Emory University remembers First Lady Rosalynn Carter

Emory University joins the world in mourning the passing of former first lady Rosalynn Carter on Nov. 19, 2023, and honoring her courage as an advocate for mental health, childhood immunization and human rights.

In her transformative work advancing mental health in the U.S. and globally, she partnered for decades with Emory experts, uniting her vision of a more equitable health care system with the university’s strengths in research, training and service.

Mrs. Carter’s deep engagement with the university was one half of an unforgettable chapter in which both Carters, Rosalynn and President Jimmy Carter, turned to Emory to help achieve their ambitious post-presidential goals. In 1982, the couple launched The Carter Center in association with Emory to promote peace and democracy and address issues of global health.

Former President Carter joined the faculty as Emory University Distinguished Professor, taught classes and conducted memorable Town Halls annually with first-year students for 39 years. In his tongue-in-cheek style, he went so far as to say, “We’ve formed a marriage with Emory, and it’s worked out quite well.”

—Emory President Gregory L. Fenves

As much as the couple worked together with astonishing energy and focus on a range of issues, even well into their later years, President Carter understood from the beginning the difference Mrs. Carter could make acting on her own.

During their White House years, he considered it “only natural” that she attended cabinet meetings, advised about presidential appointments, served as an emissary of the president overseas and continued to advance the mental health work she began in Georgia. When Mrs. Carter testified before Congress as honorary chair of the President’s Commission on Mental Health in 1979, she was only the second first lady to do so, following Eleanor Roosevelt.

Her achievements reflect a range of areas: advancing the arts; co-launching the immunization campaign Every Child by Two; co-founding The Carter Center in 1982 with President Carter; and serving on the policy advisory board of the Atlanta Project, a Carter Center initiative that addressed poverty’s social ills.

However, it is for improving mental health resources that she will be principally known. As she never tired of reminding us, mental illnesses were not something that could remain in the shadows — not when they are experienced by one in four Americans.

As a demonstration of that unflagging commitment, in May 2023, The Carter Center indicated that Mrs. Carter was suffering from dementia.

The statement read in part: “We recognize, as she did more than half a century ago, that stigma is often a barrier that keeps individuals and their families from seeking and getting much-needed support. We hope sharing our family’s news will increase important conversations at kitchen tables and in doctor’s offices around the country.”

Taking up the cause of mental health

Her involvement with the issue began at 4 a.m. in early spring 1966, as a young Rosalynn Carter stood outside an Atlanta cotton mill hoping to interest voters in her husband’s gubernatorial aspirations. A woman came out of the mill exhausted and covered in lint.

When Mrs. Carter called to her, suggesting that she go home and get some rest, the woman responded, “Well, Mrs. Carter, I hope I can get rest because I have a mentally ill daughter at home. My husband’s salary doesn’t allow me to have good help for her, so we do the best we can.” 

That afternoon, unable to stop thinking about the weary mother, Mrs. Carter got in a receiving line to surprise her husband and ask him what so many people soon would ask her on the campaign trail: “What will you do about mental health in Georgia?”

Confidently, he answered: “We’re going to have the best program in the country, and I’m going to put you in charge of it.” With that, Mrs. Carter put in motion what became a more than 50-year commitment to improve the lives of those dealing with mental illnesses.  

Soon after becoming Georgia’s governor, Carter established the Commission to Improve Services for the Mentally and Emotionally Handicapped, to which he appointed Mrs. Carter. She worked on it for four years, volunteering in hospitals and learning about the issues. The path was not easy; as she recalled, when she announced her focus on mental health as Georgia’s first lady in 1971, “only five mental health advocates in the state wanted to be involved with the issue.”

During her time as America’s first lady, Mrs. Carter led the President’s Commission on Mental Health and helped to bring about passage of the 1980 Mental Health System Act, which positively reformed publicly funded mental health programs.

Making the university a partner

After leaving the White House, Mrs. Carter turned to the Emory Department of Psychiatry for help in launching the Rosalynn Carter Symposium on Mental Health Policy in 1985. Hosting symposia through 2016, Mrs. Carter brought together national leaders in the mental health community to discuss a specific topic each year.

Once the permanent facilities of The Carter Center opened, the symposium moved there from the Emory campus, and The Carter Center Mental Health Program began. It promotes awareness about mental health issues, informs public policy, seeks equity for mental health care comparable to other health care as well as reduces stigma against those with mental illnesses.

Through the years, the program has benefited from a dynamic relationship with Emory that has included the departments of psychiatry and psychology as well as the Rollins School of Public Health and Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing.

Establishing the Rosalynn Carter Chair in Mental Health at Emory

In 2003, Rollins professor Benjamin Druss was named the inaugural Rosalynn Carter Chair in Mental Health. One of the few psychiatrists in the country whose primary appointment is in a school of public health, Druss complements Mrs. Carter’s goals of not only improving mental health within the health care delivery system but also improving people’s lives in the community.

He established a Mental Health Certificate Program at Rollins, which allows students to specialize their degrees and earn additional training related to mental health. Druss also serves on The Carter Center’s Mental Health Task Force.

Mrs. Carter established the Rosalynn Carter Fellowships for Mental Health Journalism in 1996, relying on experts like Druss to help journalists in the U.S. and abroad report accurately and reduce the stigma surrounding mental health. Fellows have produced more than 1,500 articles, documentaries, books and other works that have garnered an Emmy, Pulitzer Prize nominations and other awards.

