4800 Friendship Ave — Pittsburgh Community Served by Center
Steven D’Achille spent five years holding weekly meetings, sketching an idea on paper, and meeting with board chairs across Allegheny Health Network and West Penn Hospital, all in pursuit of a center he believed might have saved his wife. Alexis Joy D’Achille died by suicide six weeks after giving birth to their daughter, Adriana, in 2013, after the couple visited at least seven psychiatric facilities and crisis centers searching for help that never came in time.
The center that bears her name, the Alexis Joy D’Achille Center for Perinatal Mental Health, opened at West Penn Hospital in December 2018 and is described as the first of its kind in western Pennsylvania, according to WTAE. It offers a mother-baby intensive outpatient program for women during or after pregnancy, according to Allegheny Health Network, housed in a 7,300-square-foot facility with rooms for individual therapy alongside space dedicated to the intensive program. The Alexis Joy Foundation, which D’Achille founded and now leads as president, is based inside West Penn Hospital, per the same account.
A Search That Ran Out of Time
According to WTAE’s reporting, Alexis developed postpartum depression, anxiety, OCD and eventually psychosis, and was also diagnosed with PTSD from childbirth. She was aware of her own condition before her death and, per D’Achille, begged to be admitted but felt unheard. At one facility, staff told the couple that psychiatrists had already left for the day and promised she would be prioritized when she returned on a Monday. She was gone by then…