Leading with Lived Experience: Perinatal Mental Health, Peer Support, and Hope with Wendy Davis, CEO of Postpartum Support International

Wendy Davis, PhD, PMH-C, is the President and CEO of Postpartum Support International (PSI), an organization dedicated to supporting the mental health of people during pregnancy and the postpartum period. Under her leadership, PSI connects families with resources, offers professional training, and promotes mental health support for a strong and healthy start to parenthood.

Dr. Davis brings vision and guidance to PSI’s team, chapters, and experts, helping to expand access to education, support, and care for individuals and families during this important time. Her passion for this work began with her own experience—she became a perinatal mental health specialist after recovering from postpartum depression and anxiety herself.

Wendy started Oregon’s first peer support group for new parents, Baby Blues Connection, and continues to advocate for the power of peer support and lived experience in healing. She works closely with healthcare providers, community groups, and government leaders to improve care and shape policy around perinatal mental health.

She also leads the PSI Mind the Gap Initiative, a national effort to bring together organizations and experts to ensure perinatal mental health remains a top priority.

You can reach Dr. Davis at wdavis@postpartum.net.

Transcript

Wendy Davis: 0:00

One in 500 moms gets postpartum psychosis. If these numbers are so high and higher probably than the research has already shown us, then we should be talking about this, like we talk about a fever, like we talk about diabetes. We should be talking about mental health in general.

Unknown: 0:23

Welcome to perinatal and reproductive perspectives. This is a podcast where we empower birthing individuals, partners and health professionals with evidence based insights, holistic strategies and relatable stories, hosted by a healthcare expert. This podcast fosters understanding equity and growth in perinatal and reproductive health. Here's your host, Becky Morrison GED.

Rebecca Gleed: 0:55

For anyone tuning in today, we are in for a special treat because we are covering everything perinatal mental health with Wendy Davis, who is the CEO and President of Postpartum Support International. Welcome, Wendy,

Wendy Davis: 1:10

hi. I'm so glad to be here with you. Rebecca,

Rebecca Gleed: 1:14

yeah, likewise, tell our audience a little bit about yourself and what brought you into the space of perinatal mental health.

Wendy Davis: 1:23

Well, I am a mom of two. I live in Portland, Oregon, and I am psychologist by training. Actually, my first career was as a waitress. I'm just laughing because shout out to waitresses and all servers and restaurant workers, because I feel like sometimes that's my best training. And I could go on and the analogies about that, but it really helps me run an international nonprofit, to be honest. So my original training is as a waitress, and then I became a therapist. And as a therapist, I specialized in depression, anxiety, transitions and creative process, performance, blocks and creativity and very happy in one to one therapy practice. I also worked in community mental health, and I worked a lot. I studied a lot in Dream Therapy and Jungian psychology. I've kind of had a really well rounded training in psychology, including developmental psychology. And when I went to college, I majored in psychobiology, I really was interested in how the brain and body work together. So you could see I just have always had more or less a very holistic view of being and mental health included in that. So here I am happily in my therapy practice, and when I had my first baby, I got postpartum depression and anxiety, and in all of my studies and all of my holistic education and my graduate degree, I had exactly zero education about postpartum depression, anxiety, or what we call now perinatal mental health, zero. No classes, no mention the only mention I'd had. And speaking to you as a therapist with lots of training as well, you understand that the only training we used to get, and sadly still at times in professional education, is really pointing out, quote, underlying issues, latent problems, not even vulnerabilities, but weaknesses. So when I had my crash course in postpartum depression and anxiety, all I had to go on was my own brain, which unfortunately, erroneously, was telling me I had made a mistake. So on old theories, if I looked at anything in psychology, it pointed back to things that were broken in me, things that weren't right. So what I learned in retrospect is the power of depression. What I learned at the moment was that depression is such a thought stealer, it's such an identity stealer that I as a specialist with all of that information reaching all the way back to high school. Really, I did not recognize I was depressed with all of that specialty and actually a lot of interest and enjoyment in working with depression and anxiety with my clients, a real understanding of it and ability to work through it for myself in the past and with clients, still, I didn't know when I had a baby, and I had all these symptoms that made me feel flat and scared and unhappy and huge panic attacks all the time that I didn't recognize it was depression and anxiety, and that awareness led me. To change my whole career. So I don't think I would have specialized in perinatal mental health. If I had not decided to become a mother. I would have still seen it from the outside, as many mental health and healthcare providers do now, and in that broad brush, would have thought of it as what many people used to say less now, but used to say when I would give a talk, but she had problems already, right? Or other things like that. So that got me into the field. And if you think about it. So I entered the field actually still pre baked. I wasn't ready because I was really struggling with depression anxiety. But by the end of the first year, the world had presented me an opportunity to get involved, and that was chapter 1.5 I was at a previous client of mine had to do community, personal community project for his self help, self growth seminar she was in, and she started something called baby blues connection, a mom to mom organization in Oregon, and she called me up. I hadn't seen her for years, and she said, you know, started this support group, this whole community idea, I'm calling a baby blues connection for postpartum depression and anxiety, and I wonder if you'd be my consultant. And I was on maternity leave just starting to answer calls again, and I'll never forget the moment. You know, when you feel your life change, kind of the world rotates a bit. And I just remember exactly where I was in my house. This was 1994

