Women’s History Month 2024: Dr. Jeanne Watson Driscoll
“The experience of becoming a mother, pregnant and postpartum, is a holistic, environmental shift in your reality. It's not just hormones, it's everything. I would love for every woman to be pregnant and postpartum in a loving community. That she didn't have to ask for anything, that things were offered first.“
Dr. Jeanne Watson Driscoll received her Bachelor of Science in Nursing from the University of Delaware, her Master of Science Degree in Adult Psychiatric-Mental Health Nursing from Boston College, and her Doctorate in Nursing Degree from the University of Connecticut. She had been involved in the psychiatric-mental health care of women during their reproductive years for over thirty years by providing psychotherapy, psychopharmacology, education and consultation. She closed her private practice in 2017 but continues to provide education and consultation in her specialty area: women’s mental health.
Dr. Watson Driscoll is the author of many clinical papers in addition to the publication of the following books: Taking Care of your new baby with Marsha Walker; Women’s Moods with Deborah Sichel; Postpartum Mood and Anxiety Disorders: A Clinician’s Guide with Cheryl Tatano Beck; and Traumatic Childbirth with Cheryl Tatano Beck and Sue Watson. Additionally, she is known for her video productions via Lifecycle Productions, Inc.: Postpartum: A Bittersweet Experience; Diapers and Delirium; Breastfeeding: Better Beginnings; Fragile Beginnings: Postpartum Mood and Anxiety Disorders.
This blog is made possible by a sponsorship from Sage Therapeutics, Inc. and Biogen Inc. All content on this page has been curated by the Mass. PPD Fund without input from Sage Therapeutics, Inc. or Biogen Inc.
March 2024 | Interviewed and edited by Jessie Colbert, Executive Director, Mass. PPD Fund
For Women’s History Month, the Mass. PPD Fund is proud to present an interview with Dr. Jeanne Watson Driscoll, one of the founding mothers of scholarship, treatment, and advocacy around perinatal mood and anxiety disorders. Jeanne is a Psychiatric-Mental Health Advanced Practice Registered Nurse (PMH-APRN) who literally wrote the book on perinatal mood disorders with her seminal publication with Dr. Cheryl Beck, Postpartum Mood and Anxiety Disorders: A Clinician’s Guide. Her written work, expertise, and legacy is even broader, addressing the transition to parenthood, Women’s Moods, breastfeeding, and more.
Jeanne was involved in the founding of Postpartum Support International (PSI) and the establishment the lactation consultant profession in the 1980s. She has helped innumerable women and families with her teaching, books, videos, and 40 years in private practice in the Boston area. Her interest in the field was sparked by her own postpartum experience, characterized by anxiety and obsessive thoughts before the terminology or diagnoses for those challenges existed. In this interview, Jeanne lends her trademark humor and no-nonsense style to the story of her early career, her quest to better understand her own and other women’s postpartum experiences, and her hopes for the future of how we treat mothers and families.
Let’s start with your early career. Can you share what initially drew you to psychiatric nursing?
I took the exam to be an LPN [Licensed Practical Nurse] while I was in college. I fell in love with medical-surgical nursing and coronary care and intensive care and ER, and I did that every summer and every school vacation. I graduated from college and moved to Boston, and started at the Deaconess Hospital. I also went to teach med-surg nursing at the Faulker, but I thought, I'm not sure I want to do all this when I get older. I wanted to do something else, I wasn’t sure what.
My mentor in college was my psych clinical practice professor. My nursing curriculum was based a lot on interpersonal skills and relationships; the nurse was really critical in the mental health of the patient. While I was working in the Deaconess, I thought, Okay, I think it's time to get my master's degree. The question was, do I get it in cardiac nursing or psych nursing? I ended up applying to Boston University and Boston College – one was for critical care, one was for psych.
In the meantime, I got married. I got accepted to BC [for psych], but then couldn't take it because I didn't get back to them fast enough – I was on vacation. Then they called me up and said someone had been in an accident and if I wanted to come, I could come. So of course, I did that, which was [paid for by] a National Science Foundation grant.
Wow, that was lucky! And is that when you started your family?