Mrs. Carter authored two books on mental health: “Helping Someone with Mental Illness: A Compassionate Guide for Family, Friends, and Caregivers” (coauthored with Susan K. Golant in 1998) and “Within Our Reach: Ending the Mental Health Crisis” (coauthored with Susan K. Golant and Kathryn E. Cade in 2010).

—Benjamin Druss, professor and Rosalynn Carter Chair in Mental Health, Rollins School of Public Health

Emory alum leads Mental Health Program

Eve Heemann Byrd was appointed director of the Mental Health Program in 2017 and remembers the first time she met the Carters. She was 22 years old and attending Emory to pursue a second bachelor’s degree — this one in nursing. “It was announced that President Carter was coming to speak to the School of Nursing. At the time, I was president of the Student Nursing Association and I got to introduce him. I almost couldn’t get through it. This was a man I had looked up to all my life.”

Byrd went on to earn her master’s of nursing science (psychiatric/mental health nursing), a master’s of public health (health policy) and a doctorate of nursing practice (health systems leadership and implementation science) at Emory. As a graduate student, she regularly attended Carter Center events, where the former first lady made a powerful impression on her.

She could not imagine then she would help plan The Carter Center Mental Health symposia, become an instructor in Emory’s School of Nursing, lead the university’s Fuqua Center for Late-Life Depression for 16 years or have the life-changing experience of training nurses in Liberia as part of the Mental Health Program. That breadth of experience culminated in being tapped to be program director under Mrs. Carter.

Concerned not just with mental health in this country but around the world, Mrs. Carter oversaw the extension of mental health efforts to low- and middle-income countries. With the majority of work taking place in Liberia, the hope is that lessons learned there will point the way toward other countries implementing best practices.

Women’s rights and women’s studies

During her time in the White House, Mrs. Carter energetically endorsed ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) in speeches as well as at fundraisers and press conferences. In addition, she pressed key legislators from unratified states, hoping to win their support. Ultimately, disappointed by the ERA’s failure to be ratified, she observed: “Why [is there] such difficulty in giving women the protection of the Constitution that should have been theirs long ago?”

Mrs. Carter’s steadfast support of women’s equality was also a hallmark of her association with Emory. She served as Distinguished Fellow from 1989-2018 of what was, first, Emory’s Institute for Women’s Studies, then the Department of Women’s Studies and since 2011 the Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies (WGSS). 

Throughout a nearly three-decade association with the WGSS, she regularly hosted WGSS undergraduate classes at The Carter Center, where students learned about her work on the ERA as well as other issues and could ask her questions in an intimate setting.

Carla Freeman — currently director of Emory’s Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry and Goodrich C. White Professor of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies — joined the university’s faculty in 1995 and served as department chair for women’s studies from 2002-2003 and from 2006-2008. “I brought my students on many occasions to meet with Mrs. Carter to learn about the vital work of The Carter Center and about her initiatives around mental health and the rights of women,” Freeman recalls.

— Carla Freeman, Goodrich C. White Professor of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies

In 1990, Emory’s first set of Rosalynn Carter Fellows in Public Policy was named. The fellows program, which continued through the early 2000s, named women distinguished for their national, state and community service as honorary fellows for a three-year term. 

The first Rosalynn Carter Distinguished Lecture in Public Policy followed in 1993, reflective of Mrs. Carter’s work with the department to develop a series of programs in public policy. The annual lecture series, also active through the early 2000s, featured women who played a key role in contributing to the nation’s public policy and its development. A number of the speakers, who were introduced by Mrs. Carter, drew large crowds.

“Her support has been important in both public and personal ways, bringing women leaders across all spheres of public service to our campus, and also connecting with students, hearing their concerns and individual ambitions and relating to them in a remarkably warm and empathic manner,” Freeman says. “Our time with her was, for so many of us, one of the most memorable gifts of our Emory experience.”

In 2001, Mrs. Carter was honored with induction into the National Women’s Hall of Fame.

‘Tough enough to follow through’

For the woman who said, “You have to have confidence in your ability, and then be tough enough to follow through,” the 2000s brought a further advance.

Mrs. Carter was instrumental in bringing about the passage of the Paul Wellstone and Pete Domenici Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008, which ensures that mental illnesses are covered by insurance on par with other illnesses.

Honors for Mrs. Carter’s support of mental health causes include the Bill Foege Global Health Award, the Rhoda and Bernard Sarnat International Prize in Mental Health, the United States Surgeon General’s Medallion, the Director-General’s Award for Global Health from the World Health Organization and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

In a video tribute posted by The Carter Center, she reflected on her work on mental health issues and the need for it to continue: “I want my mental health work to carry on, even after there is no more stigma, which I’m not sure will come in my lifetime …

“But even after we don’t have stigma to work on, there is always going to have to be a lobby to get the services that we need,” she said. “I think it will still be important for the mental health community to come together the way they do now.”

In addition to President Carter, her husband of 77 years, she is survived by her four children, 11 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren. A grandson died in 2015.

“Rosalynn was my equal partner in everything I ever accomplished,” President Carter said in a statement from The Carter Center announcing her passing. “She gave me wise guidance and encouragement when I needed it. As long as Rosalynn was in the world, I always knew somebody loved and supported me.”

Readers are welcome to sign the condolence book for Mrs. Carter at the official family tribute site.

Story by Susan Carini 04G. Photos courtesy of The Carter Center and the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library. Design by Laura Dengler. Published Nov. 19, 2023.