Unknown: 6:51

the things we remember Yeah,

Wendy Davis: 6:53

and I said, Yes, I ended up having a baby as a dur and I'm in the middle of postpartum depression. Now I really can't believe you're calling. And she said, yeah. So anyway, will you do it completely unaffected? Yeah. And ultimately, then she moved out of the state, and she said, Will you take this on? And we had already set up a phone number. I had already started learning from postpartum support international. We had folks coming to group, just a few, but lots of professionals interested. And she moved and said, Do you know anyone that'll take it on? And I was nine months postpartum, and I knew I couldn't find another therapist who would take it on for free. I just knew it at that time, so I did, and that led me to Postpartum Support International, which as a volunteer, a peer support volunteer, and then I joined the board. Fast forward, I was hired as the first executive director in 2009 and now I'm the president and CEO. And when I look back, Rebecca, at that little mama who was afraid she wouldn't make it through the night, who thought she didn't love her baby, who thought she wasn't cut out to be a mom. I hold her in my heart and take her everywhere, and I just think this is the message, and this is why I got involved, but also why I stay involved, and why? I know that of all of my training, in many ways, it's all come together, but that understanding pregnant, postpartum and post loss individuals who are struggling with mental health, stress, confusion, they really just need to know what psi says, which is, you're really not alone. Yeah, this is not something broken about you. This is not your fault, and you will be yourself again, only version 2.0 like you will be through this. Otherwise, we really lose lives because of the devastation and then the shame, so that the medium length story, not very sure, is how I got into this field.

Rebecca Gleed: 9:11

Thank you for sharing that, and I know that so many will connect with this idea of not being able to see the forest through trees until you're out of it. And so I love this message of maybe checking in with yourself. Are you in that forest? And how do you bring some awareness? Or listen to loved ones who say, Hey, are you okay? How can we support you? I want to come back to a few different versions of yourself, because I think there's some gems here, like the waitress, you talked about some of the underlyings, how we can recognize some of that, but I'm guessing, as a waitress, you had to be somewhat perceptive, and so I'm wondering, like, what did you take from that experience? Into those different roles. And

Wendy Davis: 10:05

what a great question. I was so I was so glad that you're interested in that this, ladies and gentlemen, is why talking to her graphic lead is different than talking to a reporter? Well, you are absolutely right. The most important thing in waitressing is perceptiveness and speed and memory. There a lot goes into that. So you have to understand that each person, each table you're serving, and each person is going to be telling you what they want. It's better if you come to them with some ideas, right? So you always have to be ready to make suggestions, but understand that they really already know what they need. They might just need some facilitation. This is true for counseling. It's true for training other people, training other professionals. So it's also true talking politics like you have to listen and use those listening skills, but also not just listen. It's not really a passive act, right to listen, but you got to be ready to deliver. And if you don't have what they need, still stay engaged. So there's perceptiveness. There's also making sure you have things stocked. So you got to be ready. No matter how many people show up. You also have to know how to respect the people you work with, for so many reasons. One, it will all work better. Everyone's got talents and everyone's got skills and everyone's got roles, but the other part is you gotta get along with people, not just the people you're serving. You gotta get along with the people you're working with. So I feel like there's all that, and there's a thing that every server learns, if they learn it well and get well trained from the very beginning, never walk through a room empty handed, never you never go in or out. This is turning into yes training, but you never go in and out of a space just wandering through. You are always looking for the thing to carry in or carry out. You're looking around to see what's needed. And this is also, for me, part of being from a large family. You always, always look to make sure everyone has a chair. You always make sure that people don't just sit there hungry, and you always make sure that they feel cared for, but that sense of the big picture and then zooming in to the individual needs, I feel that in my work so much of the time. And the other piece of that most important thing that you learn anytime you're in the front of the house, as they call it in restaurants, is never let them see you run. You have to stay calmer as a therapist, as a provider, as an organization. You have to stay calm when everything else is really harried, or when there's a dinner rush, or when the cook is sick, or they're threatening to shut down your restaurant, you as the person bringing not just what they need, but listening as you said to what they need. You have to find that calm in yourself and know that people are relying on that as well, and that is really what I've connected with, especially through the pandemic, that psi could be a place of clarity and calm and listening. So through the pandemic, through the summer of 2020, the murder of George Floyd, yeah, through all of our politics, through all that's happening now in early 2025 to be a place that's not just here. To say, here's what the truth is like, here's what you want to eat, but to say we are here, here's what we have. Yeah, we're taking care of ourselves so we can stay on our feet and keep the doors open, and then, to be honest, in the kitchen, all kinds of stuff's going on. People might be running. You might have people out. The cooks might be unhappy, but there's that piece of dealing between the back of the house and the front of the house that, for me, is really important, and I seem to have a skill for it. And if I don't, I better take a break. It's my time to be done. It's my time to take a break, come back when I'm fresh. And so I just love that you asked me that, because it really does go out and also take notes if you can't remember.

Rebecca Gleed: 14:40

Yeah, let's use that idea, this metaphor, of the restaurant later, to take a deep dive into systems, because I think that is so deserving of a deep dive. Let's come back to a few years back of your going into this group. You're in Oregon. Then tell folks a little bit more what that was like earlier on.

Wendy Davis: 15:06

Oh sure, for me. Perform international started in the late 80s, 1987 by Jane Honigman and cat California, and the term postpartum really started to be used only in the 1980s because of doulas. Now, Dana Raphael started using the term postpartum to really note a time period in a work life. And so then Jane hakman And just a few others really started talking about the emotional reality of the postpartum period, and started working with a scientific society called the Marseille organization and Marseille International. The Marseille society was really the science and Postpartum Support International was, as they call it, at the time, the support groups. And one brilliant thing that happened, because of champions like Jane Honigman and champions from the Marseilles society, started to have annual meetings. So this is before the internet was being used. It's all telephone and travel and meetings, right? And thinking about that, that really is the origin. When we started baby blues connection, we researched all of the other Postpartum Support agencies or organization in the world, and there were five of them, five. And maybe surprising, the leaders there, South Africa was there, New Zealand, Australia, Canada and England. So

Rebecca Gleed: 16:49

this is five global not talking the US. We're talking globally, yeah, wow.

