I want to be honest. I’ve hesitated to say anything about this case. I kept thinking someone else would say it, someone with a bigger platform, someone braver. I’m not proud of that hesitation. Mental illness is not for the weak, and neither is speaking up about it. So here I am, later than I wanted to be.
Here is what the record shows so far. Before the deaths of her three children, Clancy had been raising concerns about worsening symptoms and medication side effects to the people treating her. A psychiatric nurse has testified to this. Her diary entries about the crushing weight of new motherhood and postpartum struggles were read aloud in the courtroom. Her defense is that she was overmedicated and in the grip of postpartum psychosis when it happened. She has pleaded not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility. None of that undoes what her children lost. And none of it should let us look away from the fact that a mother said she was drowning, more than once, to more than one provider, and the system around her did not catch her.
That is the part I cannot stop thinking about. Not whether she’s guilty. Whether she was heard.
Postpartum psychosis is a psychiatric emergency, not a phase and not a personality flaw. Onset is typically abrupt, often within the first two weeks postpartum, sometimes within days. It is a different animal from postpartum depression or the baby blues. It can include delusions, hallucinations, severe confusion, rapid mood swings, and a break from reality that the person experiencing it often cannot recognize as illness while it’s happening. Risk factors include a personal or family history of bipolar disorder, a prior psychotic episode, and sleep deprivation severe enough to destabilize the brain’s ability to regulate mood and perception. It is treatable. It is also, without fast and correct 1/2
3 months agojenna2922
Honestly horrified that im not seeing more posts like this. Add covid times to the mix and you've got yourself the perfect storm. She asked for help over and over and just because she wasnt slurring her speech or have a plan her pleas went unanswered. Also, not to add fuel to the fire but I dont think people who haven't birthed children or treated people in the mental health/post partum realm should get to weigh in on this. Most simply do not get it. The thing is you can send this woman to prison for life without parole. Doesn't matter what's done. Shes broken. A ghost of who she used to be. She lost everything she had to live for. You can see it in her eyes💔
3 months agotype2.diabetes.nutritionist
I really love this post Alicia, it’s courageous to share ❤️ also I’ve been watching the case and thinking a lot about this and how heartbreaking it all is
3 months agobirchgrovecollaborative
intervention, one of the only psychiatric conditions where infanticide is a documented and tragic risk. This is not new information to anyone in perinatal mental health. It has been in the literature for decades. Somewhere between what we know and what gets acted on in an exam room, women keep falling through. I’ll tell you why this sits so close to my chest. Years ago I was hospitalized for my own depression after having Adam, my first son. I don’t say that for sympathy. I say it because I remember exactly how dreadful it felt. Not sad. Dreadful. The kind of heavy that makes your own body feel like a place you can’t live in anymore. I remember what it took for someone to actually see how bad it had gotten, and I remember how much worse it could have gone if they hadn’t. I got caught. Lindsay Clancy did not. This could have been any of us birthing folks. Any of us who smiled at a follow up appointment because we didn’t have language for what was happening inside us. Any of us who got a medication change and a “let’s see how that goes” instead of a safety plan with care and compassion. Postpartum mental illness does not check credentials, income, or how put together someone looks in the waiting room. If you are pregnant or postpartum and something feels wrong, tell someone, and if the first person doesn’t take it seriously, tell another. If you are a provider, believe the mother in front of you even when she’s using her calmest voice, because sometimes the calmest voice is the one hiding the most. ♥️ I was one of them.
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