Kerry McCarthy
“The despair and the anxiety set in immediately, and it never lessened. It never got better for years. I never got treatment. I never had a six-week postpartum checkup; I didn't put myself in front of a doctor for three years. I was one of the ones who slipped through the cracks.”
Kerry McCarthy is the Founder and Executive Director of the newly established Perinatal Wellness Support Center of the Cape and Islands. This agency offers a range of programs and services tailored to support women and birthing persons throughout the Cape and Islands region, all provided at no cost to recipients. The primary goal of the Center is to improve outcomes related to maternal mental health during the perinatal period.
Kerry earned her Master's Degree in Social Work from Boston University and is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker. Her expertise lies in Perinatal Mental Health, and she has undergone specialized training through organizations such as Postpartum Support International and The Karen Kleiman Postpartum Stress Center. Kerry, along with her husband, David, and their beloved daughter, resides in Barnstable, along with their cat, "Fluffy."
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.
April 2024 | Interviewed and edited by Jessie Colbert, Executive Director, Mass. PPD Fund
Kerry McCarthy is a Licensed Social Worker, survivor of Perinatal Mood and Anxiety Disorders (PMADs), Coordinator of the Cape and Islands Perinatal Wellness Alliance, Steering Committee Member of the Massachusetts Mind the Gap Coalition, and the founder of the new Cape Cod and Islands Perinatal Wellness Support Center. The Mass. PPD Fund has been lucky to have various partnerships with Cape advocates over the years, and it has been exciting to see the growth of programming and support under Kerry’s leadership.
Kerry’s story is unique among our Amplifying blog posts in that, although she did eventually figure out that she was experiencing PMADs, she never got help. But unfortunately, this probably makes her story more typical for moms facing these mental health challenges. Our interview gets into how suddenly her mental health collapsed after her daughter’s birth, how she made her way to the other side, and all the great work she’s doing to make sure other local parents have the comprehensive support she didn’t.
Did you have expectations about bringing home a new baby? What were your hopes and fears?
My husband and I experienced a three-year infertility journey, with one miscarriage as well. When we did finally get pregnant, I'll be honest, I didn't really think too much about when she arrived. I was so fixated on the labor and delivery. I'd say the first half [of the pregnancy] was kind of fraught with a little bit of like, let's just wait and see.
Once I started showing at that 20-week mark, then I really had an amazing pregnancy. I loved being pregnant! I kind of knew in the back of my head it was probably going to be the only time I was pregnant. So really, the pregnancy itself was unremarkable outside of being deemed “geriatric” by the doctors because I was 37.
We explored the Falmouth maternity unit, and the OB at the time said to me, Well, let's not get ahead of ourselves. You have a miscarriage history. We don't even know if this will be a viable pregnancy. I looked at my husband and I was like, We're done.
So, I very happily went up to Cambridge Birth Center when that was still [open], and I had the most incredible prenatal care. As far as hopes and fears, my biggest hope was just that she was healthy, and my fears were connected to my hopes. We did all the typical things of getting ready, but I just thought it was going to be a smooth transition, just an arrival of an extra member of our family. But that's not what wound up happening.
That’s related to my next question: there’s usually so much planning for the baby, but did you think about, or plan for, the support you might need as a new mom?
I was actually in my grad school program for Social Work at BU at the time, so I'm studying mental health, but they don't talk about maternal mental health at all. And as wonderful as my midwife was, she never brought it up either. I just went into the whole experience with zero expectation or preparation about the possibility of anything developing.
Tell me about your journey with mental health challenges around your new baby. When did you realize something was “not right”?
I had a great pregnancy, I had great prenatal care. But my labor was ultimately 42 hours with three hours of pushing. And I wasn't laboring in a hospital or at the Birth Center because of the dynamic between Cambridge Hospital and the Birth Center – I was laboring in a hotel and waiting rooms. She ended up being birthed at Cambridge Hospital because eventually I threw the towel in and said, I need an epidural.
After my daughter was born, I remember the deepest depths of despair that I had ever experienced, coupled with the highest level of anxiety I had ever experienced. I think part of it was just the pure physical exhaustion of what I had been through. I remember that those feelings were immediately followed with the thought of, like, I’ve never been so inept at something in my life. But the labor was what it was – I had a tough labor.
The despair and the anxiety set in immediately, and it never lessened. It never got better for years. I never got treatment. I never had a six-week postpartum checkup; I didn't put myself in front of a doctor for three years. I was one of the ones who slipped through the cracks.
Oh my goodness, Kerry, I’m so sorry. Given that you never got treatment, how long did your mental health challenges last? How did you get through it?
I think mine really lasted for about four years, getting slowly better. I don’t know how I got through it. You just get up every day and you put one foot in front of the other. You know, I'm launching this Perinatal Wellness Support Center, and our tagline is, Come as you are, because I remember when I would leave my house, I always pretended to be better than I was. I would sort of play a game in my head: Can they tell how sick I am?
My support system was small, but I had a very solid support system: it was my husband and my mother. My husband's a pilot so he's gone 50% of the time, so my mom would literally move in half the week. And as wonderful as they were as supports, nobody ever asked how I was.
My husband eventually started to understand what was happening, but it was many, many months later. My daughter was probably about 10 months old. One of my one of my features for my maternal mental health is I had a tremendous amount of rage. We were in the midst of some fight, and he's like, Do you think this might be postpartum? I remember he kind of winced, because he was expecting this, like, enormous rageful response. And I was like, That’s what's happening. It was like the clouds broke. But I still never got help, I never went to a doctor about it. I didn't know it was treatable.
