For Mental Health Awareness Week, Legal Week has invited law firm partners to talk about how mental health issues have impacted their careers and the coping strategies they have adopted. Here, Baker McKenzie IP partner Michelle Blunt discusses her experience of post-natal depression

I had post-natal depression seven years ago after the birth of my first son. Nothing dramatic had happened during my pregnancy, but I felt really miserable after he was born. People said, 'everyone gets tired, it's just the baby blues', but it was awful.

For me, it was very anxiety-driven. I couldn't sleep and, when I did, I would wake up having panic attacks. We were fortunate enough to be able to have a night nanny, but I still couldn't rest. I felt it was an absolute disaster and felt completely irrational – I didn't want to be on my own at any time, but I had no real awareness of what was wrong.

I had really good post-natal care, and at my 10-week checkup I was referred to a psychiatrist and put on medication, which took me three weeks to get used to. During that period, I felt like I was losing my mind. It definitely got worse before it got better, and it was one of the most terrifying things I've ever been through. But then it started to improve and I was able to enjoy being a mum to my lovely boy.

To find I couldn't cope was frightening and humbling

The experience shook me. I value being smart, calm and able to take things in my stride. To find I couldn't cope was frightening and humbling. I'd never given a great deal of thought to taking care of mental health before I went through that and it changed me in a lot of ways, some of which are most certainly for the better. I'm much more attuned to my own mental wellbeing and that of people in my team. I feel very passionate about it.

When I came back after maternity leave, I felt it was important to look out for others. If women I knew were going on maternity leave, I would usually try to have a chat with them about what different people's experiences can be and share that it had been hard for me, or sometimes just add a note when sending them a card after they gave birth. When I was struggling I found it helpful to hear from other people who had had similar experiences. It's really very common, so I wanted to make sure I shared that with others where I could.

I'd talked to individuals about my experience, but I hadn't shared my experience more broadly. But then my firm participated in the 'This Is Me' campaign two years ago. It felt like the right time to tell my story and to help with the message that taking medication when needed is not the end of the world. There were about 14 of us who shared our different stories and we had an overwhelming response from people, many saying they had also suffered in some way or were close to someone who had.

Taking medication when needed is not the end of the world

The experience has meant I don't take my wellbeing for granted. I pay more attention to how eating, sleeping, exercising and relaxing impacts on how well my brain is working. Our jobs rely on our minds and keeping them at their best is complicated, but vital. We all function well or not so well depending on a range of factors and I feel society in general doesn't do enough in the workplace to help people find the best balance for that, particularly with the rate of change being driven by technology.

At a firm level we have all sorts of great initiatives and support available – training programmes on mindfulness and sessions on the importance of sleep etc – but you have to role-model the right behaviours from the very top too. It's good to have a focus on work/life balance, but if I then walk around as department manager giving people extra work when they're already at breaking point, or work right through my holidays, that undermines the message.

Every Monday morning we have a departmental chat about the week ahead and we always try to weave in some aspect of wellbeing. I've particularly been encouraging the idea of 'old-fashioned' holidays, where people hand over their work before going away, so they can have real downtime. Constantly being online and available is destructive. It's about encouraging people to have boundaries – and we need our most senior people to do that too so that the culture really changes.

Michelle Blunt is a partner in Baker McKenzie's London IP practice.

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