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 from 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.?

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.”?

Bishop Leonard Fairley (Photo submitted)

As hundreds of United Methodist churches in Kentucky left the denomination over LGBTQ+ issues, some members disappointed with the disaffiliation wanted to remain United Methodists.

Despite the rift, Kentucky United Methodist Bishop Leonard Fairley remained optimistic about the denomination’s future, predicting that United Methodists “will show the love of God by starting new faith communities throughout Kentucky.”

Fairley on Sunday will help celebrate the first new faith community to officially join the United Methodist fold, Antioch United Methodist Church in Erlanger.

Fairley will preach at the 10 a.m. “chartering service” at the Receptions Event Center on 1379 Donaldson Highway. The media have been invited.

Most of Antioch’s 75-member congregation belonged to other United Methodist churches but were not in the voting majority when those churches decided to leave the United Methodist Church (UMC). It took at least a two-thirds vote of a church’s participating members to disaffiliate. Those not seeking disaffiliation basically were left without a church.

Other churches may follow the route of Antioch, said Cathy Bruce, communications director for the Kentucky United Methodist Conference, noting that Northern Kentucky was “especially hit hard by disaffiliations.”

In Western Kentucky, she said, more than 50 people last month, also upset that their churches disaffiliated from the UMC, attended the launch of the United Methodist Church of Trigg County in Cadiz, but it has not yet scheduled to charter with the denomination.

“Sometimes it takes up to a year to get a church chartered,” Bruce said.? “Antioch has been meeting since March but just now is getting chartered.” Chartering involves making sure the church understands the various guiding points and beliefs of the United Methodist Conference.

Bruce also said another church has plans to form in the Lexington area made up of United Methodists who want to remain United Methodists.

History of the split

The disaffiliation movements started in January 2020 with a proposal to split the denomination over “fundamental differences” concerning homosexuality.

The disaffiliations picked up momentum with a decision by the UMC to allow congregations to keep their property if they voted by two-thirds of participating members to disaffiliate.

The exodus of Kentucky United Methodist churches was confirmed in June when delegates to the Kentucky Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church approved requests from 286 churches to leave the denomination that was formed in 1968. About 80 churches had already left in recent years.

Departing congregations ranged from Kings Mountain in Lincoln County, whose members voted 2-0 to disaffiliate, to Centenary in Lexington, where the vote was 511-45 in favor of disaffiliation.

A total of 369 United Methodist churches in the state conference with about 84,000 members decided not to leave the denomination. The Kentucky Conference of the UMC covers most, but not all, of the state.

In the Kentucky conference, more than 100 of the almost 400 congregations that have left the United Methodist Church have been approved, applied or are inquiring about joining the Global Methodists, a more conservative Christian denomination.

Global Methodist doctrine does not recognize same-sex marriages or the ordination of openly gay Methodists. Neither does the United Methodist Church, which, during years of debate surrounding LGBTQ+ issues, has repeatedly upheld its stance against gay clergy and same-sex marriage.

But the issue has been debated in the United Methodist Church for years.

That debate came to a boil in 2016 after hundreds of United Methodist clergy came out as gay and a Western regional conference elected the first openly lesbian bishop, sparking the conservatives’ push to leave the church.

United Methodists may revisit the LGBTQ+ debate next year in Charlotte at the worldwide General Conference, the denomination’s highest legislative body, the first since 2019 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

But for now, the state conference will celebrate the addition of Antioch in Northern Kentucky.

The Rev. Caleb Wheat, who previously served at St. James United Methodist Church in Bowling Green with about 175 members, became pastor od Antioch at the end of June. St. James decided to stay with the United Methodists.

Wheat, 31, said this Sunday’s worship service at Antioch will include a special liturgy for chartering churches.? It will be preceded at 9 a.m. by a church “charge conference,” at which church officers will be formally elected to serve as representatives of the newly formed church.

“It is an exciting time for everyone involved with Antioch,” said Wheat.? “We especially want to thank Bishop Fairley for his guidance. Folks here have remained in the faith and in God’s love for all.? They came together after a tough situation to accomplish this together.”

