'I could hear voices coming out of the tap' - Mum of three shares terrifying symptoms of postnatal psychosis

Hollie Crawley, a 36-year-old mum has courageously taken to TikTok to share her harrowing experiences with postpartum psychosis, to let others know that "it’s OK to ask for help".

After the birth of her first child, Aidan, now 14, in 2010, Hollie began experiencing what she described as "bad dreams" where she feared she had harmed her son, and these nightmares were so vivid they blurred with reality. "It happened pretty much straight away after he was born," Holly from Lowestoft, Suffolk, said. "I was having a lot of bad dreams but I was getting confused whether they were dreams or things that had actually happened. "I used to dream that I’d hurt him and then I’d wake up paranoid and I’d have to check on him – I couldn’t really tell what was real and what was not." READ MORE: 'Do not' warning issued to anyone drinking Baileys in their home this Christmas Hollie said that it was approximately six weeks later during a routine postpartum check-up that a health visitor noticed her troubling symptoms and referred her to a mental health team through her GP. "My husband picked up that I wasn’t doing so well but we both thought it was hormones – I’d just had a baby, it was our first baby, we didn’t know what to expect," Hollie explained.

She was diagnosed with postpartum psychosis and underwent treatment with antipsychotic medication, therapy, and ECT, which involves passing an electric current through the brain.

The NHS notes that ECT is sometimes used when other treatments have not worked or the situation is life-threatening. "It’s not as horrific as it sounds, you’re completely out with general anaesthetic for it," said Hollie.