{"id":624521,"date":"2026-09-14T16:18:13","date_gmt":"2026-09-14T16:18:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/624521\/"},"modified":"2026-09-14T16:18:13","modified_gmt":"2026-09-14T16:18:13","slug":"glasgow-mum-who-tried-to-end-own-life-from-postnatal-depression-wrongly-discharged-by-nhs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/624521\/","title":{"rendered":"Glasgow mum who tried to end own life from postnatal depression ‘wrongly’ discharged by NHS"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Glasgow mum <\/a>has opened up on living with postnatal depression so severe that she attempted to take her own life.<\/p>\n

Stephanie Craig claims she was “wrongly” discharged by NHS community mental health services last month after being told “we can’t help you” wherever she turned to find support \u2013 which also included private services.<\/p>\n

The 26-year-old, based in the north-east of Glasgow<\/a>, lived through a childhood of “constant” horrific abuse, and ended up in children’s homes until she was 18, surviving several attempts to take her own life as a teenager.<\/p>\n

She says medical professionals previously told her she wouldn’t be able to have her own child because of the severity of the abuse she went through at a young age, but was “given the most amazing human” when her daughter Callie, now 2, was born in September 2024.<\/p>\n

However, only a few days later, she began to experience severe low moods and “horrible” intrusive thoughts that she says she recognised immediately as postnatal depression.<\/p>\n

\"Stephanie<\/p>\n

Stephanie Craig, 26(Image: Supplied)<\/p>\n

Stephanie, who works in mental health and suicide prevention, told Glasgow Live<\/a>: “I had an amazing labour, and we had a good few days, but on the fifth day it went from zero to 100, really quick, and my thoughts went incredibly dark.<\/p>\n

“As someone who was abused as a child, to then think horrible thoughts about your own child who you’ve dreamed of for years, was really frightening.”<\/p>\n

She added: “You’re handed the best thing on Earth, the most amazing human, and your brain is saying ‘you’re not good enough, you need to hurt yourself or this child’.<\/p>\n

“[Callie] is so funny, so smart, she’s just everything. But on the bad days, which is 98 per cent of the time, my brain is telling me ‘you need to put her up for adoption’ and ‘you need to die’.”<\/p>\n

Stephanie said of living daily life with postnatal depression<\/a>: “I just function until I can’t anymore. I do everything that she needs so she’s looked after, but then I’m not.<\/p>\n

“I get to a point where I’ve not looked after myself – I’m not eating, I’m not sleeping, I burn out and have a mental breakdown.<\/p>\n

“It’s a constant cycle, and it got to a point in March where I tried to kill myself. The only thing that hasn’t killed me yet is that I don’t want to be the reason Callie doesn’t have a mum.”<\/p>\n

When Callie was just a few days old, the concerned parent says she phoned the perinatal unit as she had realised she was severely depressed. And by the time her daughter was eight days old they were staying in a mother and baby unit where they remained for six weeks.<\/p>\n

\"Stephanie<\/p>\n

Stephanie and daughter Callie(Image: Supplied)<\/p>\n

Since leaving the unit in 2024, Stephanie claims she has not received the help she needs with her postnatal depression.<\/p>\n

After being discharged by the NHS’s <\/a>perinatal services a year after her daughter’s birth, Stephanie says she was referred back to the NHS’s Community Mental Health Teams (CMHT) \u2013 which she was also discharged from last month, which she claims she “shouldn’t have been”.<\/p>\n

Stephanie said: “It’s been nothing but hell for the last year. I’ve had to fight for help and not get it, and and they’ve just recently discharged me and refused to provide any support, saying that they’ve offered things that I’ve turned down.<\/p>\n

“It’s been a journey, and two years later, I’ve still got really severe postnatal, and the NHS \u2013 other than my GP \u2013 have wiped their hands of me.<\/p>\n

\"Stephanie<\/p>\n

Stephanie Craig(Image: Supplied)<\/p>\n

“They try and blame my trauma for a lot of it, but I did years of therapy and had five good years [before experiencing postnatal depression after Callie was born].<\/p>\n

“I had a baby, my hormones went out of sync, and I got postnatal.”<\/p>\n

The mum said her GP and her health <\/a>visitor have both been “phenomenal” but that there’s “only so much” they can do to help.<\/p>\n

She says she has also tried to get help privately, but that she has been told her insurance wouldn’t cover it.<\/p>\n

Stephanie added: “I’ve bounced about everywhere and done everything possible to still be told ‘we can’t help you’.”<\/p>\n

The struggling parent is now encouraging people to check up on the mothers in their lives, and believes better services should be in place to help women living with postnatal depression.<\/p>\n

She added: “The amount of women who are going through this and it isn’t being spoken about is frightening. I think people are going to die, because they’re trying to speak up and there aren’t the resources.<\/p>\n

“[NHS staff] are underfunded, they’re undertrained, and we’re the ones that suffer because of it…<\/p>\n

“Check on the mums in your life \u2013 taking a bit of the pressure off could make a huge difference.”<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for NHSGGC said: “We cannot comment on individual patient cases for reasons of confidentiality.<\/p>\n

“All decisions around patient care are made clinically following assessment.<\/p>\n

“We would encourage this patient to contact us directly to discuss her concerns.”<\/p>\n

If you are having thoughts of suicide, please reach out for help, speak to someone you trust or call one of these helplines:<\/p>\n

Samaritans 116 123 or use the online chat at samaritans.org<\/a>Breathing Space 0800 83 85 87NHS 24 mental health hub on 111<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Glasgow mum has opened up on living with postnatal depression so severe that she attempted to take…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":624522,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[24793,103,61,60,410,411,782,5171],"class_list":["post-624521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mental-health","tag-glasgow","tag-health","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-mental-health","tag-mentalhealth","tag-nhs","tag-premium"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=624521"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624521\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/624522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=624521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=624521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=624521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}