Dukakis was born Katharine Virginia Dickson in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the daughter of Jane (née Goldberg) and Harry Ellis Dickson.[1] Her paternal grandparents were Russian Jews; her mother was born to an Irish Catholic father and a Hungarian Jewish mother, and had been adopted by a family of German Jewish descent.[2][3][4][5] Her father was a member of the first violin section of the Boston Symphony Orchestra for 49 years and also served as Associate Conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra.[6]
In 1989, Dukakis was briefly hospitalized after drinking rubbing alcohol.[12] In 1991, Dukakis published her memoir, Now You Know, in which she candidly discussed her ongoing battle with alcoholism. The book also discussed the pressures of being a political wife and her disappointment over her husband's defeat in the 1988 election. In the mid-1990s, Dukakis graduated from the Boston University School of Social Work with a master's degree in social work, successfully performing her practicum at Charles River Hospital in Wellesley, Massachusetts. In 2006, her book Shock revealed that she had undergone electroconvulsive therapy treatment beginning in 2001 in order to treat major depression. Dukakis is a leading proponent of using ECT to treat depression.[13]
Dukakis with her husband in 2012
In 2007, the Lemuel Shattuck Hospital in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, opened a center for addiction treatment named after Dukakis.[14]
Dukakis has served on the President's Commission on the Holocaust, on the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, on the board of the Refugee Policy Center, and on the Task Force on Cambodian Children.
^"Story on Mrs. Dukakis Is Denied by Campaign". New York Times. August 26, 1988. Retrieved May 27, 2016. Michael Dukakis's Presidential campaign, responding to comments by Senator Steve Symms, an Idaho Republican, issued a statement Wednesday saying any suggestion that Kitty Dukakis had ever burned an American flag was totally false and beneath contempt.
^Susan Estrich (September 4, 2004). "Lies move Democrats to dig up dirt". Myrtle Beach Sun. Archived from the original on September 17, 2004. Retrieved May 27, 2016. Or how about the one about Kitty Dukakis burning a flag at an anti-war demonstration, another out-and-out lie, which the Bush campaign denied having anything to do with, except that it turned out to have come from a United States senator via the Republican National Committee? Atwater later apologized to me for that, too, on his deathbed.
Dukakis, Kitty; Tye, Larry, 'I Feel Good, I Feel Alive', Newsweek, September 18, 2006. An article in which she discusses her treatment with electroconvulsive therapy for depression
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