Kitty Dukakis, wife of former Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis and a tireless mental health advocate, has died. She was 88.
Dukakis married her husband in 1963, the same year he was first elected to the Massachusetts House. The couple spent more than 60 years together. Just over a decade after their marriage, she became the commonwealth’s first lady when her husband won the first of his three non-consecutive terms as governor.
Dukakis faced hardships with behavioral health and substance use. During her husband’s presidential campaign, she revealed she’d struggled with an addiction to diet pills. She later went public with her struggles with alcoholism, publishing the memoir “Now You Know.” In that book, Dukakis expressed gratitude for her husband’s 1988 loss to George H.W. Bush because she feared being the first lady of the United States would have sent her “out of control” and unable to get the help she needed.
A later memoir, “Shock,” would detail her battle with depression and the relief she found in electroconvulsive therapy. In a 2013 presentation about that journey, Dukakis shared the desperation she felt from not responding to antidepressants and therapy, and her surprise at how fast she found relief after her first ECT treatment.
“The following day was our wedding anniversary, and we assumed that any celebration was out of the question,” she recalled. “Michael picked me up at the hospital after my first treatment, and I turned to him as we’re driving home and said 'Let’s go out for dinner tonight. After all, it’s our anniversary.’ And he almost had an accident ... on Storrow Drive in Boston from the surprise.”
Dukakis was a staunch advocate for others dealing with substance abuse and mental health challenges, with an addiction treatment center at the Lemuel Shattuck Hospital in Jamaica Plain bearing her name.
Responding to the news of Dukakis’ death, Gov. Maura Healey reflected on the former first lady’s legacy. “The causes she championed — recovery, gender equality, human rights, and more — made a real difference in people’s lives,” Healey said in a post on X .
Massachusetts Democratic Party Chair Steve Kerrigan echoed that sentiment.
“Kitty Dukakis used her role as first lady of the Commonwealth to champion refugees and the homeless, promote greater awareness of the Holocaust, and advocate for placing more women in leadership roles within state government,” he said in a statement. “Yet it was her courage in publicly sharing her struggles with depression and substance use disorder that truly defined her strength.”
