Adele posts touching message about her best friend's experience of postpartum psychosis
Adele has shared a touching message about her best friend's struggle with postpartum psychosis after giving birth six months ago.
"This is my best friend," wrote Adele on Instagram. "We have been friends for more of our lives than we haven’t."
Adele wrote that her friend, Laura Dockrill, gave birth to her "beautiful godson" six months ago, which was "the biggest challenge of her life."
"She has written the most intimate, witty, heartbreaking and articulate piece about her experience of becoming a new mum and being diagnosed with postpartum psychosis," she wrote.
Adele also urged mums to talk about their mental health after giving birth because "it could save yours or someone else's life."
Dockrill shared her experience in a blog post.
"Since having my baby boy in February this year I’ve been suffering from and battling against postpartum psychosis," she wrote.
Per the NHS, postpartum psychosis is a rare condition that's considered a "medical emergency."
Symptoms include hallucinations, delusions, a manic mood, and a low mood, according to the NHS. "Don’t worry I had never heard of it either until it tried to ruin my life," wrote Laura.
She described the feelings she began having when she returned home from hospital after a traumatic birth. She said she told her partner Hugo that "something's not right" with her, but she couldn't figure out what was wrong.
"I thought that time would heal," she wrote. "I knew I wasn’t right, I was hiding the congratulations cards and my own air made me feel sick."
Things became much worse, however.
"I started getting severe anxiety attacks believing I was having a heart attack, that my stitches would split in the night, that my baby was going to die because he was so small and if I didn’t feed him 24/7 it would be all my fault," she wrote. "That I was a terrible person and an awful mother."
Laura wrote that she was hospitalised for two weeks following an intervention. She had group therapy. She wrote that talking "has been a huge part" of her recovery. She's now taking medication, seeing "an incredible psychiatrist," and being supported by her family.
"You have to talk," she wrote. "Birth and motherhood is a shock to the system and traumatic and we shouldn’t have to suffer in silence."
If you want to talk to someone or are experiencing suicidal thoughts, text the Crisis Text Line at 741-741 or call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255. If you're in the UK, call the Samaritans on 116 123. For international resources, this list is a good place to start.
Rachel Thompson is the Features Editor at Mashable. Rachel's second non-fiction book The Love Fix: Reclaiming Intimacy in a Disconnected World is out now, published by Penguin Random House in Jan. 2025. The Love Fix explores why dating feels so hard right now, why we experience difficult emotions in the realm of love, and how we can change our dating culture for the better.
A leading sex and dating writer in the UK, Rachel has written for GQ, The Guardian, The Sunday Times Style, The Telegraph, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Stylist, ELLE, The i Paper, Refinery29, and many more.
Rachel's first book Rough: How Violence Has Found Its Way Into the Bedroom And What We Can Do About It, a non-fiction investigation into sexual violence was published by Penguin Random House in 2021.
