Perinatal mental health week

23–29 November 2025

Perinatal Mental Health Week was created to help the community and health professionals to better understand perinatal mental health, or the social and emotional wellbeing of a person from conception up to one year after childbirth.

The interaction between adult mental health issues, children and parenting is complex. Our Supporting infants and toddlers course explores the impact of mental illness on families, explaining attachment and principles of sensitive communication with parents regarding the needs of their children. It also shares parenting interventions and strategies to effectively support families.

If you are a non-Indigenous practitioner working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families, you may be interested in our course Replanting the Birthing Trees. This course explores the impacts of intergenerational trauma on parenting while using a strengths-based approach that recognises the resilience of individuals and communities. The course aims to build your skills in culturally safe, trauma-integrated, holistic and transdisciplinary care for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families.

Those interested in learning how historical challenges and disadvantage within families can influence parenting and impact children’s wellbeing may want to take a look at Intergenerational mental health. This course supports you to apply three elements of an ‘intergenerational lens’ to your work, to positively influence the parent–child relationship and children’s mental health.

By supporting parents to understand the importance of the parent–child relationship and identify their preferred ways of parenting, while also considering intergenerational impacts, we can improve future outcomes for infants and toddlers’ mental health.