Breaking the Stigma: Postpartum depression is lonely. Shame, guilt make it worse.

Chan Kemper with her daughters, Tavi and Mika. (Photo provided)

This story discusses postpartum depression and suicide. If you or someone you know is contemplating suicide, please call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988.

Before having children, Chan Kemper pictured how the experience would go.

“I was determined to have the hippiest, dippiest, crunchy, earth goddess pregnancies and deliveries that I could have,” said Kemper, 43.

The attorney, who is from the Virgin Islands and now lives in Louisville, researched “the crap out of pregnancy” and her baby, she said. “I didn’t do that much research about after.”

She had a fairly smooth experience with her first baby, Tavi, whom she had at 37. In fact, she said, it was “so fine” that she and her husband decided to have another baby right away.

After having her second child, Mika, at 39, “it was just immediately different,” said Kemper, who was then diagnosed with postpartum depression (PPD).

Her blood pressure spiked and she could not breastfeed. She cried nonstop — to the point of dehydration. Prozac didn’t help what Kemper described as a “profound sense of sadness.” She feared her baby would die, a fear that escalated when Mika had to be hospitalized with a severe urinary tract infection.

Eventually, “I just thought to myself, ‘I don’t want to be here,’” she recalled. “And I meant like, ‘I don’t want to be here on this Earth.’ And I had never felt like that in my life, ever.”

Kentucky therapists who treat postpartum and perinatal depression said people who have it can often experience suicidal ideation — which needs to be addressed immediately . People with PPD also often experience headaches, irritability, trouble sleeping, anxiety, depression, low self esteem, visceral feelings of panic, trouble connecting with their baby and more.

Societal stigma and cultural shame can compound these symptoms, therapists say, making it a debilitating illness.

The illness can affect anyone, therapists say, but is more likely to affect people of color and those with a history of trauma, anxiety and/or depression.

What is postpartum depression?

Rebecca Kerr, a Bowling Green therapist who specializes in PPD, said it falls under the umbrella of perinatal mood and anxiety disorders (PMADs) and is “ very common .”

PPD “doesn’t necessarily discriminate,” said Kerr. “Really, anyone could experience postpartum depression, but there are populations that may be more vulnerable. So, if you have a personal history of depression, anxiety, OCD ( obsessive compulsive disorder ), anything like that, you may be more prone to experiencing it.”

Wesley Belknap-Greene, a Richmond therapist, said it’s important to distinguish between PPD and the “baby blues.”

Baby blues can mimic some of the symptoms of PPD — but they don’t last past two weeks and come on because of hormone shifts following delivery.

“A lot of people, probably especially around here, who have experienced actual true postpartum depression have systematically, continuously been told ‘oh, it’s just the baby blues,’” said Belknap-Greene. “Whether that’s a thing with rural America, Appalachia, … mental health has not been talked about in this country historically.”

Baby blues is an “emotional disruption” for sure, she explained. But “perinatal depression, or postpartum depression, is this  debilitating, very difficult, deep, dark depression that makes it difficult for the mother to be able to provide care to herself, let alone her baby.”

The film industry has added stigma, Belknap-Greene said, by depicting PPD as a condition in which a mother wants to kill her baby. While it can take that form, she said, it’s “very rare.”

Chan Kemper’s story

In addition to feeling like she didn’t want to live anymore after giving birth to her second child, Kemper recalls feeling guilty for feeling that way.

“I had … access … to a lot of things, and I still felt alone,” she said. “As a Black woman, I felt even more like I’m supposed to be strong, and I wasn’t. I wasn’t strong at all.”

Even her cat, Cosmo, whom she described as “the worst cat ever,” was “distressed by my distress.”

Kemper’s blood pressure spikes turned out to be panic attacks — and she feels her race was a factor in those symptoms being dismissed. She went to the hospital when she “felt like I was having a heart attack” with “insanely high” blood pressure and sat waiting for care.

“I think there would have been more concern or care if I had not been a Black woman,” said Kemper, who is also Jewish. “I’m … larger, I’m tall, and I feel like it’s like, ‘oh, she’s strong, she’s fine.’ And it’s like, ‘no. I deserve, and I need, help.’”

But, she said, lack of mental health care for new mothers is an equal opportunity offender “across the board.”

Kemper got into therapy and on the right dosage of medication, and is doing “so much better” but “I’m still crawling my way out of this.”

She would like to see classes focused on PPD, just as there are birth classes, as well as more public health education about PPD.

“There’s so many red flags,” she said. “We don’t talk about it. … I think it’s so important to talk about things that are stigmatized.”

She predicts fewer new mothers would be surprised by the symptoms if more people — and health organizations — talked about PPD publicly.

“I had no clue that this could ever happen to me,” Kemper said. “I did not in a million years think that there were signs that I should have been looking out for or having my partner look out for.”

Kemper isn’t alone. Other Kentucky mothers who spoke to the Lantern about their PPD experiences described feelings of loneliness and depression exacerbated by shame and guilt that took them by surprise.