Wendy Davis: 16:55

And in the US was Postpartum Support International and depression after delivery. So these were really strong champions. The Self Help movement was already strong, so it really this combination and parallel to now with the mental health policies and advocates. There was already a self help movement. There was already Nami National Association, advocate for mentally ill. There was research that showed then that of the all the time in a woman's life, the time around pregnancy and childbirth resulted in the highest number of inpatients admissions to psychiatric hospitals over her whole life. This was the highest time. So that point of vulnerability was really starting to get focused in in the 80s and late 80s, what the big change in the 90s and in the 2000s was the emergence of two things, more and more support groups and support organizations, and the really strong presence of depression after delivery and postpartum support international that then merged, but also technology and that continues now. Every step of new technology, the perinatal mental health movement and psi, they have done a good job of keeping up with using the next technology, so using the internet, using email, then using social media, using apps, Using all of this technology enabled in, you know, women and other perinatal individuals, dads and moms and everybody to find each other. Yeah, that was the biggest change. Just thinking

Rebecca Gleed: 18:52

about the restaurant. You have this robust restaurant with incredible food, but if no one can find you or reach you, people are going to miss out on that glorious meal that you have to offer. I'm also wondering if this is a piece to highlight about your background. With you mentioned not just psychology, but interest in biology, and some background in that of being able to incorporate that into this data of, oh, there's something happening where there's we're just becoming aware of this impatient prevalence. I wonder how you incorporated some of your background in education from the biological perspective.

Wendy Davis: 19:39

This is a really good question about how my background in my studies and interests in biology informed like both how I've gotten involved and the questions I've asked. So what really stands out to me when I look back over the growth of perinatal mental health in my own education and my own interest is that my. Interests. We're always looking at the holistic view. We're always looking at, what are all the factors going into that? Maybe that's also that wide lens view that comes from being in a large family or being a goose restaurant worker, which is, you can't just focus in on one table or one sibling. You know, you can't just say, well, here's what's going on, right here. They wanted their bacon burger, not it. You've got to look at the whole thing. And so for me, I just have this instinct to know the reason that I wanted to study psychobiology. Was barely an undergrad major when I started, but I found there were maybe eight colleges that had it. Oberlin College was one. And that's where I went. When I went to psychobiology, I knew, even as a What is that 18 year old, I want to know how the brain and body work together. I just wanted to know how the brain and body go together, and actually undergrad psycho biology is neuroscience. Here I am, like, I literally wouldn't know how like Holistic Health, and it was neuroscience and high level math and psychology, and I found my way to opt out of the animal labs and do alternate projects by the end. But I almost quit the major because it was difficult and it was hard, and I also was a musician, and I had to give that out in a way to really make it. And I almost quit. And I remember saying my senior year, I got a switch and I could just do this other major and this little voice in my head says, someday you're going to be working with all kinds of medical professionals and other people. And when they say you don't know what you're talking about, I want to be able to say, Well, actually I do. I remember that as a 21 year old, actually, I do, and I kept with it. And I am really interested in who knew when you look back at your life and you look at that long thread of kind, meaning and purpose, and so much of the time, most of the time for me, I didn't know where I was going. I didn't know what I wanted to do when I grew up. I thought maybe I'd be a midwife or maybe I'd be a piano player. I didn't know. I don't want you to think, Well, I am one of those highly focused, high chance. I had no idea. I was just following my intuition my interests, and where it led me, ultimately, is, in fact, not to say, oh, biology, that's the ticket. What is to say, what are all the factors we have large enough brains and large enough communities and many colleagues, we have enough to be able to say, what are the multi factors going into a person's well being, your body, your brain, your spirit, your culture, your society, your family, your trauma and your hopes. When I look back at all of my interests, creativity, psychobiology, holistic health, evidence and community, all of it, but also, I suppose my first language music like it's got to harmonize and it's got to make sense, but don't narrow your focus, unless you need to narrow it, because you're on a deadline where you have to give one answer, and we do so much better by combining the knowledge and skills and the evidence from all these different fields. That's what my ultimate remedy was, right. If I had only looked at psychology and what was wrong and latently broken about me, I would have always felt broken. I would never have come to a holistic understanding of what was happening for me. If I had only looked at biology, I would have left out all of the other psychology, and if I only looked at the environmental stresses, I would have missed the fact that my body and my brain needed some assist. So all of that for me, I represent, or I match, ultimately, where the field is now, right? And I'm just grateful in even in some ways, and I tell my kids about this, I'm grateful for the time that I meandered, that I thought, maybe I'll try, maybe I'll study this for a while, because it led me to understand lots of different points of view, and then to come to an understanding that also, Having said all that, I need to know my own evidence. I don't need to know everything. I just need to know how to gather really other interested and innovative people around to do the work with

Rebecca Gleed: 24:56

it brings me back to this restaurant of you know, are you a. Able to collaborate with the cook. Do you know where the ketchup is? How's the temperature of the restaurant? What's the energy, which tables are right, which are left? What's the rhythm of and resources, and how to integrate all of those pieces? Or maybe there's a family sitting that you are very familiar with, who comes every Friday at five o'clock. So we'll keep running with this, but if we jump forward, if I heard correctly, you started as a coordinator, so if we could juxtapose where you started there and where we are in 2025 help folks better understand that landscape, because it's changed.

