Stephanie Gatt
Bluebell PND Women's 10k
Fundraising for CrossReach, Church of Scotland Social Care
Story
I was expecting to feel so happy. Nothing prepared me for the overwhelming despair, guilt and sense of failure that followed the birth of my beautiful daughter."
Jenny Brown & Margaret Kent are volunteer counsellors with our service. As well as giving their time free of charge to help parents affected by ante/post natal illness - they are also running the 10k to raise funds for us! Please sponsor them so we can continue our much needed work!
Margaret says........
As a PND counsellor I am running the Morrison's 10k Run to raise money for Bluebell PND Support in Glasgow and to help raise awareness of Perinatal Mental Health. Untreated Perinatal Mental Health has the potential to have long term negative impact on mothers, fathers and their children. As a result we need interventions such as counselling to improve and protect families long term mental health. As a charity with no statutory funding the organisation relies on donations and fundraising to maintain the services available to those who need it. If you could find the time to sponsor me for the run I would be very grateful as will the many families who continue to benefit from this worth while charity.
Regards Margaret
What we do....
We provide counselling (free of charge) for parents affected by ante/post natal depression (PND) on a 1:1 basis, as couples and group therapy. We also have a specialist Baby Massage service for which we accept direct referrals.
The Bluebell campaign was established to raise awareness of PND and to encourage more women to come forward for help. PND affects the whole family including husbands and partners and can strike any family.
There can be many reasons for PND. Society today puts many demands on new parents – they are told they must have the latest buggy and equipment-expectations are high and often mums have little support and feel isolated.
We know that there are more than 11500 mums diagnosed with PND in Scotland alone every year – and that is only the ones that are diagnosed.
This represents as many as 1 in 6 mums.
- We do not receive any statutory funding. As a Crossreach project we benefit from their financial support which goes some way towards meeting our costs but essentially we rely on donations and the goodwill of our volunteers.
We are a small charity – not as big and as popular as some charities who have a high profile and lots of volunteers and funding – but we are a charity with some stigma attached and that is why your support is really important.
Run the 10k for us and help us to keep our service going so that we can offer more creche places to the mums who need counselling but cannot come due to no childcare provision.
Every £50 raised will enable us to provide 1 hour's free counselling (with a creche) for a mother (or father) coping with the effects of PND.
THANK YOU!