Women's Mental Health Clinic

Tygerberg Hospital, a tertiary academic hospital, is the second largest hospital in South Africa and the largest in the Western Cape. Situated in Parow, on the northern outskirts of Cape Town, the hospital services a population of over 3.6 million people with 1,384 active beds. The referral population includes the Northern Metro sub-districts, Khayelitsha, Eastern Tygerberg, West Coast, Cape Winelands, and Overberg rural districts. The socioeconomic status of the drainage area is mainly from low- to middle-income communities, with high rates of unemployment and poverty. The Women’s Mental Health Clinic at Tygerberg Hospital was established in 2017 to provide specialised women’s mental health care, including perinatal mental health care. The clinic runs once per week and is run by a transdisciplinary team including a consultation-liaison psychiatrist, trainee psychiatrist, senior clinical psychologist and nursing staff, with social worker and occupational therapist input on a referral basis. A weekly mentalisation group for pregnant and postpartum women and their babies is facilitated by a clinical psychologist on the same day as the clinic. The clinic accepts referrals of women’s mental health-related disorders not responding to primary care interventions. Indications for referral include mental illness during pregnancy and the post-partum period (up to 12 months post-partum), pregnancy planning for women with psychiatric illness, and mental illness related to infertility, pregnancy loss, menopause, gynaecological cancers, termination of pregnancy, chronic pelvic pain and premenstrual dysphoric disorder.