Wendy Davis: 25:43

It has changed. So how I started and how the landscape has changed, I'm with you until I was hired in 2009 almost everything in psi was volunteer run. So that means we were already an international organization, and so much was being done and is still being done. We have 1000s of volunteers, so it's really important to go back before I talk about how it's changed, to understand that. And this is true for anyone who is volunteering or is part of a volunteer organization, that's not a make do, that's not an until you get way more fun. We want more funding, but it's the heart and soul of a holistic system of recovery. Because if it's only science and it's only medicine, there is no voice of the lived expertise, the lived experience, and not just the voice, the input as we're using more and more in research and in policy, but the work and the knowledge of wisdom that helps create infrastructures that are actually meaningful and informed By lived expertise, as we call it. So for me, I Yes, I knew a lot about psychology and already being a therapist for 10 years before I had PPD. But that's not really what informed my best contributions to this field. I think what informed it was understanding that when people are going through a mental health crisis, they lose themselves and their sense of recovery. They lose hope, and if there are no resources, naming it, like you said, Rebecca, you could walk past a restaurant with everything you want and need to eat, and even free food, but if you don't know it's there, or you don't know you are welcome there, yeah, you'll still miss it, or not feel deserving of it, or be starving, or someone tells you that's not for you. Don't eat that food. That's for other people. So for me, I did start because the world brought it to me with baby blues connection, and I started reaching out to other organizations. And like I said, I found Postpartum Support International. They started connecting with it at the time. The way psi was organized, and we still have this at our courts, is there's a central office with a wait for people to contact telephone at the time, and Jane honebin answered the phone all the time one person, and then she started to get volunteers in different countries and different states. So we call them support coordinators, because our job was not just to provide one to one peer support the phone at the time. Now flash word with all kinds of things, text and web forums and telephone. The majority of our contacts are still phones, but at the time, back then, people would call and then they would get connected to their closest Support Coordinator. What Jane also did, and psi still does, is, anytime someone contacted for information, or I'm really interested in this, but I can't find someone else who is then she'd say, Would you like to be the coordinator for Oregon? And in the beginning, I was the coordinator for Oregon and Idaho, because we didn't have anyone in either state, and that meant that people going through depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, psychosis in pregnancy or postpartum would call me and I would call them back. So that's what it was. And then we started support groups, and our approach to peer support groups was then and continues to be now in 2025 that it's very important to have it be peer support, not a therapy group, but peer support group, and if at all possible, co led by. Or someone with lived expertise and someone with some kind of healthcare experience, but it's okay to also if it's somebody who has lived expertise but has training. So it's not enough to just have people come into the restaurant. You gotta know what the best practices are and to have regulations to just prevent risk. So from the start, you can hear that despite the fact I have a PhD in psychology, but I know that the essential ingredient for a treatment team includes peer support, trained, supported, supervised, informed and resourced peer support to work hand in hand with the health care system, the mental health care system, which was back in the 80s and 90s and is still now even more so overworked and hard to get into. You can wait two or three months in most cities to find a psychiatrist or a therapist. So it is essential that organizations like Postpartum Support International and others and peer supporters are not just the stop gap. They're actually helping people stay alive and find what they need to do, some of the self care, and also just hang on, in many cases, until they find a mental health or other healthcare provider. So it's always important for me to say, and you hear me over emphasizing it almost, that when I learned how to be a Peer Support Coordinator, as we call them, psi, it was new learning. I had to unlearn some things about being a therapist to be able to be a peer supporter. And now psi has an amazing village of peer support programs led by Carrie banks in North Carolina and so many opportunities and so much diversity and so much knowledge, and we just treasure them as part of the recovery, essential part of recovery in healthcare. Yeah,

Rebecca Gleed: 32:17

I love this idea, this intersection between what called the lived experience as someone who is trained. So just to translate that for someone who may not be familiar with some of these peer support groups, you can go and trust that there's going to be facilitation. It's not open, loosey goosey, and you can not only feel safe, but if something does come up in the group, that there will be redirection, refocus, re, stabilizing, safety. And then the other piece, and I want to accentuate that you brought up, that I don't want to gloss over, is this idea of the heart and soul. And for anyone, myself included, who has sat in some of those sessions or plenaries that Postpartum Support. These are individuals bringing their stories of survival and lived experience. This is, I just don't want to gloss over the idea of the heart and soul, and maybe you can speak to just some anecdotes or stories of what this actually looks like.

Wendy Davis: 33:26

Your even your question brings tears to my eyes. Yeah, that's because of the poignancy and the courage of someone bringing forward their lived experience, typically into a room of healthcare clinical medical providers, it's not always safe to bring your experience even into a room as a patient. It's not and people are discriminated against and they're harmed and they're blamed and they're shamed, and sometimes in their own families. So I'm just going to tell you that when somebody comes as you said, Rebecca, to, let's say, a training or a conference by psi the and they're coming to tell their own story, whether they're presenting their own workshop because they're also now healthcare providers or they're on a panel of lived expertise, as we say, of survivors. It's a really courageous act. It's always courageous to bring forward that most vulnerable, sometimes often traumatic, part of your life, and that's what the poignancy is. But now, whenever somebody comes and tells their story, that's the showstopper. That's when the healthcare providers, the medical providers, just stop and say, oh my gosh, now I get it. So everything about our development of new programs has come from somebody saying, either I'm going through this, do you have anything to help? And then we start developing it maybe one of the most poignant and motivating moments for us as an organist. Is family who said we lost our sister, we lost our I lost my wife. She came to your website, but she couldn't find herself there. And we really do respond and listen. We don't get overwhelmed. We don't say, oh my god, we're failing. We say we failed her. What's next, and as an individual, as a provider or a mom or an organization, we have to be able to take that moment and say ow, because we are devastated. What can we learn from this and move forward? So that moment of that family sitting to us, she couldn't find herself there was very transformative and existing in a context of an organization and leadership that wants to be welcoming to all but really understanding that to be welcoming to all, right? And this is true no matter what, who you are in the world, but I'm talking right now to providers and organizations and policies. But in order to be welcoming to all, you actually need to listen and take in their information, even when you feel defensive or you feel like you just want to give it up because you failed, you have to be able to say, I need to incorporate this. So we did many things in the context of already working on that as an organization. It's a value of psi. It's value of mine to say where want to be inclusive and welcoming. But that moment was for us just a real stimulus to say, we are going to include and listen to and have sessions, first of all. Now this is so important, and you understand this. Rebecca like, first of all, listen, bring in more, listen to her family and more from their community. First do that, then develop services a lot of times what people miss, especially in the world of science research and clinical care, is, oh, we heard this was a risk. This is a critical incidents report. Let's develop a service. And they skip

