Healthy beginnings, hopeful futures: Black maternal mental health (7 April 2025)

Summary

World Health Day, celebrated on 7 April, kicks off a year-long campaign on maternal and newborn health. This year's campaign, titled ‘Healthy beginnings, hopeful futures’, will urge governments and the health community to ramp up efforts to end preventable maternal and newborn deaths, and to prioritise women’s longer-term health and well-being. It is led by The World Health Organization. 

The Motherhood Group focuses on creating supportive spaces where Black mothers can find community, resources, and advocacy. In this interview Sandra Igwe, Founder and CEO of the Motherhood Group, reflects on this year’s theme and the continuation of disparities in Black maternal mental health. Sandra highlights key areas for action and explains how a greater focus on lived experience leads to better outcomes for women and babies. 

Content

What does a ‘healthy beginning and hopeful future’ look like for Black maternal mental health?

A healthy beginning means Black mothers receiving respectful, dignified care where their voices are heard and their concerns taken seriously. It means having access to culturally competent mental health support without stigma. Drawing from our "Interconnecting Themes" framework, a hopeful future includes:

• Community and Connection: Strong support networks both online and in-person
• Advocacy and Voice: Black mothers empowered to speak for themselves and be heard
• Education and Knowledge: Better information for both mothers and healthcare providers
• Healthcare Transformation: Systems that acknowledge cultural differences and provide equitable care
• Safe Spaces: Environments where Black mothers can be vulnerable without judgment

This vision requires reframing Black maternal health as a human rights imperative and addressing it through an anti-racist approach, as highlighted by speakers at our conference.

What are the big issues that need addressing?

The most pressing issues include systemic racial disparities in maternal healthcare, lack of cultural competency among healthcare providers, insufficient mental health support for Black mothers, and the dismissal of Black women's pain and concerns. Our training workshops highlight specific challenges including:

• Mental health stigma within Black communities
• Barriers to effective engagement with healthcare services
• Language and cultural barriers affecting quality of care
• The "Strong Black Woman" myth that prevents many from seeking help
• Black mothers being less likely to be identified with perinatal depression due to inadequate screening tools
• The difficulty many Black mothers face expressing emotional distress in a system that applies western/eurocentric labels

These issues disproportionately affect Black women, who in the UK are four times more likely to die during childbirth than white women and consistently report poorer experiences throughout their maternity journey.

What results have you seen for women and their babies when they receive good mental health support?

When Black mothers receive appropriate mental health support, we see transformative outcomes: stronger maternal-child bonding, better parenting confidence, improved family dynamics, and children who thrive emotionally and developmentally. Mothers report feeling more empowered to navigate healthcare systems and build supportive networks.

Our initiatives like the NICU, Early Life and Loss panel discussions reveal how proper support can help mothers through the most challenging circumstances. The community-led initiatives showcased at our conference demonstrate that when Black mothers are supported appropriately, they often become powerful advocates and create solutions for others facing similar challenges.

What more needs to happen by who?

We need coordinated action across multiple fronts:

• Policy: Implementation of culturally sensitive care standards and mandatory training on racial bias for all healthcare workers.
• Funding: Greater investment in community-based maternal support services and grassroots solutions.
• Training: Healthcare professionals need comprehensive education on recognizing and addressing racial disparities and implicit bias.
• Healthcare Providers: Maternity services should collect and act on ethnicity data to identify and address disparities.
• GPs and Midwives: Need to create safe spaces where Black mothers feel heard and validated, with better screening for mental health concerns that considers cultural context.
• Community Organizations: Continued development of diverse focus groups, patient forums, and support groups (both digital and face-to-face).

Our conference demonstrates the multi-stakeholder approach needed, bringing together NHS leadership, politicians like MP Florence Eshalomi and Rt Hon Diane Abbott MP, medical professionals, community groups, and most importantly, mothers with lived experiences.

Final thoughts?

The conversation around Black maternal health must move beyond statistics to recognize the lived experiences of Black mothers. As our conference theme "Building Better Futures: Community-Led Solutions" suggests, the most effective approaches center on the voices of those most affected. Initiatives like our project work with Genomics England and "Avoiding Brain Injury in Childbirth" (ABC) show that when Black mothers' perspectives are included in research and service design, the outcomes improve for everyone.

This World Health Day theme aligns perfectly with our mission of creating healthy beginnings through community, connection, education, and advocacy. We believe that rest, as highlighted in our "Rest as Revolution" conference session, is also a critical component of maternal wellbeing that is often overlooked for Black mothers. True progress requires not just acknowledging disparities but actively dismantling the systems that create them and building new, more equitable approaches.

Related hub content

• Addressing critical gaps in Black maternal mental healthcare: a new partnership project is launched (interview with Sandra Igwe)
• Working with bereaved parents for safer and more equitable care
• Neonatal herpes: Why healthcare staff with cold sores should not be working with new babies
• Women who experience high-risk pregnancies are too often forgotten when their babies are born
• Mums with babies in NICU: postnatal maternal mental health support
• Top picks: Key resources for maternity safety

About the Author

Sandra Igwe authored the bestselling book "My Black Motherhood: Mental Health, Stigma, Racism and the System" (2022), which is now used as a training tool. She also served as Co-chair for the National Inquiry into Racial Injustice in Maternity Care, and Partner for the Mayor of London's Anti-Racism Hub. She has been recognised by Forbes as a Top Inspirational Woman UK and by Vogue magazine as Top Influential Woman.

Sandra is the Founder and CEO of The Motherhood Group who run regular support groups, educational workshops, and mentoring programs specifically designed to address the unique challenges faced by Black mothers. Their flagship initiative is the annual Black Maternal Health Conference UK, which brings together community members, healthcare professionals, policymakers, and industry stakeholders to bridge gaps in maternal care.

They also offer culturally competent training workshops for healthcare professionals to better understand cultural differences and barriers faced by mothers from Black and ethnic minority backgrounds. Their BlackMums App connects mothers with each other, creating digital safe spaces for support and resource sharing. Additionally, they run specific projects including the Black Maternal Mental Health Project, collaborate with organizations like SEL Mind, and engage with NHS Equality & Inclusion commissioned work to drive systemic change.