What our callers are experiencing:
- 26% are feeling grief and loss in the postnatal period
- 24% are worried about their ability to be a good parent
- 66% reported difficulty adapting to their new role as parents
- 40% are concerned about their baby’s sleep
- 20% are worried about building a positive relationship with their baby
- 30% reported feeling psychologically isolated
PANDA’s National Perinatal Mental Health Helpline
Our PANDA Helpline delivered 42,578 support calls to people and their families during the 2021 calendar year. This represents a 51 per cent increase in people making calls to PANDA, and a 56 per cent increase in reach-out contacts by the PANDA team compared to 2020.
Many of our callers told us they were struggling with feelings of isolation, anxiety, depression and difficulty adapting to the role of parenthood. These experiences were magnified by the challenges of dealing with a second year of COVID-related disruption and social isolation.
Feelings of grief, loss, worry and a loss of identity were common themes among new parents, along with an increase in callers reporting struggles with increased stress, low mood and negative thinking.
Almost a quarter of the parents we spoke to had a baby aged under one month old, indicating that people are reaching out for support early in their journey as new parents.
Digital phone system launch
PANDA transitioned to an industry-best digital phone system, enabling us to recruit helpline staff from around Australia, as well as provide callers with a great experience. The new digital system enables us better interact with callers, triage requests for assistance and provide seamless follow-up support.
The new system also enables our PANDA team to gain deeper insights into the type of support our callers need, enabling us to work proactively to create resources and ensure people are receiving the information they need, when they need it.
Online support
Online support continues to be an important part of PANDA’s suite of resources for new and expecting parents. In 2021, 29,000 people completed our free online Mental Health Checklist for Expecting and New Parents, which helps people self-screen and provides information about how and where to reach out for help.
247,000 unique users visited the panda.org.au website in 2021. Approximately 21% of those visitors were international. Our factsheets were downloaded 32,500 times and our podcast Survive and Thrive had 5,000 streams.
PANDA Learning Hub
PANDA Learning Hub is a unique online resource for health professionals and new and expecting parents. The PANDA Learning Hub combines evidence-based training with lived experiences which share the stories of our community members who have lived with perinatal mental health issues. It provides practical approaches for health professionals to support people with perinatal mental health in their local communities.
Providing online perinatal training has enabled us to upskill health professionals around Australia. With funding from the Victorian State Government, we reached 302 midwives and 253 maternal child health nurses in Victoria in 2021.
We've had 1,916 users sign up to over 5,000 courses in the PANDA Learning Hub in 2021.
The Helpline team also delivered 658 secondary consultation services to health care professionals across the country, ensuring that people were provided with the right care and referral options from their local services.
Information and translated resources
Providing free, easy-to-access resources is a core part of PANDA’s work. During 2021, we have distributed 87,820 hard copy resource to our partners working with families in every Australian state and territory. 15,000 of these were distributed in November during Perinatal Mental Health week, showing the huge efforts of the community in raising awareness and breaking down stigma.
During 2021, PANDA launched a range of translated resources including brochures in 40 languages and videos in 13 languages. This adds to our ongoing work to ensure PANDA is an accessible service for all.
PANDA Volunteers
Volunteers are critical to the work we do at PANDA. PANDA volunteers actively work to reduce stigma around the challenges of perinatal mental health, support new and expecting parents, and ensure every new parent is surrounded by a caring community. Our volunteers have tirelessly navigated the many challenges of COVID-19 and continued to provide support remotely as well as fundraising and coordinating activities.
Perinatal Mental Health Week
Our theme for Perinatal Mental Health Week in 2021 was “Breaking Down Barriers”. Tying in with the National Perinatal Mental Health Week campaign, we aimed to raise awareness of the barriers that exist when reaching out for help.
The campaign exceeded our expectations achieving 735 media mentions across the week, featuring the powerful stories of 14 PANDA Community Champions. We acknowledge and thank these strong mums and dads for allowing us to share their stories to raise awareness and encourage conversations about perinatal mental health.
Social media
PANDA is part of a thriving community on social media, with 23,863 followers on Facebook, 16,300 Instagram followers and a presence on Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn.
Social media is a vital link between our community of new and expecting parents and the resources and support we provide. In 2021 we had 20,650 visits to our website resources via social media.
This represents 20,650 people exploring social media looking for support, resources and information during the perinatal period, which PANDA was able to provide via our online resources.
Corporate supporters
PANDA is grateful for the support of all our corporate partners and fundraisers. In 2021, we continued our strong partnership with Baby Bunting who helped raise awareness and raised more than $80,000 for us. This funded our important work creating an extensive library of translated perinatal resources.
We also celebrate the ongoing partnership with Priceline Sisterhood Foundation. Their generous support has enabled us to rebuild our website (launching in 2022), as well as upgrade our phone system and Learning Hub to ensure more people can access information and get the support they need.