Proctor and Luntzel

Vashti Proctor, one of those mothers, found out she was pregnant — unplanned — in March 2021. COVID-19 was everywhere and racial justice protests were ongoing following the police killing of Breonna Taylor in Louisville.

Proctor, who lives in Louisville, said she considered abortion, which was legal at that time in Kentucky.

“I was literally scared out of my mind to think that I’m gonna enter a Black child, a Black baby, into this world when a Black woman was just shot and killed … in her home,” Proctor said. “That was very, very scary for me.”

With support from her family, she decided against abortion and gave birth to Aaliyah in December 2021. At her four-week checkup, she got on Zoloft to help with her PPD symptoms.

The stressors compounded quickly. Proctor, who had to work, couldn’t find child care — much less affordable child care — for the baby. So, she took her to work with her until she found an opening — which remains her second highest bill behind only rent.  She nursed on demand while not being able to sleep at night.

The first person in her friend group to have a baby, the then-28-year-old had entered a new chapter of life her friends couldn’t relate to. The COVID-19 pandemic also kept her from a social life. Therapy was too expensive. There was a national formula shortage.

All this made her feel “really heavy” and “very overwhelmed,” she said. Having more accessible child care would have helped her in her transition to motherhood, she said.

It would also be helpful if there were more medical providers who look like her, she said. A 2020 study f rom the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that Black babies were twice as likely to survive when their doctor was also Black.

Autumn Luntzel of Bowling Green had a slightly different experience. She felt immense guilt when she had her son in late 2019 and the depression, numbness, anxiety and sadness hit her.

“I’m never going to be a better mom,” she remembers thinking. “My husband’s never going to divorce me so I need to just end it all so (my son) can have a better mom.”

Reid, her son, was happy and healthy. Her husband was “very hands on.” Her career thrived.

But Luntzel, the daughter of Bangladesh immigrants, felt tremendous pressure to be perfect, she said.

“My whole personality is my parents — specifically my dad — sacrificing everything to have the life that I have,” she said.

So, she thought, “here I am being sad and I shouldn’t be.”

In February 2021, Luntzel attempted to end her life: “I truly believed that Reid, my son, needed a better mom because I couldn’t be a good mom to him because of the way that I was feeling.”

Her husband found her after that attempt, and helped her get into an intensive six-month therapy program, where she began taking medication. She no longer lives with suicidality and advocates for mental health in her community.

If you or someone you know is contemplating suicide, please call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988.

What policies could help combat PPD in Kentucky?

PPD doesn’t have much space in The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Illnesses (DSM) — a paragraph compared to pages for other conditions, Belknap-Greene said.  More research and space for the condition is much needed, she added.

Kentucky also needs a universal, paid parental leave, she said. That would put it in line with 13 states and Washington D.C. that provide paid family and medical leave .

“If mom and dad — or mom and mom, dad and dad, whatever that nuclear family looks like — if there’s not that opportunity to provide secure attachment, we’re looking at a whole host of other issues for the baby,” said Belknap-Greene.

Research published in the National Library of Medicine in 2023 backs up the importance of leave, saying that “paid, longer maternity leave is associated with less postpartum depression.”

During the 2024 legislative session, a bill that would have given teachers 20 days of maternity leave died . Another bill to give state workers with at least a year on the job up to four weeks of paid leave made it through the Senate but failed to advance in the House.

There is bipartisan appetite in Congress to pass paid parental leave, with bipartisan and bicameral working groups working on solutions. Members’ legislative framework for such solutions includes having public-private partnerships and cross-state program harmony.

Meanwhile, Kentucky therapists and mothers who spoke to the Lantern agreed: screening mothers earlier would be a huge step toward combating postpartum depression and anxiety early.

“We should start screening moms before they deliver,” said Kerr. But certainly, screening them as they are leaving the hospital after delivery would help as well.

“If it were up to me, that would be a thing that had to be discussed before discharge,” Belknap-Greene said. And: “A follow up appointment for mom needs to be done much sooner than the two-week checkup for the baby.”

Because she spent so much time internalizing her PPD symptoms, Luntzel said having OB-GYNs better trained to spot those symptoms early would have helped her. She’d also like to see mental health professionals give on-site consultations with new moms at hospitals after delivery.

Mental health services like therapy should generally be more accessible as well, she said. The Lantern previously reported Kentuckians are more likely to pay out of pocket for mental health services than medical services.

“Mental health, in general, I think, needs to be discussed more because our brains are so complex, and yet we treat it like it’s just this one being and that’s just not it,” Luntzel said. “I don’t think it’s okay to treat it like that.”

When and how to get help for postpartum depression

Kentucky therapists say when symptoms of postpartum depression are interfering with day-to-day life, it’s time to seek help. Treatment can include therapy and medication.

To find Kentucky therapists who treat PPD and related issues, search by city here .  You can filter results based on type of insurance, illness that needs to be treated, gender of the therapist and more.

For help evaluating symptoms, one can also fill out the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale here.

Anyone who scores more than 12 on this evaluation tool should talk to a health care provider about treatment.

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