From left, Robyn Pizzo, Sherman Neal and Shelly Baskin, who campaigned for removal of a Confederate monument from the Calloway County Courthouse grounds, display some of the yard signs that sprouted across the community. The fiscal court decided to leave the statue of Robert E. Lee where it has stood since 1917. (Photo Courtesy of Rural-Urban Exchange)

Sherman Neal spent many days of the summer of 2020 in the Western Kentucky college town of Murray next to a Confederate monument at the county courthouse.?

It was on the heels of the murder of George Floyd and the fatal police shooting of Breonna Taylor when Neal — a Black volunteer college football coach, veteran and recent transplant to the city — penned an open letter to local leadership calling for the monument to be removed.?

In that letter, he evoked his young children, saying if they asked about the monument, he would have to tell them it was a racist symbol put in place “to keep Black people quiet and subservient.” The monument, which features a statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee, was erected with funds from a local United Daughters of the Confederacy chapter in 1917.?

Neal’s letter sparked a movement that led to months of protests, a local man assaulting protesters with mace and a march on the county courthouse square, a place where those wanting the monument to stay often confronted those who wanted it removed.

“You don’t get too many opportunities in life to go through real shared hardships together and learn lessons at the same time,” Neal said in a recent interview with the Lantern. “It takes actual experience sometimes to learn certain things and build certain bonds.”?

A new documentary, “Ghosts of a Lost Cause,” captures the struggles and bonds built by those in Murray who pushed for the monument to be removed.

It is one of a series of documentaries airing this Saturday in communities across Kentucky, coinciding with a regional tradition of celebrating emancipation from chattel slavery on Aug. 8.?

The Rural-Urban Solidarity Project, coordinated by the organization Kentucky Rural-Urban Exchange, is airing four films that chronicle actions and protests for racial justice that Kentuckians took following the killing of Breonna Taylor, while also uplifting and celebrating Black communities across the state.?

Robyn Pizzo, a resident featured in the Murray documentary, made “Move the Monument” yard signs that sprouted across the community. She said watching the film is “painful” and “heartbreaking” in some ways given that advocates, like herself, for removing the Confederate monument didn’t achieve their goal.?

Lee’s statue remains by the county courthouse after the Calloway County Fiscal Court decided to keep it on county property in 2020. But the bonds made between Pizzo, Sherman and other community members throughout those efforts also remain.?

“I think some of the power in the storytelling is the diversity of the people who were interviewed and the people who were part of the movement, like the backgrounds that we all came from, our motivations to join, how it’s impacted our lives since,” Pizzo said. “I think that there is a hope, that even individual people making small changes can have an impact to the future of what Kentucky looks like and making it a more welcoming and equitable place for everyone.”

Years in the making

Savannah Barrett, the co-founder of the Kentucky Rural-Urban Exchange, is still deeply connected to her roots in Grayson County.

Barrett helps lead the Exchange, an organization that brings together Kentuckians from rural and urban communities to share ideas and create understanding and bridge divides.?

When people began to fill the streets of her current home in Louisville following the police killing of Breonna Taylor, she was also hearing from people she knew about Black Lives Matter protests popping up in smaller communities across the state, including in her home of Grayson County.?

She saw that younger people in Leitchfield, the Grayson County seat, were organizing a protest at a local courthouse.?

“I can say without a shadow of a doubt that that has never happened in Leitchfield,” Barrett said.?

She said she recognized the protests sweeping across rural communities in solidarity with Black Kentuckians was something “very special,” and working with filmmakers she knew, efforts began to capture some of those moments on film. The ideas for the documentaries were conceived from that footage.?

“We started to work with our member network to try and figure out how to make these films in a way that was by and for the folks who were supporting these actions across the state,” Barrett said. “We needed to hear from more Black Kentuckians. We needed the leadership and oversight of some of the luminaries in African American arts and culture in the state.”

As the ideas for the films progressed, she reached out to people such as Betty Dobson who runs the Hotel Metropolitan, a storied hotel-turned-museum in Paducah that hosted Black travelers including stars such as James Brown and Louis Armstrong during the era of segregation. A documentary highlighting Hotel Metropolitan’s history and the importance of preserving and sharing Black history, “Preserving the Past to Build a Better Future,” became one of the films in the series.?