Unknown: 37:15

listen part where you

Wendy Davis: 37:17

have to if you want to help people, you have to include the people you want to help in the development of your services and in the perinatal mental health field. To make a really clear point here, in the past, the picture and the view of the maternal mental health or perinatal health was white and privileged and had money and didn't talk about trauma, and didn't talk about racism, and discounted some of those essential causes of distress and stress. Probably for me, the most important change in the time that I've been in this field has been kind of breaking that not only that culture, but that image and listening. If you want to help people, you've got to listen to what the people you want to help are saying and what they need. And you have to process that first,

Rebecca Gleed: 38:18

yeah, I'm hearing listening, and then it's iterative. This isn't just a, b equals c. It's going to be constantly an iteration. Reminds me of music. You're not going to just one and done. Learn a piano piece, but it's going to be an iterative development practice. Integrate some dynamics. But how can we better listen to that family who says, Hey, we lost our sister, or maybe the birthing individual who has had racial injustice? How do we as providers organizations, calm our own defenses and create that power pause of listening.

Wendy Davis: 39:04

You just have to take time. It is an investment of time that sometimes translates the money. So you have to invest funds and you have to find leadership. So let's imagine that psi always wanted to do that, which I think most of the people in leadership at psi have always wanted to be inclusive and listening and learning about racism, but we didn't have the skills. And as a person who's grown up privileged and white, it doesn't mean I didn't have trauma or difficulty. It just means that I had that trauma difficulty in a country that supported what I looked like and where I came from, so I didn't have the additional racism, discrimination. There's other obstacles, but I didn't also have that. So I think the most. Most important lesson, really the most is don't just keep being a white, privileged organization. So first of all, as I said, we have so many volunteers. Well, it was important to have our volunteers be representative of the culture and ethnicity of the world, because we're worldwide, but just looking at the United States to be representative, but you can't expect people always to work for free, otherwise known as volunteer. So one of the things psi has done, and it's twofold, one, listen, be hurt, but don't center yourself as the person for me, don't center myself as a person that has been in a place of privilege to get here and focus on my hurt, but I tried so hard I didn't mean that that doesn't really matter at all. It matters for me and maybe with me and the therapist or me and a friend or me and my pillow. It doesn't matter in the conversation of someone that I've hurt and harmed. So we had to learn to just listen to someone. If you've harmed someone, there's only one thing to say. First, I'm so sorry, period. And so we could have a whole conversation session just about that, but that's step one, and continuous forever. Step two is, open it up, open the doors, yep. First of all, hiring more people of color, hiring more diverse staff, looking for that in your organization, on our board, on our advisory councils, in the research we do, that's the real change. And not just hiring, not just having as volunteers, which is crucial, not just having climb leaders, which is crucial, not just listening, which is also crucial, but hiring. I'm just big and pragmatic. Again, I could run the restaurant and say, every once in a while, we'll have a special No, I want it here. I want it on the menu. This has been ongoing for psi to really understand this. But in 2020 when we all lived through COVID, the pandemic, George Floyd, isolation, more trauma, and after having Obama as president, and at a certain point, having an administration which was Biden and Harris, who started to prioritize community based organizations like doulas, like black doulas, like Black Women's Health imperative, We really were able to change this. And psi has always been here, ready for it, so it didn't break us. It really activated for us that we wanted to do more and more to be really inclusive and to understand that. So we started working with the perinatal Mental Health Alliance for people of color, which is a wonderful group started by jabina Coleman, Desiree Israel and Divya Kumar. And we started working with them. We were their fiscal sponsor. And in 2017 Wow, by 2020 we had already worked together so long, and I was still learning from them. And by 2022 we brought that program in to be a program of psi, and we hired our first director of the Alliance, Andrea Clark, and created a whole program in psi, which is the Alliance for people of color, which includes mentors and coaches and programs and trainings all focus on people of color, and that is how you really make sure that it's not just a restaurant that has a special every once in a while, but as Andrea said her second week of work, oh no. It's not that we want PSI to have a safe space for people of color. We want PSI to be a safe space for people of color. And now Andrea has been transitioning to be Deputy CEO, and July 1 of this year, 2025 she'll be full time Deputy CEO, and that's how you that's how you do that. Yeah, positions of leadership, sources of wisdom and training, and then a whole program. And yes, we all work hard for that. We have to work really hard to keep the funding and keep a revenue so that we can really keep growing in that way? Well, I wonder

Rebecca Gleed: 44:42

if this is a segue into some of these systems. I imagine you've got this special on your menu, but what if you don't have the proper oven? What if you're short on smoke detectors, or maybe the neighborhood isn't a fan of the lasagna? How do we operate? In systems where there is an article a headline last week of the decline since 2016 on maternal mental health. You know, we've got these policies. We've got reproductive rights. I could keep going, but I think you get what I'm saying is, we've got an incredible international organization to support these birthing individuals their families, and we're also operating in broader systems, both in the United States and globally. And so how do we do that when there might be some barriers?

