Issues of maternal mental health should be considered and pregnant women should be screened of mental health just like other health conditions such as HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis, Centre for People Empowerment and Right Initiative (CPRI), a Non-Governmental organisation, said.

Mr Dominic Wunigura, the CPRI Programmes Coordinator, who was speaking to the Ghana News Agency added: "We have come to realise that when we tackle mental health from the angle of maternal issues, pregnant women and mothers of children below the ages of two years, we will be able to prevent a lot of mental health issues".

CPRI is implementing a project dubbed: "Enhancing maternal mental health of pregnant women, mothers and children in Ghana," which he said was to among other things, train health service providers directly working with pregnant women and mothers of children under two years.

He said about 190 health service providers covering midwives, community health nurses and enrolled nurses would benefit from the project which was on Pre-natal Adapted Screening Tool (PAST).

CPRI launched the project in 2018 in partnership with BasicNeeds, UK with financial support from UKAID and has since engaged major stakeholders in the health sector including; traditional birth attendants and community volunteers.

"We will train midwives, community health nurses and enrolled nurses on the Pre-natal Adapted Screening Tool," Mr Wunigura said: "It looks at all forms of mental illness-anxiety, depression, psychosis and other extreme cases of suicidal tendencies and disability".

"It will help them to undertake basic screening for mothers or pregnant women who come for maternal services and appropriately refer them for further assessment and treatment".

He was of the view that incorporating maternal mental health in other health policies would broaden the scope of maternal health delivery services.

"We want to ensure that when a pregnant woman comes, we do not only look at the physical wellbeing, but we are able to include the mental health aspect because pregnancy and child bearing brings about a lot of burden that affects the psychological wellbeing of a parent", he said.

He called for increased awareness creation on maternal mental health and conscious efforts to support those women since treatment of mental illness went hand-in-hand with other psycho-social and environmental factors.

He also entreated the public to embrace the initiative, saying screening one of mental health did not mean the person was mentally ill, but a way to avert preventable mental health cases.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), globally, about 10 percent of pregnant women and 13 percent of women who have just given birth experience a mental disorder, primarily depression.

A recent meta-analysis showed that about 20 percent of mothers in developing countries experienced clinical depression after childbirth, but the figure could be more, according to health officials.

Virtually all women can develop mental disorders during pregnancy and in the first year after delivery, but poverty, migration, extreme stress, exposure to violence (domestic, sexual and gender-based), emergency and conflict situations, natural disasters, and low social support generally increase risks for specific disorders.

Maternal mental disorders are treatable and effective interventions can be delivered even by well-trained non-specialist health providers.