Mother’s Death Inspires Fundraiser for Postpartum Mental Health Care

[Editor’s note: This story discusses postpartum depression, self-harm, suicide and systemic gaps in mental health supports.]

Friends and family members of Jenna Dorman are raising the alarm about the systemic failures of mental health supports for parents during the pregnancy and postpartum periods in B.C.

Dorman died by suicide in late 2024 while suffering from severe postpartum depression after having her second child.

Dorman’s partner, Jay Hoggard, says she was brilliant and driven and helped everyone around her to be the best version of themselves.

She worked as chief revenue officer for a large technology firm and excelled on every project she put her mind to, he says.

Dorman died when her second child was 10 months old. The development of her mental illness was gradual, Hoggard says, as if they were in warm water that slowly got hotter until it was boiling.

Dorman had an extensive network of friends that surrounded her with love, help and food, but she wasn’t able to access the mental health care she needed.

“There was nowhere to go,” Hoggard said.

“You’re on a wait-list. We tried everything. The only place when it came down to it was in emergency at [Vancouver General Hospital] on a cot or a stretcher basically in the corner of the emergency room for six or seven days,” he said.

Admittance to the psychiatric emergency unit created stress, in part by separating Dorman from her family.

“The lights are on all the time,” Hoggard said. “You don’t really have any privacy. You don’t have your phone, you don’t have your baby and you don’t have your husband. That’s the resources we got.”

“There needs to be a place for women and their babies, where families can be supported,” he added.

“Jenna would have survived if she had a place to go, no doubt about it.”

According to the BC Women’s Health Foundation, suicide is the fourth-leading cause of maternal death in Canada. A 2024 retrospective review for the Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology Canada found that over a third of deaths from accidental overdose and suicide occurred more than 42 days after birth or the end of a pregnancy.

Fundraising to support perinatal and postpartum mental health

In the wake of Dorman’s death, her close friends launched In Her Circle, a fundraiser and advocacy campaign for postpartum mental health.

The campaign launched in early May with the initial goal of raising $16,000 for a year of weekly drop-in postpartum support through the Pacific Post Partum Support Society, which is open to all postpartum mothers regardless of immigration status and does not have a wait-list.

The campaign blew through that goal, so they decided to double it, Kiri Bird, lead organizer for In Her Circle, told The Tyee.

Then they blew through that goal too.

“The biggest surprise has been the response from midwives, from psychiatrists, from anesthesiologists, from people who work in health care every day, saying, ‘Please do more of this, tell the story, ring the bells, because absolutely more attention is needed here. Keep going.’ So that’s what we’re offering to do,” Bird said.

Bird said the current goal is to raise $50,000 by May 31, and they’ve raised close to $40,000 so far.

The Pacific Post Partum Support Society will receive $32,000 and the rest will be used to help In Her Circle continue to advocate for improved postpartum mental health supports in B.C., Bird said.

One of the core areas of focus will be advocating for the opening of the perinatal mental health unit at BC Women’s Hospital, she said. “Perinatal” includes the periods directly prior to and following birth.

BC Women’s Health Foundation is raising $9 million through private funding to develop North America’s first acute inpatient unit for perinatal psychiatric inpatients, according to its website.

The foundation declined an interview to discuss how the campaign is going.

Currently there are wait-lists several months long to access postpartum mental health supports, Bird said. Many programs can’t support parents who are suicidal, so as mental illness progresses there are fewer options for support, she added.

When Dorman tried to access services, she was told there was a four-to-six-month wait-list, Bird said, adding she’s been receiving messages from people donating to In Her Circle that they had to wait six to eight months for supports.

Inpatient psychiatric care where the parent and baby are both admitted is more common in Europe and Australia, said Catriona Hippman, an adjunct professor with the University of British Columbia’s department of obstetrics and gynecology and post-doctoral research fellow with the BC Women’s Hospital’s reproductive mental health unit.

B.C.’s proposed perinatal mental health unit would admit a parent and baby but would require the baby to sleep in a nursery at night, she said. This supports parent-infant bonding and is also more equitable for people who need inpatient care but don’t have other child care options available.

A lot of mental health care is done through a family doctor, who can give a preliminary diagnosis for depression and anxiety and recommend therapy or medication, Hippman said.

