We are here to help women start their own healing process

Birth Trauma Counselling centre is based in Surbiton, Surrey in the South West of London. Run exclusively by volunteers it is a self-run project to help mothers to find their first steps of recovery after a traumatic birth experience. Some of these traumatized mothers show some signs of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and others fit the full description of DSMIV criteria.

Our female professional counsellors use different counselling approaches (Person-Centred, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) and techniques combined with years of experience in the field.

We receive calls from all parts of UK as far as Ireland and Scotland. Our aim is to be a listening ear for women in crisis traumatized by childbirth. We open only Mondays but we would like to be more available due to the demand at present. We lack facilities and funding and therefore we can only offer crisis counselling, a one-off visit or telephone call. Although some women have taken three to four consecutive sessions.

Opening Hours: Mondays 9.30am-12pm and 8pm-9pm

 If you need to make an appointment for yourself please contact Birth Trauma Counselling directly. A counselling session fee is normally £35, telephone counselling fee is £25. We are a non-profit organization therefore we would ask you to match this fee with a donation in order to carry on helping other mothers with traumatic childbirth experiences in the UK. But if you can't afford this amount, please still contact to receive counselling.

  We accept referrals from GPs, hospital, schools, churches and other organizations

The NHS is responding to a surge in cases of birth trauma by setting up specialist support services to reduce the rising demand for a caesarean delivery from those who, after a bad experience, are scared to undergo labour again.
Midwives say increasing numbers of women are so badly affected by their first experience of birth that they are postponing for years, or abandoning, plans to have any more children.

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Why do we help women who have experience a traumatic birth?

Because...

 Up to 30% of women show trauma symptoms after childbirth 1
  (this means 200,000 women each year)

2% - show severity to fit full DSM-IV *
  (this means 10,000 women each year)

16% of children aged under 16 experienced sexual abuse during childhood 2

11% of boys aged under 16 and 21% of girls aged under 16 experienced sexual abuse during childhood 2

There are only two organizations helping women with postnatal traumas, Birth Trauma Counselling is one of them.

1 Office for National Statistics, based on 650,000 births per year in England and Wales, Ayers and Pickering, 2001; Loveland Cook, 2004*Data and Scale of Mental Health by the American Association of Psychiatry
2 Cawson, P. et al. (2000) Child maltreatment in the United Kingdom: a study of the prevalence of child abuse and neglect. London: NSPCC. p.85.