Category Archives: Health

17 March 2026 23:59 ~ National Maternity and Neonatal Investigation Call for Evidence – Deadline

Baroness Amos is asking women and families across England to share their experiences of maternity and neonatal care through a public Call for Evidence.

Responses to the Call for Evidence will be used to inform the National Maternity and Neonatal Investigation’s findings and recommendations.

The Call for Evidence is open for 8 weeks from 20 January until 17 March 2026.

There are two Call for Evidence surveys available:

  • One for women and people who have been pregnant to share their own experiences of maternity and neonatal services.
  • One for other people to share their experiences supporting someone through pregnancy. This could include fathers, non-birthing partners, family members, friends, or other support people.

You must be aged 16 and over to respond. If you are under 16, you must complete the Call for Evidence with somebody who is 16 or over.

Please do not include any personally identifiable information in the free-text boxes.

All experiences will remain anonymised for evidence processing and use in investigation reports and publications.

For more details, please refer to our Privacy Notice, which explains that personal information will not be used to identify individuals.

  • The deadline for responding to the Call for Evidence
    is 11:59pm on 17 March 2026.

For full details in how to respond and the call for evidence in other languages and Braille etc., go to https://www.matneoinv.org.uk/call-for-evidence/

January 26, 2026

17 March 2026 23:59 ~ National Maternity and Neonatal Investigation Call for Evidence – Deadline

Baroness Amos is asking women and families across England to share their experiences of maternity and neonatal care through a public Call for Evidence.

Responses to the Call for Evidence will be used to inform the National Maternity and Neonatal Investigation’s findings and recommendations.

The Call for Evidence is open for 8 weeks from 20 January until 17 March 2026.

There are two Call for Evidence surveys available:

  • One for women and people who have been pregnant to share their own experiences of maternity and neonatal services.
  • One for other people to share their experiences supporting someone through pregnancy. This could include fathers, non-birthing partners, family members, friends, or other support people.

You must be aged 16 and over to respond. If you are under 16, you must complete the Call for Evidence with somebody who is 16 or over.

Please do not include any personally identifiable information in the free-text boxes.

All experiences will remain anonymised for evidence processing and use in investigation reports and publications.

For more details, please refer to our Privacy Notice, which explains that personal information will not be used to identify individuals.

  • The deadline for responding to the Call for Evidence
    is 11:59pm on 17 March 2026.

For full details in how to respond and the call for evidence in other languages and Braille etc., go to https://www.matneoinv.org.uk/call-for-evidence/

January 26, 2026

Women in acute mental distress are continuing to be imprisoned as prisons treated as default psychiatric wards – Independent Monitoring Board (IMB)

Despite the Independent Monitoring Board’s (IMB) 2023 thematic report warning that women in acute mental distress were being imprisoned due to a chronic shortage of secure psychiatric hospital beds, two years later the IMB’s 2024–25 annual report for HMP/YOI Bronzefield (published 10 December 2025) highlights that these serious concerns remain largely unresolved.

Overstretched in-prison healthcare facilities, ill-equipped to provide specialist treatment and care to very vulnerable and mentally unwell women, are being used as makeshift mental health wards, leaving them without the specialist care they need.

IMB members, appointed by ministers to carry out independent monitoring of prisons, are trained volunteers with unrestricted access to the prison to which they are appointed. They report on fairness and humanity of treatment, shining a light on what happens behind closed doors.

HMP/YOI Bronzefield in Surrey is the only purpose-built private prison solely for women in the UK, and is the largest female prison in Europe. This maximum security prison is operated by Sodexo Justice Services with a current capacity of 527, holding a complex mix of prisoners: remand, sentenced and high profile ‘restricted status’ (Category A) offenders.

The 2024–2025 IMB annual report for HMP/YOI Bronzefield paints a stark picture:

  • 22 women were sent to Bronzefield prison as a ‘place of safety’ under the Mental Health Act, up from 19 the previous year. The 18-bed in-patient healthcare unit is consistently at full capacity accommodating women experiencing severe mental illness and displaying complex behaviour.
  • A shortage of secure psychiatric hospital beds, along with disputes among NHS health trusts, is delaying the transfer of women from HMP/YOI Bronzefield to hospital. Staff are under mounting pressure but continue to provide compassionate care under extremely challenging conditions. The delays affect the wider prison population, with some women reporting feeling unsafe or vulnerable when others experience mental health crises.
  • Only 45% of transfers to hospital met the statutory 28-day target, with some women waiting over 100 days; the longest wait recorded was 157 days.

“These are not isolated incidents. This is an ongoing national issue,” said Ben Moseley, IMB HMP/YOI Bronzefield Chair. “Prison is not treatment. These women need care, not custody.”

The IMB remains concerned that efforts to resolve this problem show little discernible effect.

“Without urgent reform vulnerable women will continue to suffer. The crisis in care puts their dignity, health, and safety at risk” said Moseley.

