Speaking Up: Scheana Shay’s Journey with Postpartum OCD

 

Reality star Scheana Shay prides herself on being an open book. Starring in the reality series Vanderpump Rules, Shay has been sharing the honest, intimate details of her life with television audiences every Tuesday night for eleven seasons. And yet, when Shay started to experience Postpartum OCD, she was afraid to speak up about it. “I didn’t want someone to think I wanted to harm my child,” Shay said. “It was a terrifying thing to open up about.”

Postpartum OCD, also called Perinatal OCD, is a legitimate mental health condition that can be experienced by parents, whether or not they are a childbearing parent. It can affect parents of any gender and can occur during the pregnancy period and/or after the baby’s birth. While it’s common for expecting and new parents to experience intrusive thoughts and anxiety, as well as to be very protective of their pregnancy and/or newborn, for those with Postpartum OCD, these thoughts become consuming and debilitating. 

Shay recalls being plagued by concerns during her pregnancy, which she believes were exacerbated by her prior miscarriage. “I feel like having a miscarriage definitely was one of the triggers, because when I got pregnant again, the entire time I was pregnant, I was worried that I was also gonna lose this baby,” Shay said. She was filled with constant worries about worst-case scenarios. “It was just like obsessing over everything,” Shay described.

After her daughter, Summer Moon’s birth, Shay said, the anxieties continued to plague her. “It was then worrying about [if] she’s going to die of SIDs, [if] she’s going to stop breathing, [if] she’s going to choke. It was just so many things,” Shay said. Yet, Shay remained reluctant to say anything. She recalled being at her six-week check-up and lying on the questionnaire she was given to avoid being misdiagnosed with Postpartum Depression. 

“I didn’t open up about any of this because I just, I didn’t want it to be real. I didn’t wanna, you know, admit the things that were going on inside my head.  And it was definitely a struggle to open up about,” Shay explained. Shay knows that her experience is not unique.  “So many people suffer in silence because they’re afraid to speak up; they’re afraid to tell someone what’s going on in their head because they don’t want to seem crazy,” she said. 

When Shay’s intrusive thoughts began to expand beyond her daughter and to her husband, Brock Davies, she finally told her therapist about the thoughts she was having. “She was like, have you ever been diagnosed with OCD? And I’m like, no, but I’ve kind of felt that way my whole life,” Shay described. “So being able to finally openly speak about that and just know that I’m not alone helped me so much too.” 

That message of knowing you’re not alone, is one that Shay says has meant the world to her, and one she hopes to bring to others to inspire hope and healing. “That's why I do this.  That’s why I’ve always wanted to have a platform to literally be able to help others know that they’re not alone.”

Shay expressed her gratitude to Bravo and the Vanderpump producers for helping her share her story, noting that a lot of content gets “left on the cutting room floor.” “The fact that this is part of my story more than any other story that’s been told on Vanderpump Rules, the fact that this made it in, I’m so proud of and I’m just so happy that it’s helping so many people.” 

It was Shay’s openness on Vanderpump Rules that originally caught the attention of the International OCD Foundation (IOCDF.) In the summer of 2024, IOCDF awarded Shay the Illumination Award, given to public figures who have represented OCD and/or related disorders in a respectful, accurate, and appropriate way.