Outwardly I probably had the appearance of functioning, but internally, it was the most profound suffering I've ever been through. One of my coping strategies is that I tend to intellectualize things: if I understand something, then I don't have to feel it. It was like, Okay, this is postpartum. You know what it is, now you have to deal with it. I’m a social worker, and I never would have told [another social worker because I’d worry], Are they going to take my baby away because I can't do this?
When things did improve, and what did that look like?
Kind of coming out of the fog; things sort of started to dissipate. Like, the rage minimized, and then something else minimized, and then the anxiety and the just chronic uncomfortable feeling in my own skin. I mean, she's gonna be nine tomorrow. . . I would say it was just time. I don't even really know how to put that into words. You know, just living through it. I don't feel like my story is unique. There’s so many women that are suffering in silence, because they don't know any better.
Looking back, what do you wish you had known? What do you wish others around you had known or done?
I really wish that it had been mentioned to me in the prenatal period, that the number one complication in the postpartum period is PMADs [Perinatal Mood and Anxiety Disorders]. You know, I would have done my own research on it, I would have prepared for it. I would have at least had an awareness.
For me, one of the saddest points is that somebody would have asked. When my husband realized I wasn't okay, he said, Rosalie [Kerry’s mom], I think Kerry’s struggling with postpartum. And she said, No, David, I’m here, I’m keeping a close eye on her. I don't fault my mother; she comes from her own generation. What that says is just her own lack of understanding, and that as a society, we're not normalizing this and talking about it. I had many moments in the early days with my daughter that I would look back and think, I wonder if my mom [experienced PMADs], because there were certain things that happened. She divorced my father when I was three months old.
But yeah, but I really wish that I had been given the information in the prenatal period. I wish that when my husband was googling What the heck is wrong with my wife? at three o'clock in the morning, something came up for him. I wish he had somewhere to turn to learn about it. And I really wish somebody had asked me, How are you doing? Back then, most of my friends didn't have children yet, it wasn't on any of my friends’ radar. It just didn't occur to anyone to ask.
What are some changes we can make collectively to improve things for perinatal people experiencing PMADs?
I really think that we need to normalize this for women and birthing persons more in our society. Everybody needs to understand that this is the number one complication in the postpartum period. I do recognize there's a spectrum, and my depression is going to be very different from someone else's depression or anxiety or OCD, or whatever it is. I don't personally support the current statistics [1 in 5 moms] because we're not properly, universally, comprehensively screening women. I believe anecdotally that these numbers are far closer to 50%. I believe that we have a large amount of people suffering in silence.
We also need to have a much more robust network of prescribers and providers that are properly educated, properly trained. Part of my work is trying to offer professional development trainings in our region. Last fall I organized a training with Dr. Marlene Freeman from the MGH Center for Women’s Mental Health and PSI (Postpartum Support International) to try and build up the network of properly trained prescribers on the Cape and Islands. It was a free training, and I had great attendance, but I didn't have anyone show up from Cape Cod Health Care. I had people from Romania, Hawaii, and North Dakota, and I didn’t have anyone from my own backyard! That was very disappointing, because I know that we don't have a properly trained staff on the subject on the Cape. OBs kick it to the primaries [Primary Care Physicians], the primaries kick it back. Nobody's really taking ownership of this in the medical field.
Yes, it’s such a challenge! Can you share more about the overall mission of your new Perinatal Wellness Support Center?
What I'm trying to do is build what I wish my husband and I had access to nine years ago. Our goal is to positively enhance outcomes related to maternal mental health in the perinatal period. We’re going to offer five free programs. We have support groups on the Cape for mothers with a new baby up to one year, and we’ll be expanding those to the Islands this year as well.
We have a postpartum in-home doula program that we partner with an agency called Monumental Beginnings. We're working very diligently right now to expand the doula workforce into the Portuguese, Haitian Creole, and Spanish-speaking communities across our region, to be able to deliver our services in a very culturally meaningful and relevant way.
In January I also launched a perinatal education program, and this is where I'm marrying crucial information about maternal mental health that expectant folks should know about, with information they want to know about. Our main topic is maternal mental health, and then each week I bring in a guest speaker on topics that they want to know about – breastfeeding, formula feeding, pelvic floor specialists, things of that nature. That's kind of the carrot that gets people to attend.
And then I'm in the process of developing an in-home clinical program. This is where we will provide eight free sessions of therapy in the home by a clinician certified in perinatal mental health, and then if folks need additional support after that, we’ll refer out to the community.
This winter we had four calls about women in acute perinatal distress. What we’ve done sort of informally is shown up within 24 hours with a care team – with a doula, with a pediatric sleep consultant, with a therapist, and with education for themselves and the families and a wraparound care program. Two of the moms wound up going into the partial hospitalization program out of Providence [Women & Infants Day Hospital], so we helped coordinate that. So based off this need, we’re developing an emergency in-home response program for women in perinatal distress.
Lastly, because right now we only have five PMHCs – clinicians certified in Perinatal Mental Health – on the Cape and Islands, and two of them are in private practice, I'm offering a scholarship so that we can build up the network of informed clinicians to be able to support the women and birthing persons across our region.
Do you identify as a “survivor” of a perinatal mood disorder?
Yes, I absolutely consider myself a survivor because of the very, very dark place that I've been to and come back from.