Wendy Davis: 45:34

I really appreciate your analogy. Things aren't easy. You know, we never have I've never taken for granted the support from our federal government, but I've also never been satisfied with it. What I was saying earlier is that if the voice and the champions for perinatal mental health aren't at the table, it does fall off in general, just that alone, even when mental health is on the table, even when maternal health then became on the table more in the last 10 years, thankfully, the physical causes of maternal mortality and morbidity, as they say, even when It's on the table, the mental health voice is not identified or evidenced or expressed unless there's champions there. Yeah, when that full system has fewer resources or is under threat than the champions, we have to be even more clear about two things, how to express ourselves succinctly and with that evidence, and to not undo it. Not falter if people counter that. And two, how to do that respectfully and not lose it, not lose our cool. So I am rare, taken for granted. But I also, like I said, support for this part of mental health is still on the back burner compared to other federal support. So if it's a restaurant, yeah, you got it, people walk by and say, well, we don't need that anymore, or or that food makes people sick when you know that it's making them healthy, or that's a dei restaurant, we have to be very focused, and we have to be very clear about what our work is, and for Organizations, for advocates and for recipients of these services. It's really, really important that we stay connected with each other. It's really important that we do what we need to, to maintain our health and our, you know, to regulate as an organization, as a person, to say, I need to listen to some music. I need to go outside. I need to cry, I need to listen to comedy, whatever it is, so that we stay as human as possible, even when we're facing things that seem inhumane. And so there's always going to be objections to what we're doing. There always have been objections to maternal mental health programs. Or they're just this. They're just that. I don't even want to use the quotes and the words that people have used now, right now in the United States, there really is, on the part of our federal administration, more emphasis on what's called cutting costs and less emphasis on science and evidence. And that's really, really challenging to everybody, or as I understand it, and as I work with my colleague to be helpful here, it just is even more essential, even more important, that we hold on and record the research and the evidence that has been done, especially in the last 10 years, and present that in conversation and keep our cool and not waste time arguing over the little things, because there's some very, very big things at stake. And so we're going to keep the restaurant open, even if there's a blizzard, even if everyone says no one should be eating lasagna anymore, we're going to keep the restaurant open for the people who need us. And what's interesting for inclusivity is that includes people who don't vote, like the person answering the phone. If you're going to be inclusive, you have to be respectful to help seekers no matter what. So we don't talk about politics when we're helping people. We do talk when we're training people. We do talk about policies and resources, because that's our job. So we. Take all that into account.

Rebecca Gleed: 50:02

Yeah, for someone who might not understand the consequences of, you know, keeping the restaurant open, or closing it down, or offering the lasagna or not, what's at stake here? What? How does this translate to everyday life people? I

Wendy Davis: 50:20

think it's already more challenging, and I fear that it will continue to be challenging for a while for people, clearly more challenging for people to feel confident in finding and receiving and being able to afford the health care they need. Yeah, it's already happening that people are afraid for their livelihood, their well being, if they are immigrants to the United States, and people are already afraid and have much reduced access to health care around pregnancy, including reproductive choice. That's already happening. So what that means for us? Becky and thank you for asking me this. What that means for us is that as an organization that is helping people, if they're brave enough and find our resources postpartum.net, you can find it all there. They're already afraid now. What that means is that they're afraid that we will also judge or monitor them. Is really crucial, if you're a provider, one, to safeguard the data that you have and to let people know, in reality, like with reality, to not over promise, but to say your information, this is a confidential and trustworthy space. Take your time, but part of my job is to help you find the help you need, find the resources that you can and hang in there with you while you're waiting. The limits to that confidentiality are, if you are danger to yourself or to others, and I can't find a way to talk that through with you and help you stay safe, that's when I break your confidentiality. But I am really well versed in perinatal mental health symptoms, and I know the difference between anxious, repetitive thoughts and real danger. And as soon as you say that to, let's say a person having anxious, intrusive thoughts with no danger of acting on them, you gave her a whole wide welcome mat to say you are this is a trustworthy space. Oh, she knows what I'm dealing with. So you have to find your way. This is it like we have to find a ways to stay connected as providers and organizations and advocates, and we have to find that thread to stay connected to the help seeker who's coming to us to say, Yeah, this is what we're dealing with. Here's what I can do for to give you that life raft until we get to the next spot, how we as a country are dealing with that there is more unknown than there is known right now about what will happen in these crucial items that we've talked About that have been essential to the growth of quality perinatal mental health services, and that's research, inclusivity, diversity, connection and kind of a network of systems. These are essential and trained providers. What can we do? What can you do? We are training providers all the time, 1000s of providers, everything from volunteers, doulas to therapists to psychiatrists, researchers and midwives. Once I start saying, then I know I'm leaving people out, but keep training people and who is the other most important part of the treatment team is the health seekers empowering pregnant postpartum and post loss people to have things like a discussion tool that we have on the postpartum.net website in English and Spanish, and for psychosis and one for loss, to bring that to their provider and to help People find providers so that are informed. And if it's someone, we all have to work together at that so that no matter what's happening in the storm outside the restaurant, there's a shelter inside that still is allowed to exist in the storm, but is a trustworthy space to come in and have some respite and have some shelter and get some food, and say, This is good food. This is what I needed. And it's not everything, but this is just what I needed today. Yeah,

Rebecca Gleed: 54:51

you named some incredible players. I'm wondering too, in addition to all of those players who are tending to this end of. Individual, this help seeker amidst a storm, what are the roles of partners, family members, siblings, what are their roles in supporting the individual who might be struggling?

