Perinatal Clinical Psychologist Said Parents’ Mental Health Can Impact Children’s Mental Health In Early Stages

Dr. Sheehan D. Fisher is a Perinatal Clinical Psychologist at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. Photo provided by TMI.
Dr. Sheehan D. Fisher is a Perinatal Clinical Psychologist at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. Photo provided by TMI.

Perinatal Clinical Psychologist Said Parents’ Mental Health Can Impact Children’s Mental Health In Early Stages

By Tia Carol Jones

Dr. Sheehan David Fisher is a Perinatal Clinical Psychologist at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. He focuses on families during their pregnancy and postpartum period.

In undergrad, Fisher was trying to figure out what he wanted to do as a career and debating whether he wanted to do child psychology or adult psychology. He found perinatal psychology, which was a combination of working with parents and understanding their experiences while also looking at the health and mental health of children. Fisher has been doing perinatal psychology work for 19 years and has been a faculty member at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine for almost 13 years.

“It was a perfect marriage of both of those worlds to really understand the family system,” Fisher said.  He added that he wanted to help children at an early stage, to help them to grow up healthy, and at the same time, since parents are the biggest influence on children’s environment and wellbeing, it was a way to prevent future mental health issues, while supporting adults dealing with their experiences.

Fisher said that when a woman is pregnant the stress can have an impact on the fetus and once the child is born, parents’ behaviors, the way they engage with the child – vocalizations, eye contact, how much attention they give – influences the child based on the parent’s mood.

 Even though the child is nonverbal, the way a parent engages with a child can impact a child’s wellbeing, sense of stress and the way they deal with stress, even as infants. Fisher said as a child gets older and more verbal, day to day interactions, discipline approaches and a child seeing how a parent deals with their own stress, can have an impact on a child’s emotional health.

“The goal is to provide a nurturing and stable environment for the child, but it is also about what the child observes; not only what you do directly to the child,” Fisher said.

For example, if a parent is able to be positive and nurturing with the child, but the child observes the parent coming across as they are not doing well, the child has empathy and can become concerned, putting more of an emotional weight on the child.

Fisher said parental leave has shown to decrease depression in mothers and fathers, yet the United States does not have federally supported leave for parents after a child is born. He added, not having enough parental leave doesn’t give parents enough bonding time with a baby after their birth. Fisher said that there should be maternal and paternal leave after the birth of a child. He said not giving paternal leave puts more of the childbearing and childrearing burden on the mother, which impacts everyone’s stress levels and can even make the man feel like a secondary parent.

“We have to be conscious about how much our general policies and federal policies, state and local, how much are they structured for making sure a family is supported and we’re not overburdening the mom,” he said, adding that commonly a year of parental leave is beneficial for parents.

He added that, having a year of parental leave gives children an opportunity to bond and engage with the parent.  It also gives the mother and father the opportunity to psychologically and physically heal and come to terms with their new identity as parents. Fisher would like to see the United States give parents a standard three months of parental leave as a start. When parental leave is available, mothers get three months, while fathers get two weeks.

Fisher always wanted to be a father and was blessed to have a daughter. Because of the nature of his work as a perinatal psychologist, he was able to prepare for fatherhood in a unique way, focusing on how to design the postpartum period to be healthy. He believes with preparation, purposefulness and collaboration between the parents and their community, there is a way to design that period that allows for healthy outcomes.

Because of the transient nature of people, sometimes people have to be more creative around creating support and community, making sure they have people who share their commonalities and can give them emotional support.

Fisher does a lot of international work that has expanded his thought process around the perinatal period. Being in other countries, the more he engages with other communities, the more he can understand aspects and approaches to parenting, as well as academically to understand the perinatal period better and to create better interventions to support families.

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