[2025] EWHC 2219 (Fam)

Dr. Kolkiewicz assessed M to fulfil the diagnostic criteria for a Moderate Depressive Episode Without Somatic Syndrome. Her current functioning was in keeping with a Mild to Moderate Depressive Episode “because she is continuing to meet the parenting needs of her son and is (sic) the obligations of her employment.” This chronic depressive disorder “is generally well managed” with treatment with antidepressant medication. She concludes that M’s prognosis “will be good as long as she continues to take antidepressants long-term at a dose that can control her symptoms”. The report goes onto state that “a return to Australia will act as an additional stressor that will maintain or worsen [M’s] anxiety and depression because she will be returning to a country in which her current immigration status does not provide the opportunity to work” and that “this will place her at an increased risk of worsening depression including a lack of recovery, until matters relating to [A’s] long-term care are resolved”. Dr. Kolkiewicz therefore concluded that “in my opinion a return to Australia will have a detrimental psychological impact on [M’s] mental health and is likely to result in increased levels of anxiety and depression including somatisation”. Dr. Kolkiewicz recorded that on a screening tool Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) should be “suspected” but her opinion was that M did not fulfil the ICD 10 criteria for PTSD because the stressors she has been exposed to could not be described as events of an exceptionally threatening or catastrophic nature which are likely to cause pervasive stress in almost anyone.