Perinatal Mental Health: Research and Practical Applications Lecture Pack

Cynthia Good, MS Clinical Psychology, is an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant, Clinical Counselor, author, consultant, and internationally recognized speaker. She is the Director of LifeCircle Consulting, LLC and is Certified in Acute Traumatic Stress Management. She is based in the Seattle, Washington, USA area, where she formerly served as an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Midwifery at Bastyr University where she taught counseling skills and is a therapist at Sandbox Therapy Group where she works with children, adults, and families. Cynthia has a strong interest in the emerging field of lactational psychology. She brings the evidence and insights of psychology and lactation consulting to her presentations, providing information and teaching skills that are essential to understanding and effectively responding to the complex psychosocial realities of families living in diverse contexts. The focus of her presentations includes communication skills and counseling techniques for perinatal care providers; equity, diversity, and inclusion; infant feeding rhetoric; perinatal mental health; perinatal loss, grief, and trauma; ethics; serving as an expert witness in lactation-related court cases; cultural competence and humility; vitamin D; and more.

Dr. Beck is a Distinguished Professor at the University of Connecticut, School of Nursing. Her Bachelor of Science degree in Nursing is from Western Connecticut State University. She received her Master’s degree in maternal-newborn nursing and became a certified nurse-midwife at Yale University. Her Doctor of Nursing Science degree is from Boston University. She is a fellow in the American Academy of Nursing. She has received numerous awards such as the Association of Women’s Health, Obstetric, and Neonatal Nursing’s Distinguished Professional Service Award and the Distinguished Alumna Award from Yale University. Over the past 30 years Cheryl has focused her research efforts on developing a research program on postpartum mood and anxiety disorders. She developed the Postpartum Depression Screening Scale (PDSS) which is published by Western Psychological Services. She is a prolific writer who has published over 140 journal articles. Cheryl’s textbook, Nursing Research: Generating and Assessing Evidence for Nursing Practice, received both the 2007 and the 2011 American Journal of Nursing Book of the Year Award. Her book entitled Postpartum Mood and Anxiety Disorders: A Clinician’s Guide received the 2006 American Journal of Nursing Book of the Year Award. She recently published another book, Traumatic Childbirth.

Dr. Kimberly Thompson is a licensed psychologist in Texas. She works with people across the life span, but the majority of her clinical work centers around the special concerns of women and children.
Dr. Thompson is a published researcher, author, and teacher. She teaches in the Infant & Early Childhood Development Ph.D. program, Fielding Graduate University, and has recently authored “Perfect Mothers Get Depressed,” a book on the cognitive and relational roots of postpartum depression.
Dr. Thompson has been married to Dr. Charles D. Thompson, an obstetrician-gynecologist, since 1985. The two Drs. Thompson have four children and one grandchild.

Dr. Kendall-Tackett is a health psychologist and International Board Certified Lactation Consultant, and the Owner and Editor-in-Chief of Praeclarus Press, a small press specializing in women's health. Dr. Kendall-Tackett is Editor-in-Chief of the journal, Psychological Trauma and was Founding Editor-in-Chief of Clinical Lactation, a position she held for 11 years. She is Fellow of the American Psychological Association in Health and Trauma Psychology, Past President of the APA Division of Trauma Psychology, and a member of APA’s Publications and Communications Board.

Dr. Barnes is an internationally recognized expert on women’s reproductive mental health. A past president of Postpartum Support International, she currently sits on their President’s Advisory Board and is also a member of the Los Angeles County Perinatal Mental Health Task Force and the statewide Maternal Mental Health Collaborative. Her work has been published in a number of academic journals. She wrote the assessment and treatment guidelines for perinatal illness for the Perinatal Advisory Council of Los Angeles County. In addition to private practice, she is often retained by legal counsel on cases of infanticide, neonaticide and pregnancy denial. The 2009 recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award presented by the Eli Lilly Foundation, Dr. Barnes is the co-author of The journey to parenthood: Myths, reality and what really matters (Radcliffe, 2007) and editor and contributing author to a reference text on Women’s reproductive mental health across the lifespan (Springer, 2014).

Laurel Wilson, IBCLC, CLE, CCCE, CLD is a TEDx and international speaker, author, pregnancy and lactation expert, and consultant. She served as the Executive Director of Lactation Programs for CAPPA, the Childbirth and Postpartum Professional Association for 16 years and now is on the Senior Advisor Board. She served on the Board of Directors for the United States Breastfeeding Committee from 2016-2019. She also is on the Advisory Board for InJoy Health. She owns MotherJourney, focusing on training perinatal professionals on integrative and holistic information regarding pregnancy, childbirth, and breastfeeding. She has her degree in Maternal Child Health: Lactation Consulting and is an internationally board certified lactation consultant. As the co-author of two books, The Attachment Pregnancy and The Greatest Pregnancy Ever, original Editor of the CAPPA Lactation Educator Manual, and contributing author to Round the Circle: Doulas Talk About Themselves, she loves to blend today’s recent scientific findings with the mind/body/spirit wisdom. Laurel has been joyfully married to her husband for nearly three decades and has two wonderful grown sons, whose difficult births led her on a path towards helping emerging families create positive experiences. She believes that the journey into parenthood is a life-changing rite of passage that should be deeply honored and celebrated.