In B.C. it’s recommended to screen all pregnant people for depression and anxiety between 28 and 32 weeks of pregnancy, as well as six to eight weeks postpartum.

The first line of treatment is therapy, which can include talk therapy, peer support and culturally specific therapy, Hippman said. From there, patients might be recommended to try medication. Any patients with an indication for suicide, having a plan to die by suicide or who are experiencing symptoms of postpartum psychosis are in a medical emergency and should go to a hospital’s emergency department right away.

About one in four pregnant people will experience some form of depression or anxiety, Hippman said.

For Indigenous and immigrant parents, the risk of developing postpartum depression jumps to 50 per cent, she said.

This is likely related to the added stress Indigenous and immigrant parents face when navigating health-care systems due to language and cultural barriers, justified fears of child removal, lack of trust in the health-care system and removal from their community and support systems to give birth, she said.

One to two people per 1,000 who give birth will experience postpartum psychosis, Hippman said.

Treating mental illness

Everyone is born with some risk of developing mental illness.

Pregnancy and the postpartum period come with huge shifts in hormones and major stressors that can be a lot for the brain to deal with, Hippman said.

Parents with a newborn go through a huge shift in identity, capacity, relationships and sleep.

“Sleep is hugely tied to mental health at any time, and the concern is in the postpartum period we know parents are not getting very much sleep,” she said.

The good news is that there are small ways to protect the mental health of new parents, and the earlier people are able to get help, the less likely the mental illness will escalate into a crisis.

Mild depression can be treated with increased social support, such as going to a parenting group, getting out of the house and doing something physical, such as going for a walk around the neighbourhood, Hippman said.

Indigenous people in B.C. can access the Doulas for Aboriginal Families Grant Program and get extra help from a doula, who may be able to take on some feedings and help a parent sleep longer, Hippman said.

A helpful acronym to remember is NESTS: nutrition, exercise, sleep, time to yourself and social supports, she said.

Moderate depression may also require talk therapy such as cognitive behavioural therapy or interpersonal therapy, mindfulness-based therapy or dialectical behavioural therapy, Hippman said.

Text-support services such as the one offered by the Pacific Post Partum Support Society can be a “lifeline” because you can connect with support while putting your baby to sleep or feeding them, she said.

There are also group cognitive behavioural-based therapy programs and attachment-based programs, she said.

Family doctors can also refer patients to the BC Women’s Reproductive Mental Health Clinic. Each health authority has a reproductive psychiatrist that patients can be referred to who has special training and knowledge about how to manage medication for mental health during pregnancy and the postpartum period.

Moderate to severe depression can benefit from nutrition, exercise, sleep, time to yourself and social supports and therapy, but may also require medication. Taking antidepressants while pregnant can make babies harder to soothe, but there are no long-term impacts, Hippman said, and the benefits of taking medication can outweigh this potential drawback. It’s important to discuss the risks of taking or not taking medication with your doctor, Hippman added.

Hippman agrees that there are gaps in services. Currently therapy is not generally covered by the provincial Medical Services Plan, so people have to pay out of pocket; not everyone has a family doctor so some people must use walk-in clinics or emergency departments to access care; and wait-lists for perinatal mental health supports are often four to six months long.

“That’s too long, especially during this very sensitive time,” she said.

B.C. is set to release the Perinatal and Postnatal Mental Health Strategy Act later this month, which Hippman said will hopefully bring more supports for people in need.

Another strategy B.C. could adopt is community perinatal mental health teams like they have in the United Kingdom, she said.

Hippman said it’s important for all doctors to screen their pregnant patients for anxiety and depression. When doctors don’t screen all patients, it creates gaps where marginalized people are more likely to miss out on services, she said.

Bird said In Her Circle will also be working to make sure the upcoming Perinatal and Postnatal Mental Health Strategy Act supports acute cases.

She said the fundraiser has helped her feel close to Dorman, who was a close friend for a decade before they decided to have kids around the same time.

Dorman would have wanted the BC Women’s Reproductive Mental Health Clinic built so new parents could take care of themselves and their new baby and not be a burden on their friends and family, Bird said.

“I believe she would feel proud” of what In Her Circle has accomplished so far, she added.