Gravida & Kin | In-Residence Perinatal and Infant Mental Health

GRAVIDA & KIN

GRAVIDA & KIN

IN RESIDENCE CARE FOR TWO PATIENTS AT ONCE.
The mother, and the child who arrives partway through her life.
Commencing Winter 2026
Maryland · Washington DC · Arizona · Nevada · New Mexico
Two patients, one clinician.
For generations, medicine has treated the postpartum parent and the developing infant as two separate patients. This structural fragmentation leaves a dangerous clinical blind spot and the space between them is where both are most often missed. A mother's recovery and her child's development happen in the same house, on the same nights. They occur within an invisible, living ecosystem: The Dyad.
Gravida & Kin attends to a mother and her young child as one clinical concern rather than two. Her mental health and the child's neurodevelopment are held by a single clinician, in a single plan, in the family's residence. What passes between them is treated as the patient it is. This is ordinarily divided among four people who do not speak to one another. An obstetrician who discharges her at six weeks. A pediatrician who is not treating her. A psychiatrist with a three month wait who will not see the baby. A therapist who does not prescribe. Nobody holds the pair. Here it is not divided at all. Gravida & Kin holds the pair. One clinician, in the family's residence, for as long as it is useful.
Who Is Seen
Before Delivery
A woman with a psychiatric history, a prior perinatal episode, a medication decision to make, or a difficult birth behind her, who would rather have a plan built in advance than a crisis managed afterward.
The Fourth Trimester
The weeks after birth. Depression and anxiety. Birth trauma. Feeding difficulty. Sleep collapse. Intrusive thoughts. And the presentation everyone around her has decided is normal.
Early Childhood
A child between one and five whose sleep, feeding, separation or behavior has become persistently difficult, understood as something happening in a relationship rather than a fault located in the child.
Care is arranged for both. The mother's own health is not a secondary consideration here.
What Infant Mental Health Means
A baby cannot tell you that something is wrong.
So it arrives in the body instead, and in the relationship. In how he sleeps. In how he eats. In how easily he can be settled, and in how he and the person holding him manage to find each other.
Infant mental health is the assessment of that. Not whether a child is growing as he should, which belongs to his pediatrician and stays there. Whether something in his early experience, or in the relationship around him, has become difficult enough to warrant a clinician looking closely.
A four month old who cannot be settled by anyone, and a mother who has begun to believe she is doing it wrong. A baby home from the NICU who turns away from feeding, with every medical cause already excluded.
A toddler who stopped sleeping after a hospital stay and has not started again. A two year old whose distress has a quality the family cannot quite describe, but recognizes as different.
A child whose parent has been ill, or absent, or grieving, and who has not been the same since. A child of eighteen months or older whose development has raised a question nobody has answered.
This is not pediatric care and does not replace it. Every child keeps their own pediatrician, and I will speak with them gladly. Nor is it obstetric care. I do not manage pregnancies. I treat the mental health of the women having them.
The
In-Residence Intensive
Three days, in the family's own home. The mother and her child, each a patient with a chart of their own, assessed together. Preceded by a preparation visit, and followed by a written formulation for each of them.
It does not end in a report. It ends in treatment already begun, with a plan in place before I leave.
Who You Would Be Seeing
Joanne Patterson
DNP, MSN, PMHNP-BC, APHN-BC
Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner
A high risk pregnancy, mother-baby, and newborn nursery nurse at Emory University Midtown Hospital before she was anything else.

Board Certified Through
American Nurses Credentialing Center
American Holistic Nurses Credentialing Center
Trained At
Syracuse, Emory and Brandman Universities
Continuing Education in Reproductive Psychiatry
Postpartum Support International (Advanced Perinatal Health Psychopharmacology)
Massachusetts General Hospital Psychiatry Academy (Women's Mental Health Coursework)
Recognition
2025 Nurse Innovator Award, American Psychiatric Nurses Association
Enquries
The first thousand days shape how a child learns to settle, rest and recover. Gravida & Kin exists to protect that foundation. Care is arranged as an engagement rather than by the visit.
Requests for a conversation to discuss fees and how care is arranged are answered personally, within one business day.
A small number of families will be seen from the Winter 2026 opening.

First Name

Last Name

Email

Comment

IN RESIDENCE CARE FOR TWO PATIENTS AT ONCE.

The mother, and the child who arrives partway through her life.

Commencing Winter 2026

Maryland · Washington DC · Arizona · Nevada · New Mexico

Two patients, one clinician.

Who Is Seen

Before Delivery

A woman with a psychiatric history, a prior perinatal episode, a medication decision to make, or a difficult birth behind her, who would rather have a plan built in advance than a crisis managed afterward.

The Fourth Trimester

The weeks after birth. Depression and anxiety. Birth trauma. Feeding difficulty. Sleep collapse. Intrusive thoughts. And the presentation everyone around her has decided is normal.

Early Childhood

A child between one and five whose sleep, feeding, separation or behavior has become persistently difficult, understood as something happening in a relationship rather than a fault located in the child.

What Infant Mental Health Means

A baby cannot tell you that something is wrong.

So it arrives in the body instead, and in the relationship. In how he sleeps. In how he eats. In how easily he can be settled, and in how he and the person holding him manage to find each other.

Infant mental health is the assessment of that. Not whether a child is growing as he should, which belongs to his pediatrician and stays there. Whether something in his early experience, or in the relationship around him, has become difficult enough to warrant a clinician looking closely.

A four month old who cannot be settled by anyone, and a mother who has begun to believe she is doing it wrong. A baby home from the NICU who turns away from feeding, with every medical cause already excluded.

A toddler who stopped sleeping after a hospital stay and has not started again. A two year old whose distress has a quality the family cannot quite describe, but recognizes as different.

A child whose parent has been ill, or absent, or grieving, and who has not been the same since. A child of eighteen months or older whose development has raised a question nobody has answered.

This is not pediatric care and does not replace it. Every child keeps their own pediatrician, and I will speak with them gladly. Nor is it obstetric care. I do not manage pregnancies. I treat the mental health of the women having them.

The

In-Residence Intensive

Three days, in the family's own home. The mother and her child, each a patient with a chart of their own, assessed together. Preceded by a preparation visit, and followed by a written formulation for each of them.

It does not end in a report. It ends in treatment already begun, with a plan in place before I leave.

Who You Would Be Seeing

Joanne Patterson

Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner

A high risk pregnancy, mother-baby, and newborn nursery nurse at Emory University Midtown Hospital before she was anything else.

Board Certified Through

American Nurses Credentialing Center

American Holistic Nurses Credentialing Center

Trained At

Syracuse, Emory and Brandman Universities

Continuing Education in Reproductive Psychiatry

Postpartum Support International (Advanced Perinatal Health Psychopharmacology)

Massachusetts General Hospital Psychiatry Academy (Women's Mental Health Coursework)

Recognition

2025 Nurse Innovator Award, American Psychiatric Nurses Association

Enquries

The first thousand days shape how a child learns to settle, rest and recover. Gravida & Kin exists to protect that foundation. Care is arranged as an engagement rather than by the visit.

Requests for a conversation to discuss fees and how care is arranged are answered personally, within one business day.

A small number of families will be seen from the Winter 2026 opening.