Wendy Davis: 55:13

I'm so glad you asked about other helpers in psi, we get people contacting us both through our helpline, which is 800-944-4773 or the National maternal mental health hotline, which is where the contractor with Health and Human Services to run their hotline, TLC mama, they call it. And so in both cases, we get so many calls on behalf of somebody else, and where I will say, it used to be, back when we first started, the calls from family were more like, she won't listen to me. She's doing bad things, and will you call her? And we knew from the start to say, thank you for calling. That's not how we do it. If you want to give her our number, that would be great. We never intrude like that. Well, that's in the past. Now we get so many calls with really well meaning and helpful brothers, sisters, spouses, lots of men and very helpful and very poignant, grandparents, aunties, we get a lot and case managers. So what is the role? When you ask, what is their role? First of all, the people contacting us are already doing it. What I would say is, if you are concerned, the best thing to do is to let the individual know. You know, I just read this thing, I saw a reel, or I saw this podcast with Rebecca gleed that talked about this organization. And do you know postpartum, smart International, you can contact them anytime. You can contact them without a diagnosis, and it's just a place where you can call or text or send in a web form and say, I don't even know what's going on for me, but I heard you have groups. So what we want to do, we want to start with, when somebody appears to be struggling, is, first of all, let them know there's help out there, and they don't push you into anything. It's just a place to talk, and I'm going to give you this phone number, maybe you'll want to talk to them with the maternal mental health hotline that's available, 24/7, every day, any time of the day or night. Now I know for me, I probably would have called or texted if they were texting when I was going through it in the middle of the night. That would have been me and God bless our counselors who are there in the middle of the night, English and Spanish and 60 other languages by request, and the psi helpline is always open for messages. So first of all, let people know there's resources, but also be practical. Don't wonder like, well, she seems overwhelmed. Just go ahead and think that, but be washing dishes while you're thinking it, or clean the bathroom. Or don't say, Do you need me to take the baby? Well, I'm if I'm depressed and anxious and think I'm failing, and especially if I have other judgments coming at me, if I'm a teen mom, if I'm a black Mom, if I'm an immigrant mom, and someone says, Do you need me to take the baby? No, I'm good. We don't want people to know that we're having a hard time. So when you want to help someone going through this, trust them. Help out practically, but also say, Hey, I've got some free ants. Let me jump there for help the baby for a while. For me having my family help me in that way so I could take a shower. Yeah, brush my hair, take a walk or just go outside. These moments are life saving for me, having my husband say to me things like, you're still in there. I believe in you. He's not a mental health provider. He's just a really smart, kind guy, and he said to me, when I was afraid I wouldn't make it, you need two things you don't have yet, time and confidence. I thought he was gonna say you need to know how to breastfeed better, or you need to love the baby. That's not what he said. Time and confidence isn't that great? That's powerful. Oh my gosh, I knew he was right. But how did I get through those days? It's by the little moments, if psi and its app and the text and the phone line and the support groups existed when I was going through it. I. Would not have suffered as long you and I both, yeah, I would have just what we need to do, all in all is forget the stigma, just bust it. They say one out of five moms and one out of 10 dads gets postpartum depression anxiety, one in 500 moms gets postpartum psychosis. If these numbers are so high and higher probably than the research has already shown us, then we should be talking about this, like we talk about a fever, like we talk about diabetes, or everyone and their sister now on Tiktok talks about ADHD, and we should be talking about mental health in general and make it be accessible, not a shameful thing to talk about. The problem is that we're afraid that new mothers and fathers should just be happy, should just be satisfied. And those of us in the field, we know this. We've heard this for years, but how do we really break that open? Kay Matthews, who is a great leader in maternal mental health in Texas, said, and I always share her name when I say this, because it's the best quote ever. The pandemic introduced us all to our own mental health. Whoa, and let's just keep it going. Let's keep it going. My kids, when they went to junior Ryan High School, would just come back. I remember my son came back one day, and he's like we were reading a book about this girl that had depression, and everyone in my class just talked like they didn't even know what it was, and they were just like making fun of her. And I love that. How did he know that we didn't have lectures at dinner? He just heard me working and understanding. And I feel like, since then, I feel like kids are better at understanding mental health exists, it's okay to ask for help. But at the same time, sometimes I fear that we're also entering back into more of a culture that includes bullying and discrimination, so that that's going to go underground again. So now we are relying on the generations that have grown up and been educated for the last 10 years, really, to hold that door open to say we all got mental health, you know, and especially mental health related to childbirth, pregnancy loss and postpartum, these mental health symptoms and conditions are temporary, treatable and blameless, and that's the biggest thing that any of us can do, is just remind the person going through it, who depression is stealing their self esteem, their confidence and their identity. You know what this is? You're in there. This is temporary, treatable. There's resources, and there's 1000s of people ready to help you. This restaurant is open and has what you need, even if you go in and you say, well, actually, I was looking for the, you know, honestly, potatoes in that potatoes, I was looking for dessert, and you don't serve that here, like, Yeah, but we know other people who deserve dessert really well, yeah, but it's all here, and sometimes that's our biggest challenge, Is that the resources are here. We have amazing resources. But if people don't know they exist, they still will feel alone, and that's dangerous,

Rebecca Gleed: 1:03:50

absolutely. And you said something too blameless. I want to underscore that several times like it's so quick to self blame or to say, What am I doing wrong? I hear this every single day, but the blameless piece, I want to just give a lot of space to that, and I also this podcast is primarily consumed through audio, but for folks who are listening and not seeing Wendy, there's been a lot of checkpoints where tears will come up. And so I want to offer an opportunity. If we've gathered all of your tears in a little cup and there have their own chance to talk, what would they say?

