Black Matrescence and Maternal Suicide: Breaking the Silence for Black Mothers
Brianna A. Baker, PhD, Postdoctoral Counseling Psychologist, CUNY School of Public Health
Koree Badio, MS, Counseling Psychology Doctoral Student, University of Florida
In September 2025, 31-year-old Drake Patton and her two young children were found dead in Lake Michigan. Her partner described her as a loving mother who “loved her kids” but struggled with depression and could not access the help she needed (People, 2025). While authorities have not ruled her death a suicide, the circumstances reflect a devastating pattern: when Black mothers experience untreated perinatal or maternal mental health struggles, the consequences can be catastrophic.
Her story highlights a crisis that is often overlooked. Suicide is a leading cause of maternal mortality in the United States. Yet maternal suicide is rarely named, tracked, or addressed in policy and public health. For Black mothers, the silence is deeper still.
Structural racism and cultural stigma make disclosure dangerous, leaving many to suffer in isolation.
September is nationally recognized as “Suicide Awareness Month,” however, we must continue to acknowledge that Drake’s story is not an anomaly. In fact, her story is emblematic of a painful reality in which many Black mothers endure. Her experience shines a light on the urgent and often overlooked connection between suicide and the maternal mortality crisis erupting in Black communities.
As activists, scholars, and proud Black women, we invite you to name suicide prevention as an essential consideration in both safeguarding the lives of Black mothers and advancing holistic maternal health.
Suicide as Maternal Mortality
Maternal mortality in the U.S. has received heightened attention in recent years, especially given that Black women are three to four times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than White women (CDC, 2022). Public conversations often focus on obstetric complications like hemorrhage or hypertension. Yet psychiatric causes, including suicide and drug-related deaths, are among the leading contributors to maternal mortality, especially in the first year postpartum.
Despite this, maternal suicide is often misclassified on death certificates, coded as “injury” or “undetermined” rather than maternal mortality. This misclassification erases mothers like Drake from the data and obscures the true scope of the crisis. If we do not name suicide as maternal mortality, we fail to capture the full picture of Black maternal health inequities.
Black Matrescence Under Pressures
Matrescence, the transition into motherhood, is a profound developmental stage of bodily, psychological, and identity transformation (Athan, 2020). Baker (2025) extended this concept to introduce Black matrescence, emphasizing how systemic racism, gendered expectations, and intergenerational trauma shape this transition in Black families.
For Black women, matrescence is not simply about learning to care for a newborn; it also includes learning about navigating medical systems that often dismiss their pain, juggling economic instability, and surviving under the weight of cultural expectations to appear endlessly strong. The “Strong Black Woman” schema reinforces silence about suffering, discouraging mothers from voicing distress or seeking care (Woods-Giscombé, 2010). Stigma surrounding both mental illness and suicide deepens this silence, framing distress as personal weakness rather than a health concern that deserves care and compassion
This convergence of silence, stigma, and surveillance creates an impossible bind. Drake’s partner described her as struggling with depression but not receiving care. This quandary begs the question: How many Black mothers are feeling unsupported, neglected, and invisible?
Causes and Circumstances: Why Black Mothers Are at Risk
The circumstances surrounding Black maternal suicide cannot be reduced to individual pathology. They must acknowledge the overlapping structural and cultural forces:
- Systemic Racism in Healthcare. Black mothers are less likely than White mothers to be screened for or treated for perinatal mood and anxiety disorders. Even when they present with symptoms, their concerns are often dismissed or minimized.
- Stigma and Silence. Suicide and mental illness remain taboo in many communities, framed as moral weakness rather than health conditions. For mothers, stigma ideals of “good motherhood” amplify and dictate that maternal love should eclipse all suffering.
- Strong Black Woman Schema. Many Black women internalize cultural expectations to prioritize caretaking over self-care and to endure hardship silently (Woods-Giscombé, 2010). This cultural expectation of strength can mask suicidality until a crisis.
- Social Determinants of Health. Poverty, unstable housing, intimate partner violence, and lack of paid maternity leave create conditions of chronic stress that magnify mental health risk (Williams et al., 2019).
Drake Patton’s story reflects this convergence. By all accounts, she loved her children deeply. Yet depression went untreated. Access to effective, culturally responsive care was out of reach.
