Help with our maternal mental health research
About this study
We are trying to understand more about the causes and triggers of severe mental illness during pregnancy and following childbirth.
You are invited to take part in this research if you have had a baby, and this may or may not have been followed by an episode of mental illness.
If you decide to take part, we will ask you to provide us with some information about you, your menstrual cycle and your mental health in order to help us answer these important research questions.
We also want to identify people who would be willing to be approached about taking part in further mental health research projects.
We need as many people as possible to take part and help us make a difference.
What will I have to do?
Taking part is voluntary: it’s up to you to choose if you want to sign up.
If you join us, you’ll be asked whether you would be willing to:
- Provide us with your contact details (e.g. address, email address and phone number) and some personal information (e.g. date of birth, ethnic group and employment status).
- Answer some questions about experiences of severe mental illness during pregnancy and following childbirth and the care and support received. This will take approximately 20-30 minutes.
- Allow us to contact you in the future about this study and other studies that you may want to take part in. There will be no obligation for you to take part in these future opportunities.
- Allow us to contact you every 6-12 months, to invite you to provide more information about your mental and physical health and your lifestyle.
- Allow us to share anonymous information with other researchers if they have scientific and ethical approval for the questions that they would like to answer.
We will use your answers to improve our understanding of mental illness and help find better treatments in the future.
Once you have joined, you can choose if you want to take part in any of the questionnaires, studies, or events that we tell you about when we get in touch with you.
Visit our online survey platform to take part.
FAQs
Looking for more information first? We’ve put together the answers to some frequently asked questions.
This study is led by the National Centre for Mental Health (NCMH). NCMH is a Welsh Government funded Research Centre, led by Cardiff, Swansea and Bangor Universities. It is being funded by Health and Care Research Wales, Welsh Government. The Director of the National Centre for Mental Health is Professor Jon Bisson.
You will have the opportunity to join the study once you have read through and understood the information.
What are the possible benefits of taking part?
We hope that learning more about severe mental illness during pregnancy and following childbirth will lead to new ways of diagnosing, treating or even preventing the illness. However, these remain long-term aims and you will not benefit directly from taking part in this study.
What will happen to my Personal Data?
Only the study team will have access to your data and only they will contact you directly.
All information collected during the course of the research will be kept strictly confidential. There are strict laws that safeguard your privacy at every stage. In accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (2018) and the Data Protection Act (2018), your personal information will be kept confidential by assigning a unique study code to your data. Your name and identifying information will not be passed on to anyone.
Cardiff University is the Data Controller and is committed to respecting and protecting your personal data in accordance with your expectations and Data Protection legislation. Further information about Data Protection, including:
- Your rights
- The legal basis under which Cardiff University processes your personal data for research
- Cardiff University’s Data Protection Policy
- How to contact the Cardiff University Data Protection Officer
- How to contact the Information Commissioner’s Office
may be found here.
We will keep your personal data for 15 years following the end of the research project.
After 15 years, the research team will anonymise all the personal data it has collected from, or about, you in connection with this research project. Anonymised information may be published in support of the research project and/or retained indefinitely, where it is likely to have continuing value for research purposes.
What questions will I be asked now?
When you agree to take part and sign up, you will be asked to provide contact details and some other information about yourself such as your age and ethnic group.
You will also be asked to answer some questions about your experiences of severe mental illness during pregnancy and following childbirth and the care and support you have received.
How often will I be contacted?
After this initial assessment, we may contact you every 6-12 months about completing some follow up questions.
These follow ups will be to ask you more questions about your experiences, your mental and general health and lifestyle. Sometimes we will ask for information that you haven’t given before. Sometimes we will ask you the same questions as before, so that we can see how things have changed.
As well as this possible further contact, the study team may contact you from time to time, to ask you to take part in new studies. You may be contacted because of something that you have told us about (for example, your age).
These studies may be conducted by other research teams. We will give you more information about these studies including why the research is being carried out, what you might be asked to do and how to sign up.
It is up to you to decide whether you want to take part in these new studies. It won’t affect your participation in the overall NCMH MaM Study if you prefer not to get involved.
First, you need to join the study. This involves reading this information and then consenting on the first page of the study. This should take about five minutes. Take as much time as you need to decide whether you wish to take part.
Once you have joined, you will be asked some questions. This should take about 20 – 25 minutes to finish. We know that we get the best data if you are able to complete these questions in one go, but if for some reason this isn’t possible then you can come back to the website later because you can save your answers once you have finished a set of questions.
Can I decline or withdraw from the study?
You do not have to take part in this study. If you do decide to take part you are still free to withdraw your consent to participate in the research project at any time, without giving a reason, even after signing the consent form.
It will not be possible to withdraw any anonymised data that has already been published or in some cases, where identifiers are irreversibly removed during the course of a research project, from the point at which it has been anonymised.
What happens when the study has finished?
This is a long term study that will allow us to learn about severe mental illness during pregnancy and following childbirth. The information you provide will be stored for use on a long term basis (at least 15 years).
You will not have any claim to any future commercial use of results from the study in which your data has been used.
To make the best use of resources we will share data (anonymised to exclude any personal details) with different groups of researchers from the NHS, universities and commercial companies, both within the UK and abroad. However, we would stress that those organisations will never obtain access to personal/ identifying information (for example, your name, address, date of birth).
Ethical approval has been obtained from the National Research Ethics Service and NHS (Research and Development) permission has also been obtained.
If you have further questions about the study please contact the study team:
National Centre for Mental Health
Cardiff University
Hadyn Ellis Building,
Maindy Road,
Cathays,
Cardiff
CF24 4HQ
Phone: 029 20688401
Fax: 029 20687100
Email: info@ncmh.info
Can I discuss the study with somebody independent of the project?
Yes, you can contact Helen Richards on +44(0)29 2068 8484 or at dpmcndivisionmanager@cardiff.ac.uk. You can also write to her at:
Helen Richards
Division Manager
Division of Psychological Medicine and Clinical Neurosciences / Centre for Neuropsychiatric Genetics and Genomics
Cardiff University School of Medicine
Hadyn Ellis Building
Maindy Road
Cardiff
CF24 4HQ
Take part
Visit our online survey platform to take part.