Yes, after that I got pregnant, which was very exciting. In April 1976 I gave birth to Lorrie. The tough part was I had a spinal for the birth, because the doctors did it that way 48 years ago. I had even gone to birthing classes to have a natural childbirth, but they didn't do that. I had a spinal headache for a month, which didn't help my postpartum experience! I came home from the hospital with a headache, feeling like somebody sucked my brains out, breastfeeding with such sore, bleeding nipples. I started to experience anxiety that something bad was going to happen to Lorrie, or that I could do something to hurt her, like squeeze her too hard.
My husband was a teacher, so he was gone from eight to three. He would come home from work, and I would go out to CVS. That was my therapy. I'd walk around and take a little break and then come back home. When he was home, I was fine. I never shared any of [the anxiety] with him because I thought, Oh, this is just goofy. It's gonna go away. But then I started to be more anxious. I tried to get some therapy, [but the therapist] was not very aware or understanding and it just didn’t work, so I left that.
I went back to teaching part time, and things quieted down after about a year or so. I got pregnant again, and Katie was a natural childbirth because I was not going to have a headache again. This was 1978, and I felt wonderful, it felt like a great accomplishment that I birthed without any meds. But after a couple of weeks, the anxiety came back. Again, it was just these worries about something bad happening – thoughts I now know are obsessive worries and concerns. There were times I would be on the road by myself and think, Let's just drive into the traffic, that would be fine. So there was a layer of depression. But again, I’m not sharing this with anyone because somebody would take my kids away. [My husband] David was wonderfully supportive, but he didn't even know. It just eventually went away.
But that sparked your interest in understanding more about women’s postpartum adjustment and mental health, right? How did that interest evolve?
[I wondered], What the hell is going on? I had a Master's in Psychiatric Nursing, a Bachelor of Nursing. I started reviewing my textbooks, I went to the library, and all I could find in those days was postpartum baby blues, postpartum depression, and postpartum psychosis. I knew I didn't have psychosis because I knew these thoughts were weird. I knew that I was kind of depressed, but I saw it more as anxiety and worry.
I went back to teaching. I had a lot of these little part-time jobs in the evening, so we didn't have to worry about childcare. Then a friend of mine said, You should go to the Nursing Mothers’ Council, which was part of the Boston Association of Childbirth Education – this was ’78-‘79. So I started to go to those meetings, and I met a woman named Marsha Walker. The two of us started Lactation Associates, which was a business educating people about breastfeeding. My approach was very much based on physiology. I thought that if you knew what your body was going to do, you could problem-solve. I also listened more and more to people’s anxiety and worries. Remember, I'm really into relational connection and emotions, and being able to talk about all that. Marsha and I started giving conferences, and that evolved into publishing. It was a really great collaboration.
And then I started teaching childbirth classes at the Lying-in Hospital [now part of Brigham and Women's]. I'm reading every book I could read, learning everything I can – this is all self-taught. At that time, there was only one book on postpartum, New Mother Syndrome by Carol Dix. Then I got a job teaching 50 moms and dads a day parenting education. I loved my classes because I could talk about the not-so-nice things, and the good things. We used a lot of humor, just helping people on the transition to parenthood.
At that time, I was teaching Saturday, Sunday, and Monday so I could pick up my kids at school, because I didn’t want to get childcare. You have to be a licensed pediatrician to watch my kids! I was so anxious about leaving them with anybody. Every other day was breastfeeding education. Remember, this is all before IBCLCs, lactation consultants – that all came in the 80s. Marsha and I were involved in writing the [certification] tests and the whole development of that.
The teaching role evolved into a mental health consultant to the nursing staff. I'd bring people into my office to help them with breastfeeding. I listened to so many stories, and I heard more and more women talk about obsessive thoughts, and anxiety, and I learned more about postpartum depression. And I started to realize there was this whole area of just adjusting to becoming a mom that nobody really talked about. We sent people home [from the hospital after] three days, Good luck, have fun! I did a lot of counseling on the phone, evolving more this field of postpartum mental illness.
That’s amazing, Jeanne. And how did your work then intersect with other efforts in this new field?
In 1986 I went to a meeting in Trenton, New Jersey of Depression After Delivery, which was a grassroots group started by Nancy Berchtold, who had postpartum psychosis and no one talked about it. She pulled together this group of professionals, women, and husbands and partners of people who had lived with postpartum mood and anxiety disorders. After it merged with Jane Honikman’s group, Postpartum Education for Parents, that ultimately became Postpartum Support International. I became involved with these organizations in about ’84-‘85 as they evolved and developed and became real.
