Dr Dawn Kingston

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Calgary, AB
Dr Dawn Kingston

https://www.drdawnmentalhealth4women.com/research-studies I’m Dr. Dawn Kingston and I’m on a mission to help women live their best lives. I want to change this.

Dr. Dawn Kingston & The HOPE Team
Helping Women Overcome Mental Heathcare Barriers
🌼HOPE: Free selfguided therapy
📖Book: Your Brain on Pregnancy
🐑Farm in off hrs
⬇️Join a research study! My work centers on helping pregnant women take care of their mental and emotional well-being. Healthy families depend upon healthy mothers, and my goal is to help mothers be at their very best. I have two grown sons of my own, and I know firsthand that I can only support them well when I am healthy myself. As an associate professor at the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada, and holder of the Lois Hole Hospital for Women Cross-Provincial Chair in Perinatal Mental Health, I’m able to help pregnant women build strong emotional health and become the parent they want to be. I’ve been doing research on prenatal mental health for the past 10 years. I became seriously interested in women’s mental health during pregnancy when I was a nurse caring for sick infants in a neonatal intensive care unit. I realized that the medical field was focused on physical pregnancy problems, but some new research was linking prenatal stress, anxiety and depression to preterm birth and other health problems in children whose mothers suffered with prenatal anxiety or depression. A decade later, we now know that mental health problems are among the most common health problems in pregnancy. Unfortunately, help for emotional and mental health during pregnancy is often unavailable when and where women need it and they end up feeling alone and desperate. My goal is to share information and answers to questions that I constantly hear from women, their families and their prenatal care providers and provide bottom line, practical solutions that you can use to support your emotional health. Everything I offer will be based on our best evidence for how to prevent and treat emotional health problems in pregnancy. One last thing. The material I provide is meant to help you find the help you need to restore or maintain you mental and emotional health. As with all online health information, you should share it with your own provider before beginning any course of treatment. Warmly,
Dr. K

10/31/2025

‘Birth trauma’ is a broad term and can sound clinical. Putting it into context makes it more relatable and human. Here are some examples of what it can look like:

🔹A mother who experiences a traumatic birth may feel: anxious, fearful, confused and unheard.

🔹Experiencing these feelings may affect how a woman feels later, e.g. drop in confidence in a later pregnancy, anger, or extreme vigilance toward baby.

🔹Anxiety around experiencing, coping with and recovering from a traumatic birth may be made more or less difficult depending on past traumas and quality of support.

If you are struggling and suspect you may be dealing with some post birth trauma, anxiety, or postpartum depression, don’t wait. Traumatic births can lead to ongoing feelings of anxiety or depression, so it is vital that a mother’s needs are heard. ⁠ Reach out for help.

10/29/2025

There’s lots of research around what kind of tools are best to ask the question to identify who may be struggling with depression or anxiety, but these are free. The Patient Health Questionnaire, the General Anxiety Disorder are free on the web. Women can get them, there are 9 or 10 questions, very simple.

The Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ) can screen for depression, and the General Anxiety Questionnaire is just 7 questions and can help us understand where the patient is at.

As the provider, I’m interested in not just the total score at the end but also what women validate and confirm. And then I can go to them and say, ‘I see (on this one for example), that you’re having trouble with relaxing over half the days.’ So the items of the individual questions can become really important for assessing as well.

On Self-Advocacy:
If you are the patient and you are interested in seeking help for your mental wellbeing, a screener can be a great place to start. One way to start a conversation with a healthcare provider can be by completing a screener, and bringing your results with you the next time you have a pregnancy or postpartum check-up.

10/24/2025

In our conversations with other women, we’ve found a common theme that crops up over and over - ‘Menopause? I’s just not talked about.’ The older the woman, the greater the pressure it has been to be silent about menopause. Women talked about their mothers and their grandmothers, keeping quiet and in doing so, staying isolated in physical and yes, emotional challenges this period in life can bring.

So let’s talk about it. Talking about it reduces stigma and opens doors to get support. You are not alone in this experience and you don’t have to go through it alone. Reach out to your healthcare provider, and if you don’t feel heard, reach out to a trusted friend.

Want some more menopause support? Check out the blog for articles addressing topics such as hormonal replacement therapy, irritability, effects on relationships, caregiver burnout and more.

10/22/2025

Coming soon this fall is a newly designed HOPE Platform. Try out questionnaires and self-guided therapy modules to support various seasons in your mental health journey.

We are the HOPE team are excited to share this update on the Platform with you! Updates include visuals to illustrate courses, completion bars to help mark progress, and an easier navigation system. Stay tuned for this upcoming release. As before, CBT and IPT courses will be available to help support transitions in menopause, along with screeners.

10/14/2025

We are seeing some indication that perinatal depression is more common than 25 years ago and I think that’s a big red flag for how we propose to go forward in terms of our system and what our system can offer.

We see a dose response effect. In other words the higher the symptom, or the more severe the symptom, the greater the impact on the baby. However, recent research is identifying women who struggle with subclinical and low levels of distress with certain risk factors for their baby.

This is compelling evidence to not just support mothers with severe symptoms, but also to mothers with sub-clinical symptoms.

10/08/2025

It’s Mental Illness Awareness Week, and we’d like to join Lois Hole Hospital in shining a light on perinatal mental health.

Did you know in Alberta alone, 22% of moms report symptoms of postpartum depression and anxiety? This is just the number of moms that have reported it, that we know of. In our research, we have found that symptoms of ppd can be reduced in severity and time by treating early signs in pregnancy.

Interested in learning more? Take a look back on this talk hosted by the Lois Hole Women’s Society and let us know what you think!

10/03/2025

Women’s mental health is health. Postpartum depression needs to be taken seriously and not ignored as just ‘mood swings’. While hormones play a role it’s not necessarily the main factor in ppd.

Learn more about ppd on the blog and seek support from your healthcare provider if you’ve been experiencing low mood for a while.

10/01/2025

Has a deep breathing technique ever helped regain a sense of calm when stressed or anxious? Deep breathing techniques are helpful as they help soothe the nervous system.

Interested in a guided breathing exercise? Download our free guide on our website, https: //www.DrDawnMentalHealth4Women.com

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Calgary, AB

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http://www.hopementalhealth4women.com/, https://www.drdawnmentalhealth4women.com/

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