Unfortunately, without proper intervention, her risk escalated, and a preventable tragedy followed.
Consequences for Families and Communities
When a Black mother dies by suicide, the harm reverberates far beyond the individual. Children, partners, and extended family shoulder grief and stigma, and communities absorb another preventable loss. Research shows that children exposed to parental suicide face heightened risk of depression, posttraumatic stress, and suicidality themselves.
In Black families, these deaths are compounded by historical and intergenerational trauma. Generations of racialized loss, from enslavement and family separation to present-day maternal mortality, have conditioned many families to grieve in silence as a way of surviving. That silence, when applied to maternal suicide, ensures that grief is often hidden, unacknowledged, and unhealed. What could be a moment of collective support becomes instead another fracture in the family system.
Conclusion: Reproductive Justice Includes Suicide Prevention
The tragedy of Drake Patton and her children is a mirror reflecting the failures of our health and social systems. Black matrescence should not end in silence or despair. We must respond with care, community, and a commitment to justice.
Reproductive justice requires that Black mothers not only survive childbirth but also survive motherhood itself. Suicide prevention is maternal health. To ignore this reality is to consent to the continued invisibility of Black women’s suffering.
During and after Suicide Awareness Month, let us remember Drake and all the Black mothers whose lives ended too soon. Breaking the silence around Black maternal suicide is not only a clinical imperative; we urge psychologists and non-psychologists alike to treat this cause as an act of justice, one that affirms the lives of mothers, their children, and the generations that come after them.
Pathways Forward
The deaths of mothers like Drake demand that we reimagine maternal health through a suicide prevention lens. Several pathways are critical:
Naming Suicide as Maternal Mortality. Maternal mortality review committees must systematically include suicide and overdose deaths. Without measurement, prevention is impossible.
Culturally Responsive Perinatal Mental Health Care. Clinicians must receive training to recognize and respond to Black mothers’ mental health needs with cultural humility. This education includes addressing fears of surveillance and building trust.
Task Sharing and Community Doulas. Lay health workers and doulas can provide trusted, culturally grounded support. Evidence shows that task-sharing approaches improve engagement and reduce stigma.
Policy Change. Medicaid coverage should extend to one year postpartum for mental health services. Funding must prioritize Black-led maternal health organizations that integrate mental health support into perinatal care.
Family Systems Interventions. Prevention must extend beyond individual mothers. Family-centered approaches that include partners, grandparents, and children can strengthen resilience and disrupt cycles of trauma.
Dr. Brianna Baker
Dr. Brianna A. Baker is a public health psychologist and prevention scientist at CUNY whose work centers on Black families, girls, and women. She develops scalable, community-based interventions that bridge trauma, maternal health, and sports equity to promote healing, empowerment, and wellbeing through movement, storytelling, and culturally responsive care.
Koree Badio
Koree S. Badio is a counseling psychology PhD candidate advancing trauma recovery, restorative justice, and faith-based healing for Black communities worldwide.
Sources:
Athan, A. M. (2020). Reproductive identity: An emerging concept.American Psychologist, 75(4), 445–456. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0000623
Baker, B. A. (2025). Because of Her, I Am, I Want, and I Will Be: An Exploratory Investigation
of Black Mother-Daughter Relationships Across the Lifecourse (Order No. 32167836). Available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. (3248398511).
Chin, K., Wendt, A., Bennett, I. M., & Bhat, A. (2022). Suicide and maternal mortality. Current psychiatry reports, 24(4), 239-275.
Cross, A. (2024). Killing Black Mothers: Examining the Barriers, Facilitators, and Strategies to Address Maternal Mortality and Severe Maternal Morbidity of Black Women in the United States (Doctoral dissertation, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill).
Glazer, K. B., & Howell, E. A. (2021). A way forward in the maternal mortality crisis: addressing maternal health disparities and mental health. Archives of women’s mental health, 24(5), 823-830.
Woods-Giscombé CL. Superwoman Schema: African American Women’s Views on Stress, Strength, and Health. Qualitative Health Research. 2010;20(5):668-683. doi:10.1177/1049732310361892
Headline Image #1: Photo by Mustafa Omar on Unsplash
Text Image #2 : Photo by Jeferson Santu on Unsplash
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