In the meantime, one of my patients in the hospital was a producer with NBC, Nancy Fernandez Mills, and we decided to start a video production company, Lifecycle Productions. We produced the first video, called Postpartum, a Bittersweet Experience, which was me giving my parenting education class as well as mental health education on becoming a mom and a dad. The video took off, and ended up being purchased all over the United States and Canada, which then led to me being invited to give talks. The presentations evolved to include women's nursing, mental health, burnout, and motivation; I just kept enlarging the repertoire. We did a few more videos, we did one on postpartum mood and anxiety disorders. At that time Deborah Sichel and I had started the mother-baby unit at HRI Hospital in Brookline – it was the first one in the United States — that was in the video. But that unit didn't last, because it was costing the small private hospital too much money, and in the late ‘80s insurances weren't even acknowledging that postpartum existed.
So now I'm evolving the lactation consulting profession with Marsha, we’re flying all over, meeting all these international lactation people. I'm learning more and more, and bringing up postpartum mental illnesses everywhere I go, using humor and education as a way to talk about some really serious stuff. Our video company didn't survive because Disney started to make all these $29.95 videos, and we couldn't keep up. Then I decided to go into private practice with Deborah Sichel, who was a psychiatrist I met at the Brigham, and my colleague, Kathy O’Meara. We started a group practice in Newton, and had that for about 40 years.
Can you share more about your first book, and how your field continued to evolve after that?
In 1999, Deborah and I wrote Women’s Moods, the result of all my experience. It brought to fruition to me how I felt like the mind-body were connected, that there was a physiology to the mood and anxiety disorders, as well as a psychology and a sociology. That women were not supported at all. We have this fantasy that you have a baby and you're supposed to be so happy, like Leave It to Beaver-land. And the reality is that postpartum is laden with grief and loss, and mourning who you used to be and who you're becoming, and it's in a world of total isolation.
[I also worked] politically with my nursing organizations to get third-party reimbursement for insurance. And then we also got prescription writing, which was a great privilege because now I could do the therapy as well as the medication if needed. I just loved helping women with their postpartum adjustments, and I did that until I retired in 2016. I had some patients for over 20 years, we dealt with menopause. It was just a wonderful, wonderful profession.
When I started, the DSM, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, didn't even have postpartum depression in the glossary! So watching that evolution, though it's still not a diagnosis per se [in the DSM it is a modifier/subtype of depression]. It’s kind of this insidious misogyny that women are not really that important, that what they go through doesn't matter. That was something that I was always fighting, trying to raise the level of awareness.
Eventually, Dr. Lee Cohen started the Center for Women’s Mental Health at Mass General. We were on many panels together, many talks. The other person I spent time with was Dr. Barry Brazelton, he was my hero! He would introduce me and say, This is Jeanne Driscoll, and she goes through the brain to get to the breast. I worked with Ed Tronick, did talks with him. I was really given an opportunity to turn some really horrible years into some amazing experiences, and I have absolutely no regrets. I feel like I really helped many, many people. It was just my passion, and I would talk to anybody who wanted to talk about it.
What an incredible role you played! I’d love to learn more about your NURSE (Nourishment, Understanding, Relaxation, Spirituality, and Exercise) regimen, and how that fit into your clinical work and overall philosophy. And how does psychiatric medication fit into your healing model?
I came up with that NURSE acronym because to me, that is the care plan. The experience of becoming a mother, pregnant and postpartum, is a holistic, environmental shift in your reality. It affects your body, your soul, and your life, all the people around you. It's not just hormones, it's everything. It's access to care, it’s what community you live in, your socioeconomic status, what your resources are. And every woman comes into this with her own experience. There’s too much projecting and assuming you know what people are living, and you really don't know unless they share that with you. Providing mental health services requires a lot of trust, a lot of support, and a lot of sacredness to the relationship.
I was talking to women about their Nourishment, what were they eating? Then, Understanding: understanding the physiology of your body and your brain, and what happens with the hormones, why there's highs and lows, how you can be empowered with knowledge of your body. Relaxation; women don't get enough sleep, they don't get enough rest.