Wendy Davis: 1:04:34

Well, I'm so grateful to be alive. I'm so grateful to have my children, and I owe that to a network of support, a family of support, but also my heart breaks to think that people are still going through this alone, that there's a risk. Of losing them. Families have already lost people to this temporary, treatable, blameless set of symptoms, all because we want to almost bully parents into saying, This is how you should feel, and if you're not, you're not in the cloud. So I have so much earned and learned compassion for people who feel outside. This is more than a bad mood, and this is more than not feeling included. This is holistically a way that someone feels like they don't deserve to be here. So I think my tears are at this combination of poignancy, gratitude that I'm here, but also everyone should have that opportunity to get through and survive, and also my gratitude for the number of amazing people who are working in this field and helping people every day. I'll add some fear, you know? Yeah, I feel that too. I'm really concerned that without the amazing body of evidence and data that the CDC has gathered for the last 10 years, and finally, especially in the last five really about suicide rates, the mental health reasons for maternal mortality, for women dying and being sick. Finally, everyone worked together and came together with a more focus on women's research and maternal health to put mental health back in the analysis of why women were dying, and that was not there until very recently, huge body of research, so that they came out only in 2022 and 23 that the largest number of preventable deaths in maternal health were due to mental health and substance abuse. So I'm afraid not believe that that is that we have more risk there because people are under stress and resources are fewer. I'm afraid of losing that science and that database. So I really am grateful also to the scientists who are working to save that data, and I'm worried. So what keeps me going and not crying all the time is the meaningful work and leaning into work with purpose and colleagues and listening to help seekers and also providers who need the providers need support too. So how I keep going and how I can find some more practice optimism is by connecting with this really good work and finding ways to express it and deliver it.

Rebecca Gleed: 1:07:56

Yeah, there's the hope. Is there anything else that offers you hope for the work that we're doing in the field of perinatal mental health.

Wendy Davis: 1:08:07

Well, back to using the analogy out behind the restaurant. We've got some deep roots. We have over these decades planted, not just annuals, like just pop up and then you got to plant them every year. Like we have perennials. We've got things with such deep roots that are gonna continue no matter what. What do they say? Be like the willow that bends we have to keep ourselves, providers, organizations, parents, nourish. We have to. It's not just something we say it's something we have to do because we are here also to generate the next series of the next people who are going to keep helping. So I think that's it for me, and that's the analogy the pragmatic reality. There are free, knowledgeable resources, I'll just say, through Postpartum Support International, all someone has to know is go to postpartum.net or go to connect by psi. It's an app English and Spanish. Come to one of our trainings, and you hear over and over how you have asked me these questions, and I'm responding to say the hope is in the connections and the continuity and psi isn't a stopping place. We're a place that people come to get welcomed into trainings, do as much as we can in English and in Spanish, and listen so they stay informed and relevant. Then to know, where do you go next? Where do you go next? And so we're really a hub, an informed hub that not only trains the providers, but gives the services and stays involved in policy and research, and every one of those aspects is strengthened by our. Commitment to diversity. Just like the garden out back, we're not just growing one thing, and we're not just using one nutrient to grow it. We're really paying attention to all the things needed so that, as I always say, and Rebecca, I'm sure you've heard me say this at a training that when you get into this field, whether it's by lived experience or by profession or both, like it is for many of us, when you get into it, you will get overwhelmed. You will say, Oh, my God, she needs so much. This family needs so much. This world needs so much. How can we possibly do this? Well, you know what? That's true as a mom too. There's the analogy. But what's the remedy is to say, come back to the moment. Take a breath. What is my role in this moment right now? What is my role in this situation? And when you do that, and I have done this for years, so many times a day, I can feel my whole nervous system just regulate, get calm and say, What is my best role in this situation today? Do that be that? And then find out, where do I connect for the next step? So I use this in my work, and I've used this as a parent, what is my best role for this child today, I can do that. Sometimes it's just take that breath and say, Let's have breakfast. But for me, that's both what gives me hope, but what keeps me hoping.

Rebecca Gleed: 1:11:33

I love that beautiful check in to ask ourselves, what is my role mindfully in this moment that's really beautiful. I'm going to include the resources that you so beautifully highlighted and offered to our audience today in the show notes, in addition to postpartum.net that's where folks can find all of these resources. I cannot thank you enough for coming on today. Any last pieces of wisdom or advice that you would offer, maybe the new or expecting parent,

Wendy Davis: 1:12:06

you're not alone. I mean, if I made it through, you can make it through. We understand that you feel like, No, you don't. You don't know, I have some different thing, or I'm the worst case ever. I promise you, that's not true. What I really always want people to know is all you need to do is take that first step. We'll help you with the rest. It's right here. Just the first step is reaching out. You don't need a diagnosis to reach out. And also to providers, you don't need to know a thing to reach out. He's just saying, I think I'm interested in this, but for people going through this, I know your brain is telling you you're not in the club, that you're not cut out for this, that's a symptom of what you're going through. It's not a truth. I know you say, Oh, I don't love this baby. No, that's a symptom of depression. It's not the truth. When you're depressed, all your feelings are flattened, and when I was going through it, the real turning point for me was somehow going in one moment from thinking I thought I was so depressed and having panic attacks because I had made a mistake, because I didn't love the baby, I thought that was the cause, and then I remembered way down demon, his little, tiny awareness. I Oh no, I love this baby, and I am a mom with depression. I'm not depressed because I'm a mom. I'm a mom with depression. That's the problem. It seems so obvious from the outside, but it's not when depression makes you believe negative things about yourself. So just know you're really, really not alone. You're going through something temporary, treatable that lots of people are just waiting to help you through, step by step. Yeah,

Rebecca Gleed: 1:13:56

you are not alone. As a final offering to anyone listening, you are not alone. Thank you so much, Wendy for coming on today. Thank you

Wendy Davis: 1:14:05

for your beautiful questions and going with the restaurant analogy. Yes, I loved it. Thank you.

Unknown: 1:14:15

If you would like to learn more about how we can help, visit our website at perinatal reproductive wellness.com. And while you're there, check out the latest edition of our book, employed motherhood. We also invite you to follow us on social media at employed motherhood. Finally, if you enjoyed listening to the show, please subscribe and rate it. Thank you. You.