Prison staff continue to show extraordinary commitment and dedication under extremely challenging conditions. Yet HMP/YOI Bronzefield is not equipped and was never intended to provide the specialist mental healthcare to the extent that these women need. The Board is deeply concerned that the prison continues to be used as a last resort for acutely mentally unwell women, a setting that can worsen their conditions and put their dignity, health, and safety at risk.

https://imb.org.uk/news/mental-health-crisis-behind-bars/

December 12, 2025

Independent Investigation into Maternity and Neonatal Services in England – Reflections and Initial Impressions – Baroness Amos

While the issues I have heard about through this engagement have been extremely varied, there are a set of issues which I have heard about consistently. These include:

  • a lack of communication and support from clinical teams and organisations
  • women not being listened to or given the right information to make informed choices at critical moments of their care as risk profiles change
  • women’s knowledge of their own bodies and important information essential to clinical decision making about their care, such as reduced fetal movement, sometimes being disregarded
  • fathers and non-birthing partners feeling unsupported
  • the desire for a more holistic approach to care across a woman’s maternity and post-natal journey, with maternity and neonatal teams working together to maximise good outcomes for women, their babies and families
  • the impact of discrimination against women of colour, working class women, women with mental health challenges and younger parents leading to poorer outcomes
  • a lack of empathy, care or apology, both as part of clinical care and after things have gone wrong, with women feeling blamed and guilty; a lack of recognition from staff when care is not delivered to the correct standards
  • lack of family engagement in reviews of care and feedback of review reports
  • an overly legalistic, adversarial approach when concerns or complaints are raised
  • the failure of regulatory bodies to protect vulnerable women and families and the perception of health professionals and organisations ‘marking their own homework’
  • failure to address poor behaviour, including the use of inappropriate language when communicating with women, families and non-birthing partners
  • the length of time autopsy reports take to be produced, delaying families from being able to fully grieve for their children
  • poor standards of basic care, such as lack of cleanliness, women and non-birthing partners not receiving meals, women not being helped to use the bathroom, and catheters not being checked or emptied
  • women and families finding it difficult to access their medical notes (and notes being redacted or observations filled in at a later date)
  • birth plans not being read or followed, leading to women not being cared for in the way they wanted or had agreed, as well as having to repeat their wishes multiple times
  • women and families being placed in inappropriate spaces after loss or harm, for example, being put on wards with newborns after they have experienced a loss
  • the impact of different philosophies around birth and pregnancy on women’s experience and ability to make informed choices
  • having to work with multiple contacts when a baby dies, with issues arising from information not being shared sufficiently between different services
  • the lack of recognition of, and support for, the long-term impact that these negative and traumatic experiences of services can have on families, for example: family breakdown; long-term impacts on the mental health of women and families; support for raising children with lifelong disabilities; bereavement care; participation in reviews or investigations; joint planning of complex care; and the need for neonatal unit accommodation and transition care

To read “Reflections and Initial impressions” in full go to https://www.matneoinv.org.uk/updates/independent-investigation-into-maternity-and-neonatal-services-in-england-reflections-and-initial-impressions

December 12, 2025

Study reveals brain connectivity changes in women with post-traumatic stress disorder after sexual assault – Clínic-IDIBAPS

A team from Hospital Clínic-IDIBAPS has identified changes in brain connectivity in women who have recently experienced sexual assault and developed post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

The study, presented at the ECNP 2025 Congress in Amsterdam, shows that communication between two key brain regions —the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex— is significantly reduced, which may be related to the emotional dysregulation commonly seen in PTSD following sexual assault.

The first author of the study is Dr Lydia Fortea, researcher at the IDIBAPS group Imaging of Mood and Anxiety-Related Disorders (IMARD). The study is part of a collaborative project between the Programme for the prevention and treatment of psychological consequences in women victims of sexual assault at Hospital Clínic and the IMARD group. The project is co-led by Dr Adriana Fortea, psychiatrist in the programme and IDIBAPS researcher, and Dr Olga Puig, clinical psychologist, programme coordinator and IDIBAPS researcher. The project is supported by the Alicia Koplowitz Foundation and the Pons-Bartran research grant from Hospital Clínic.

The brain impact of emotional trauma

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental health condition that can develop after experiencing a traumatic event. In cases of sexual assault, it is estimated that up to 70% of women develop PTSD, which is characterised by symptoms such as intense fear, anxiety, intrusive memories and nightmares, mood disturbances and hypervigilance.

PTSD following sexual assault tends to be especially severe and may be accompanied by depression, suicidal thoughts and other emotional disorders. Although sexual violence is one of the most common forms of trauma affecting women, most PTSD research has focused on other types of traumatic events, such as war or natural disasters.

When the brain stops communicating

The study analysed brain images from an initial sample of 40 patients —adolescent and adult women— with PTSD following a sexual assault in the past year, compared with a group of women without PTSD or a history of sexual violence, matched by age. Using resting-state functional MRI, the researchers observed that in more than half of the women with PTSD (22 out of 40), communication between the amygdala and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex —two key regions for managing fear and emotions— was almost completely lost, dropping to near-zero levels.

“The amygdala is responsible for processing emotions such as fear, while the prefrontal cortex helps regulate those emotions. When this connection weakens, the brain may struggle to control fear responses or manage emotional states, which could explain some of the more intense symptoms of PTSD,” explains Lydia Fortea.

Although this brain alteration was not directly linked to the severity of clinical symptoms at this stage, the researchers believe this may be due to the sample size. They expect to find this association in the full study sample, or alternatively, that it may be a core feature of the disorder, beyond its clinical expression.

Towards better understanding and treatment of PTSD

This finding reinforces the idea that PTSD following sexual assault is linked to dysfunctions in brain circuits that regulate fear and emotions, and that these changes appear early after the trauma. The research team suggests that these alterations could help identify patients at higher risk of poor outcomes and guide personalised therapeutic strategies in the future.

https://www.clinicbarcelona.org/en/news/clinic-idibaps-study-reveals-brain-connectivity-changes-in-women-with-post-traumatic-stress-disorder-after-sexual-assault

 

October 21, 2025