BY ISABEL NELSON
The average person goes through life seeking to avoid trauma, but some brave folks confront it head-on. Lindsey Brown McCormick, Ph.D., is one such person. Dr. McCormick, associate professor in the Clinical Mental Health Counseling program at The Chicago School, is leading her students through courses that delve into some of life’s most fundamental traumas.
Born and raised in Kentucky, Dr. McCormick’s route to The Chicago School took a winding road through undergraduate women and gender studies classes, sex therapy, and work at a rape crisis center during her graduate program. Though her therapeutic focus evolved through her own lived experiences, her passion for teaching was ever-present.
In 2021, Dr. McCormick underwent two major changes: accepting a full-time position at The Chicago School and giving birth to her first child. Suddenly, Dr. McCormick was in the position of having firsthand knowledge of a traumatic birth, a subject she hadn’t studied in graduate school
“It really hit me that I’d worked and specialized in women’s mental health for so long, but I didn’t know anything about postpartum depression or postpartum anxiety,” Dr. McCormick says. “I’d never learned. It was never formally taught.”
She set out to change that for her own students. Says Dr. McCormick, “It really lit a fire under me to get trained in perinatal mental health, to not only get trained but to shift my clinical focus into perinatal mental health from that point and focus on the traumatic birthing experiences and reproductive trauma.”
The Chicago School was an ideal place to do that. Dr. McCormick was assisted in rewriting the lifespan development course for the online counsellor education program. In doing so, she’s ensuring that students in years to come can assist with typically underrepresented aspects of mental health.
According to Dr. McCormick, the overlap with other therapies that can help women and assigned-female-at-birth persons postpartum (e.g., lactation counselling, infant mental health, child attachment style development) can also prevent long-term problems for whole families.
“So much of what really fascinates me about perinatal mental health is the impact that it has, not just on the person that gave birth but the other children in the home and partners,” Dr. McCormick says. “It has this trickle-down effect that can be lifelong and potentially even lead to generational trauma if left untreated. It’s one of the most common complications that birthing folks have during pregnancy, and it’s very preventable.”
After her journey to reach this clinical focus, Dr. McCormick feels rewarded seeing her students finding their own path and the groups they want to serve.
“I teach a lot of fieldwork, and I love providing clinical supervision and teaching fieldwork classes and cohorts,” Dr. McCormick says. “There’s a lot of growth and change that can happen during those classes.”
It can feel overwhelming for students to determine their own focus, especially if it’s their first time doing fieldwork and experiencing direct service. But in a world still recovering from a pandemic, with more people than ever hoping to access mental health care online and in person, it’s critical that the students explore and discover where their passion lies. The next generation of birthing parents may depend on it.