The cost of birth trauma

Around one in five women in the UK say giving birth was traumatic, and around one in twenty go on to develop Post Traumatic Stress Disorder because of it. That’s more than 30,000 people a year. Two pieces of research published in the past few weeks show what tends to happen next: most are never identified, most are never referred for help, and we now have some idea of what that costs.

What the new report found

Counting the Cost of Birth Trauma: The Economic Impact of Postnatal PTSD in the UK was launched at the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Birth Trauma on 10 September 2026. 

The researchers followed more than 2,000 pregnant women in England and Scotland, from pregnancy up to two years after their babies were born. They looked at their mental health, how much NHS care they used, and whether they went back to work.

In the six months between half a year and a year after birth, NHS care for a woman with no PTSD symptoms and her baby cost an average of £473. For a woman with PTSD caused by her birth, it was £861. That is roughly twice as much.

Looking only at hospital care, women with birth-related PTSD were costing £1,325 between one and two years after birth, compared with £596 for those without symptoms.

When the researchers scaled these figures up against the number of births in NHS hospitals in 2024-25, they estimated that preventing traumatic births and the PTSD that follows could save the NHS around £26 million every year.

It’s worth noting too that the finding showed that women with only one or two PTSD symptoms, not enough for a diagnosis, were also costing the NHS more than those with no symptoms at all. You don’t have to be formally diagnosed for birth trauma to be affecting your health, and the NHS is already picking up the bill.

The other finding was about work, where they noted that a year after giving birth, 68% of women without PTSD symptoms had gone back to work, but in those with PTSD, it was 53%.

Most are never referred

The report found that in the six months to a year after birth, 46.2% of women with PTSD were referred to a mental health service. Between one and two years, that dropped to 38.8%. So most people with PTSD after birth are not referred for help at all, at any point, in the two years after their baby arrives.

A paper published in the British Journal of General Practice on 28 August looked at why. Their argument is that GPs are ‘diagnosing in the dark’. For most new parents, the six to eight week postnatal check is the only routine appointment where their own mental health gets discussed, and there is no agreed way of checking for PTSD during it. That appointment also has to cover the baby’s health and immunisations, which can easily take over. 

When symptoms are discussed, they often get diagnosed as the wrong thing. The paper points to UK research where half of GPs spotted signs of trauma in written case examples, but still went on to diagnose postnatal depression. Getting that wrong has real consequences, as treating the depression on its own leaves the PTSD untouched.

Using the same figures for how common the condition is, those authors estimate that at least 15,000 women a year in the UK are living with birth-related PTSD that nobody has diagnosed. The real number is probably higher.

In their own words

The economic report draws on a separate survey of 903 women run by the Birth Trauma Association in June 2026. 

“It’s over two years since the birth but the impact on my mental health and anxiety levels is still clear to see. This has caused a lot of strain in my relationship as often my husband has not known how to support me with what I was going through.”

“At the worst points of the trauma and PTSD it affected my marriage, my husband knew something was wrong, as did I, and it led to many arguments. I wasn’t the best mum. Alongside this, I lost my job because I couldn’t return, which has left us short on finances that before the trauma weren’t high earning but covered the food bills. Now we rely solely on my husband’s income”

“PTSD, flashbacks and depression occurred for a long time until I reached out for support over a year and half later with talking therapies where I underwent EMDR. No initial support was given at hospital or afterwards.”

“We just weren’t provided with the support. It took until getting pregnant with my second to be given therapy.”

What the researchers want to happen

Their recommendations are specific. Everyone should be asked about trauma and PTSD during pregnancy and after birth, and treated when they need it. Midwives, obstetricians, health visitors and GPs need training so they can recognise it. More research is needed to check that any screening or treatment brought in actually works. And underneath all of it, fewer births should be traumatic in the first place.

Professor Susan Ayers said: “Unless action is taken to address birth trauma and PTSD, the annual cost of health service use by women and their babies will remain high. Preventing traumatic births and implementing routine screening and treatment for PTSD will both benefit women and families and may begin to bring these costs down.”

Dr Kim Thomas, CEO of the Birth Trauma Association, said the study “shows for the first time the scale of the financial cost of birth trauma to the NHS“, and urged the government “to commission research looking at the wider costs to the economy when women are lost to the job market or their families break-up as a consequence of birth trauma”.

The researchers are open about the limits of what they did. Only a small number of the women in the study had PTSD caused by their birth. They only counted the cost of healthcare, not the cost to families or to the wider economy. And they stopped counting after two years. Their view is that the true cost is almost certainly higher than these figures show.

If this sounds like you

You do not have to explain or justify a traumatic birth to anyone. It does not have to have been an emergency, and nothing has to have gone medically wrong. If it felt frightening, out of control or unsafe to you, that counts. Many people develop Post Traumatic Stress Disorder after a birth that everyone else described as ‘textbook’.

Whether you gave birth last month or fifteen years ago, treatment for PTSD and C-PTSD is available, and you are still entitled to it.

Not sure if what you’re feeling is PTSD? Flashbacks, nightmares, feeling constantly on edge, avoiding anything that reminds you of the birth, going blank or numb, or replaying it over and over are all common signs. Our page on the symptoms of PTSD and C-PTSD goes through them properly, and our page on birth trauma and post natal PTSD covers how this shows up specifically after childbirth.

If you lost a baby, through situations like miscarriage, stillbirth or termination for medical reasons, that can cause PTSD too, and it is frequently missed. We have a separate page on PTSD following pregnancy loss.

If you were the partner in the room, this applies to you as well. Around 5% of partners develop trauma symptoms after witnessing a difficult birth, and almost nobody asks them how they are. Watching someone you love in danger while being unable to do anything is its own kind of trauma. Our page on PTSD in birthing partners is written for you.

Talking to your GP

Book an appointment, and say early on that you think your birth was traumatic and you want to be assessed for PTSD. Naming it matters, because as the research above shows, this is exactly where it tends to get misfiled.

It can help to write down beforehand what you are experiencing, particularly if you experience flashbacks, nightmares and avoidance, because those are the things that point to PTSD rather than to postnatal depression. Take the list in with you.

In England, Maternal Mental Health Services treat psychological difficulties caused by pregnancy and birth, including birth trauma, and you can ask your GP or health visitor for a referral. Many NHS trusts also offer a birth reflections or birth afterthoughts service, where a midwife goes through your notes with you and explains what actually happened. Your maternity unit can tell you whether yours does.

Treatment that works

The NICE guidelines recommend two main talking therapies for PTSD:

• EMDR, or Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing, which helps the brain reprocess a traumatic memory so it stops intruding on the present
• Trauma-focused cognitive behavioural therapy, which works on the thoughts and beliefs the trauma left behind

Antidepressants may help with low mood alongside therapy, but on their own they are not a treatment for PTSD, which is part of why getting the right diagnosis matters so much.

We also have guidance on where to get help, on finding the right therapist, and on other therapies and activities that can ease symptoms while you wait for treatment to start.

A note on language in this article: the research above studied women, and uses the word “women” throughout. We’ve kept that wording when describing what the studies found, so we’re reporting them accurately. Everywhere else we’ve used language that includes everyone who gives birth.