Kitty Dukakis (SSW’96), Humanitarian and Mental Health Advocate, Dies at 88
Kitty Dukakis, a 1996 graduate of BU School of Social Work’s (BUSSW) Master of Social Work program, died on March 21 from complications of dementia.
The wife of Massachusetts governor and Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis, she entered the public eye in the early 1970s and spent the next five decades advocating for gender equality, human rights, and eradicating stigma around mental health and addiction.
Dukakis paved the way for women leaders in government by urging her husband in his first term to appoint four women to prominent roles in Massachusetts state government – an unprecedented move that changed the face of government in the state and nationwide.
The first Jewish spouse of a presidential nominee, Dukakis also believed that educating the public about the Holocaust taught universal lessons about the importance of speaking out against inhumanity. She was appointed to the Presidential Commission on the Holocaust in 1978 by President Carter, and to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council in 1989 by President George H.W. Bush.
Privately, Dukakis struggled with her mental health. In 1990, several years before beginning her master’s degree at BUSSW, she published the influential memoir “Now You Know,” writing candidly about her struggles with substance use and depression. She graduated from BUSSW in 1996 and later published a second book chronicling her experiences with electroconvulsive therapy. In 2007, she helped open the Kitty Dukakis Treatment Center for Women, an addiction facility at the Lemuel Shattuck Hospital in Jamaica Plain.
In addition to her work in mental health, Holocaust education, and gender equality, Dukakis was an advocate for refugees, orphans, and numerous other humanitarian causes.
She left behind three children, seven grandchildren, and her husband of 61 years, the former governor Michael Dukakis.
Read more about Kitty Dukakis’s extraordinary life of service here, and find details on how to make a donation in her memory here.