother is too often the last thing anyone asks about.

What Is Maternal Mental Health?

Maternal mental health — also called perinatal mental health — refers to the psychological and emotional wellbeing of women during pregnancy and in the period after birth, which the World Health Organisation defines as extending through the first year postpartum. It encompasses not just diagnosable conditions but also the full range of emotional experience that the perinatal period can bring: grief, identity disruption, anxiety, ambivalence, exhaustion, and moments of profound love and profound overwhelm.

The most well-known perinatal mental health condition is postnatal depression (PND), but it is far from the only one. Perinatal mental health conditions include:

• Antenatal depression and anxiety — during pregnancy, which is often overlooked because pregnancy is assumed to be a happy time

• Postnatal depression — affecting 6.8 to 10.4% of women in Singapore according to local research, and up to 23.7% in some studies depending on how and when it is measured

• Postpartum anxiety — highly prevalent and frequently underdiagnosed; postnatal anxiety rates in Singapore have been measured as high as 56.7% in recent studies

• Birth trauma — the psychological aftermath of a birth experience that felt frightening, out of control, or dehumanising

• Postpartum OCD — intrusive, unwanted thoughts, often about the safety of the baby, which carry enormous shame

• Postpartum psychosis — rare but serious, requiring immediate medical attention

  Only 24.1% of women in Singapore have received assessment or education about perinatal mental health from healthcare professionals. The gap between prevalence and support is vast.

What Is the Awareness Week Trying to Do?

Maternal Mental Health Awareness Week, organised by the Perinatal Mental Health Partnership UK and observed globally, exists to do several things at once: to reduce the stigma that keeps women silent about their struggles; to improve professional understanding and screening; to amplify the voices of women with lived experience; and to advocate for better care systems that catch and support perinatal mental health difficulties early.

This year's theme — A Decade of Voices — centres something that has been consistently documented in research: women feel unheard. They feel dismissed when they raise concerns. They feel pressure to present as coping. And in many cultural contexts, including Singapore and across Southeast Asia, they feel the weight of family and community expectations that leave little room for vulnerability.

The Singapore Context

In Singapore, perinatal mental health care has improved significantly over the past decade. KKH's Postnatal Depression Intervention Programme, established in 2008 and mainstreamed into standard care in 2018, has been an important step. But structural care is only part of the picture.

Cultural factors shape how perinatal mental health is experienced here in ways that deserve honest naming:

The confinement period ('doing the month'). The traditional postpartum confinement practice — zuo yue zi — is a significant feature of many Chinese Singaporean families' experience. While it can offer practical support, research has found that almost one-third of Singaporean women who observed confinement described it as a negative experience that contributed to depressive symptoms. Control over food, movement, and access to the outside world, often managed by in-laws, can add to rather than reduce stress.

Familial expectations and face. In many Asian families, admitting to struggling after the birth of a child carries implicit shame — a sense of failing at something that women are 'supposed' to know how to do. This can delay help-seeking significantly.

Pressure on migrant mothers. Singapore has a significant population of women who gave birth far from their own families. Isolation from their usual support networks places these women at heightened risk.

The invisible labour of motherhood. The unpaid, unacknowledged work of caring for a new baby — often while recovering physically from birth and navigating profound identity change — is still largely invisible in public conversation.

What Good Support Looks Like

Good perinatal mental health support is more than screening at the six-week check. It includes proactive, ongoing conversations about how a mother is actually feeling — not just whether she is coping. It includes partners who are equipped and willing to notice. It includes workplaces that understand that maternity leave is not a rest and return is genuinely hard. And it includes mental health professionals who understand the specific clinical landscape of the perinatal period.

If you are a new or expectant mother reading this, your emotional experience matters. What you feel — including the difficult, ambivalent, unglamorous parts — is valid. And support is available.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is postnatal depression the same as baby blues? No. Baby blues — mood fluctuations in the first few days after birth — are extremely common and typically resolve within two weeks. Postnatal depression is more sustained, more impairing, and benefits from professional support.

Can anxiety be a perinatal mental health condition? Yes, and it is significantly underrecognised. Many women experience intense anxiety during or after pregnancy without meeting the criteria for depression — and this deserves equal attention.

Can fathers and non-birthing partners be affected? Yes. Paternal postnatal depression is real and affects approximately 1 in 10 fathers. Partners are affected by the same sleep deprivation, life disruption, and relational strain — and they too deserve support.

Where can I get support in Singapore? KKH's Postnatal Depression Intervention Programme offers screening and early intervention. Your GP or polyclinic can refer you. Private practitioners including Parts of Us Counselling offer ongoing therapeutic support.

Maternal Mental Health Awareness Week is not just for professionals and policymakers. It is for every woman who has wondered whether what she is feeling is normal, every partner who has noticed something is not right but not known what to say, and every family trying to support someone through the most significant transition of their life. At Parts of Us Counselling, we work with mothers, partners, and families navigating the perinatal period. Reach out to find out how we can help.