Adele Praised For Sharing Friend's Story Of Post-Partum Psychosis
By Ed Biggs in Lifestyle / Showbiz on 16 August 2018
Adele shared the story of her best friend Laura Dockrill, to whose six-month-old son she is godmother.
Adele has been praised by health experts and campaigners for highlighting the issue of post-partum depression and psychosis in new mothers, after sharing the story of her best friend and godson.
Laura Dockrill, a poet, author, illustrator and short story writer and Adele’s best friend since childhood, was diagnosed with post-partum psychosis some months after giving birth to a baby boy, who is Adele’s godson.
The severe condition, which afflicts one in every 1,000 women (0.1%) who have a baby (according to the Royal College of Psychiatrists) includes symptoms of hallucinations, delusions, mania, low moods, loss of appetite, insomnia, feeling suspicious or paranoid, being confused and generally behaving in a way that is out of character.
The hugely popular 30 year old English singer shared the “intimate, witty, heartbreaking and articulate” blog written by her friend about the experience with her 32.6 million followers on Instagram, telling them: “Mamas, talk about how you’re feeling, because in some cases it could save yours or someone else’s life.”
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Dockrill herself later told BBC Radio 1’s Newsbeat that that was Adele who first spotted the signs in her behaviour, after an online conversation they were having. “She recognised it in me. I was on the phone FaceTiming her and she was the first one to detect what I might have,” Dockrill said.
Her blog post said that she “would lie in bed begging my mum to let me die... I have never had those thoughts before in my life and no history of mental illness, this completely took me by surprise and threw me against the rocks.”
Adele herself spoke about her experiences with post-partum depression – a more common but less severe condition than post-partum psychosis – when she gave birth to her son Angelo back in October 2012. She said that, despite loving Angelo “more than anything”, at times she felt she had made “the worst decision” of her life. “I was obsessed with my child. I felt very inadequate,” she said in 2016.
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