ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights the significant barriers that stop women from gaining access to treatment for maternal mental illness. It begins with the statistics about access to treatment and then highlights the multilevel barriers such as inadequate resourcing of care, difficulties in speaking out due to shame and guilt, lack of sufficient training of midwives, health practitioners and front-line staff, and the general deficit in knowledge of women and their families about what this illness looks like and how they can access help and treatment. The chapter goes on to explore shame and stigma and their consequences which is silence. The chapter then explores the shame that can occur in psychotherapy.
