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Women with postpartum psychosis are making repeated pleas for help before receiving a diagnosis, with the first Australian study of their help-seeking experiences finding that participants contacted health services a median of seven times before getting the care they needed.

As global attention continues to focus on the Lindsay Clancy case and broader conversations about maternal mental health, researchers from Flinders University say their findings reveal a critical gap between women recognizing something is seriously wrong and the health care system recognizing they are suffering from postpartum psychosis, a psychiatric emergency.

Researchers interviewed 15 Australian women diagnosed with postpartum psychosis and found many felt their concerns were dismissed, misunderstood or attributed to more common postbirth experiences such as exhaustion, sleep deprivation, anxiety or the "baby blues."

Although rare, postpartum psychosis is the most severe mental illness associated with childbirth and can develop suddenly in the days or weeks after birth. Symptoms may include hallucinations, delusions, mania, depression, paranoia and severe sleep disturbance, requiring urgent treatment. An estimated 300 to 600 Australian women experience the condition each year.

Women in the study often recognized that something was seriously wrong and actively sought help, yet many experienced lengthy delays before receiving an accurate diagnosis. Participants reported a median of seven contacts with health care services while seeking support.

D. candidate Donna McMahon says one of the study's most important findings was that women were not concealing their symptoms.

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