Barrett said the films are purposefully being shown around when gatherings take place for Black communities in Kentucky, specifically the Old Timers festival in Covington and the Eighth of August emancipation celebrations in Western Kentucky. The film in Harlan County is also dedicated in the memory of two people featured in the documentary who have since passed away.

“It just felt right,” Barrett said.?

Other documentaries that came into shape include “Words I Speak: Solidarity + Resiliency,” featuring stories of Black women leaders from Northern Kentucky who stepped up to organize their community or run for office.

Another film being showcased in Harlan County highlights the Eastern Kentucky Social Club, a treasured gathering space and far-flung network of friends and family. The film also details the challenges and resilience of Black people in the mountain county.

“We looked at different stories,” said Gerry James, one of the filmmakers involved with the documentaries. “We wanted to have diverse geography.”

James was particularly involved with the production of the film in Murray. The story of Sherman Neal and his struggles to remove the monument personally resonated with James, who is also Black. James works in outdoor recreation planning and recounted a story of visiting downtown Glasgow in southern Kentucky to help build a trail.?

“I pulled up to downtown Glasgow, and I parked right in front of a Confederate monument. And then a Black family walks past,” James said. “It just reminded me of myself in that moment and how I felt about that monument.”

James said he wanted to show the “humanity” of those involved to remove the monument in Murray, noting Neal’s background as a Marine veteran in challenging a monument dedicated to Confederate veterans.

Neal faced a backlash for being a frontline advocate for removing the Murray monument. He left Murray in 2021 after he wasn’t brought back on his college football team as a volunteer coach.?

But he feels it’s still important to document movements, including ones that don’t achieve every tangible goal, for future posterity.

“A lot of times we look at the ‘I Have a Dream’ speech,” he said. “‘Oh, that’s great.’ Well, there’s a lot of bad that comes, too, and sacrifice that comes with all these things. And I think it’s important to capture the reality of some of that.”

(Getty Images)

This article is republished from?Kentucky Health News, ?an independent news service of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, based in the School of Journalism and Media at the University of Kentucky, with support from the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky.

Kentuckians’ sense of well-being from 2008 to 2017 was the worst of any U.S. state?except West Virginia, according to a research paper that uses polling data to compare life satisfaction, enjoyment, smiling and being well-rested along with the negative affects of pain, sadness, anger and worry.

The research also looks at 163 other nations, and ranks them along with U.S. states. In those rankings, Kentucky is 89th, just below Russia and Uruguay and just above South Korea and Belgium. West Virginia is 101st, just below Sri Lanka and just above Mauritania.

The research is being done by economics professor David G. Blanchflower of Dartmouth College in New Hampshire and?the University of Glasgow in Scotland, and social-science professor Alex Bryson of University College London. It is published as a working paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research, a nonprofit organization that says it is “committed to undertaking and disseminating unbiased economic research among public policymakers, business professionals, and the academic community.”

The researchers write that their four positive measures aren’t just the flip side of the negative measures: “It seems they are, at least to some extent, measuring different things. . . . The implication is that we might need more than life satisfaction alone to obtain a robust assessment of state rankings on well-being.”

The four negative questions in the Gallup Inc. polls asked respondents if they had experienced physical pain, sadness, worry or anger “during a lot of the day yesterday.” The four positive questions were:

• Please imagine a ladder with steps numbered from zero at the bottom to 10 at the top. Suppose we say that the top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you. If the top step is 10 and the bottom step is zero, on which step of the ladder do you feel you personally stand at the present time?
• Did you experience the following feelings during a lot of the day yesterday? How about enjoyment?
• Did you smile or laugh a lot yesterday?
• Now, please think about yesterday, from the morning until the end of the day. Think about where you were, what you were doing, who you were with, and how you felt. Did you feel well-rested yesterday?

Kentucky’s highest rank among the states and nations, 62nd, was for enjoyment the previous day. It ranked 71st in the ladder of life, 88th in smiling or laughing, and 138th in being well-rested.

The top state in the rankings was Hawaii, followed by Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Alaska and Wisconsin. The bottom 10, starting with No. 41, were Rhode Island, Nevada, Oklahoma, New Jersey, Ohio, Tennessee, Arkansas, New York, Kentucky and West Virginia.