Before heading to grad school for psychology, Sheehan Fisher, PhD, was torn between focusing on adults or children. Perinatal psychology offered him the perfect blend of both. “It’s about the family system. My work focuses on child health outcomes by looking at how each parent engages with the child, how the parents engage with each other, and how the mental health of each parent affects the child.”
Today, he is a perinatal clinical psychologist and an associate professor at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University. He is also a new member of our Diversity Advisory Board.
We spoke to Fisher about the perinatal period, why paternal mental health is getting more attention and the changes he’d like to see culturally, socially, and politically in how we think about and support families.
Tell us about about your work.
I work with moms and dads, mainly doing behavioral therapies to help treat depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, and various anxiety disorders. I also have a father’s clinic specifically to focus on fathers’ mental health.
But this work isn’t just about biological risk for mental illness. The level of stress parents go through adjusting to this new phase of life makes it difficult for them to be healthy, and many of the reasons are societal.
Can you explain what you mean?
We push people to fit into norms. For example, policies favor the nuclear family model versus whatever is best for the individual family. I work with African-American families, and the co-parents have a higher likelihood of being unmarried, so they are viewed as single parents. But you can still be in a relationship with a partner without living with them or being married. In other countries, marriage isn’t a prerequisite for good healthcare and societal support systems.
What changes would you like to see?
I do advocacy work and policy work nationally and internationally to make sure that we create policies that are actually supportive of parents.
We are the worst First World country around parental leave and support. We want babies to be born, but we do not support the families once they’re born. I would love for everyone to have parental leave. It has been shown to benefit the mental health of birthing and non-birthing parents.
We also need more programming that’s open to or geared toward both parents. Most information and training are geared toward the mom, but the fathers need as much access to federal and state programs to make sure that we are not contributing to this gender labor discrepancy.
Screening should also be done more often for moms, but we must also start screening dads. If the mom is doing well, but the father’s still sick, the child’s still in danger of negative developmental outcomes.
What are some of the common misconceptions about the father’s role?
Misconceptions about masculinity affect how fathers feel they can–or even want to–engage with family.
There is also an assumption that fathers are incompetent, so they choose to be uninvolved because they may believe they are not “naturally” able to engage in all parenting responsibilities or are discouraged from involvement at times. Many hospitals automatically put the mom as the contact, for example. And even if the father is engaging with a child, people may criticize, “Well, you’re doing it the wrong way.”
You are the proud dad of a four-year-old daughter. How has being a father yourself affected your work?
It’s helped me appreciate being in this field and having all this information. Many men don’t have access to the information to even think about what they should consider to get mentally and financially prepared for a child. Although I am pushing for new fathers to do more, we, as a society, must create more availability to this information.
Congratulations on recently being named Associate Dean of Diversity and Inclusion. What does that entail, and what do you hope to accomplish?
I’m overseeing all the diversity work within the graduate school. It really is about supporting students throughout their experience. It starts with recruitment. Then, we focus on ensuring that the students feel supported once they are here. Graduating isn’t just a matter of intelligence or working hard enough. If the environment isn’t supportive and conducive, talented people may not meet their full potential. So, my goal is to work heavily on retention, not just for the numbers but for the graduate student experience to be positive, allowing people to flourish.
If you could change one thing about the way mental healthcare is delivered in this country, what would it be?
The more elite institutions are mostly available to those with the funds and private insurance. I’d like to ensure that everyone, regardless of their economic status, has access to high-level clinical care.