Then we talk about prayer, Spirituality, whatever women define as their higher power. For me it’s watching the moon rise, the sunrise, the ocean – finding things that made them feel. And Exercise. These are things we should all be doing to help our brains. Every week we'd go over their plan and how they were doing. So that was an evolution of my own clinical practice that I brought into the book with Deborah.
Medication is an interesting topic. I think we've moved to where we use medicine as this panacea. Unfortunately, [medications] are not always prescribed well, they're not often prescribed at the right dosages, so that they don't have the real therapeutic effect. You’ve got to do a holistic treatment plan. As somebody who’s spent 25-30 years prescribing to women, there's a really unique science to medicate a woman, with her hormonal variations and shifts, because dosages change, issues change based on the menstrual cycle, and most providers don't consider that. There’s very little research done on pharmaceuticals with women.
Overall, do you feel like we're making progress on supporting new moms with mental health challenges? What are some ways things have gotten better, and some ways moms are still suffering and people don't "get it"?
I think we've come a long way since I started. The fact that we even talk about it is a big thing. Any woman who has a history of anxiety or worry is at risk when she has a baby, whether she's got a [prior] diagnosis or not. I think we have to increase awareness with women of Color, and also with gay, lesbian, non-binary parents. We still have women who can't find treatment, it’s this issue of reimbursement and insurance. We still don't value mental health as a culture. They shut all the [psychiatric] hospitals, we have very little facilities to help people if they have a severe psychiatric illness, especially a mother-baby [unit]. We don’t have enough support, it’s just a very lonely time in one’s life.
The other dilemma that I experienced was that people get assessed [at the OB], but then no one follows up. I always wanted to be the psych nurse in an OB/GYN practice so that I could see every patient that came through with an assessment and evaluation. Even in my private practice, I would call my patients once or twice a week just to check in. Women need to be cared for, and our healthcare providers need to provide the care. People don't look for that relational connection. It’s just, Here's the pills, see you later. That breaks my heart. I think that has to do with how we treat women and children in our country.
Definitely. What advice would you have for pregnant or postpartum people out there today? Their partners?
It's funny, yesterday I was in church, there was this couple with a little baby, and the baby's making noise and they were getting so upset. And I said, She's just praying, she’s fine! I think that [parenting can be a] performance model. I would say to parents, first of all, love each other, because this is a tough journey. Get ready, buckle up because it’s one hell of a ride! And I would tell them to try to decrease their expectations. The house is going to look like crap, and who cares!? As long as you're loving each other. It doesn't matter if the baby has fancy clothes, as long as they're held.
I'm big on journaling for moms, even if they need to shred every page they write. I’d tell my patients to take the sheets that you wrote on with all the F-words and put them in a tin can and burn them, because then you feel like you're offering that up to the goddesses. You need to get it out, whatever you’re feeling is okay. Feelings aren't facts and they can't hurt you.
And the guys, too. You’ve never seen the woman you love in that kind of pain, having a baby, and there's nothing you can do. Then when you get home, try to help her! This is a new job and you don’t know how to do it, it takes at least a year to figure it out. The big part is to know that you're not alone. Have some people you can call. If you have a good relationship with your mother, that's sometimes a good place to go. This is a hard thing. Women really don't share how horrible it is, because I think nobody would have another baby. And then we go back for more, but physically and mentally it changes you forever. There's good parts and bad parts and it's okay, trying to find that gray.
Your legacy in the field is just huge. What piece of that is most important to you? What is your biggest wish?
I would love for every woman to be pregnant and postpartum in a loving community. That she didn't have to ask for anything, that things were offered first. That we valued families and parenthood and motherhood, that we gave that the honor.
I just really feel so honored that [my patients] let me into their lives, and that we could all share, because I think I prevented some mood and anxiety disorders. Educating my nurse colleagues, and social workers and psychologists and physicians, just becoming aware. I just really feel very fortunate that I was able to have the career that I had, and be seen and heard and invited to help teach people. I mean, the videos were so powerful. I would get on planes and people would say, Did you make a video about becoming a parent in a hospital? It was just a wonderful, amazing opportunity. When I look back at it think, Who the hell could have planned for that? Wouldn’t have been me!