09/05/2026
My Statement on the Lindsay Clancy Case
TW: SI mentioned
Yesterday, the trial of Lindsay Clancy ended in a mistrial.
After days of deliberation, the jury could not unanimously agree on whether she was criminally responsible for killing her three children. Her defense argued that she was experiencing postpartum psychosis. Prosecutors argued that she understood what she was doing.
I am not going to tell you whether Lindsay Clancy is guilty or not guilty. I wasn't in that jury room. I didn't examine her. I don't know what was happening inside her mind.
But I do know something about postpartum mental illness.
I lived it.
I experienced postpartum depression.
I was later diagnosed with postpartum psychosis.
And before we go any further, I need to make something very, very clear:
**Postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis are NOT interchangeable.**
PPP is not simply “really bad postpartum depression.” They are different illnesses, and neither diagnosis automatically means that a mother wants to hurt her baby.
I wouldn't wish postpartum depression on my worst enemy.
Postpartum psychosis?
I wouldn't wish that on anyone.
I was young when I had my first child. I was a kid raising a kid, and I was terrified.
During my postpartum depression, I experienced intrusive thoughts involving my baby. Not desires. Not plans. Not things I secretly wanted to do.
Thoughts.
Once, I was carrying my newborn with me to check the mail. The swimming pool was right next to the mailboxes, and suddenly a thought entered my head:
*If I threw him into the pool, would he swim or would he sink?*
I had absolutely no intention of finding out.
I didn't want to throw him into the pool.
I didn't want to hurt my baby.
**The thought itself horrified me.**
But how exactly was I supposed to tell someone that?
How do you look another human being in the eye and say, “My brain just showed me something horrifying involving my baby,” when you're terrified that the moment those words leave your mouth, somebody will decide you're dangerous?
I was terrified of my then-husband finding out what was happening inside my head. I was terrified of my parents finding out.
And I wanted to run.
Gods, I wanted to run.
There were so many times I wanted to pack up my son, get as far away from my husband and my parents as I possibly could, and simply start over somewhere nobody knew us.
I was scared.
I was overwhelmed.
I was a kid raising a kid.
And here is the part of the maternal mental-health conversation that makes me angry:
People love to say, **“Ask for help.”**
I did.
I sought treatment for postpartum depression.
Before my provider prescribed Paxil, I told her that my family had a history of reacting badly to it. She prescribed it anyway and told me that we would keep an eye on me.
So I kept going to my appointments.
I told her I wasn't getting better.
I told her I was getting worse.
My dose was increased.
I came back.
I told her I was still getting worse.
My dose was increased again.
Then I accidentally left my medication at home when I went to Los Angeles for a three-day weekend with my parents. We lived in San Diego at the time.
And during those days without it, I felt **so much better**.
When I came home, I went back to my provider and told her. I convinced her that we needed to change my medication.
She agreed.
But she also told me that if I didn't admit myself to the psychiatric ward at the Naval Hospital, she was going to contact CPS.
So I went.
The emergency department wasn't finding a legitimate reason to admit me.
I was so frightened of what would happen if I wasn't admitted that I **lied about my symptoms to get myself hospitalized.**
About 36 hours later, they sent me home because they saw no reason to keep me there.
I called my provider around 12:30 to tell her I was being discharged.
Around 2:30, police and CPS came to check on me.
My family panicked.
Initially, I voluntarily placed my son with my brother and sister-in-law while everything was sorted out.
About a month later, on my father's birthday—the day my son turned six months old—we went to court.
CPS formally removed my baby from my custody.
So when we tell struggling mothers, “Don't be afraid. Tell somebody. Ask for help,” I need us to understand something:
**Sometimes she is afraid because the thing she is afraid of can actually happen.**
That does NOT mean mothers experiencing postpartum mental illness shouldn't seek treatment.
It means we have to do a hell of a lot better once they do.
**“Ask for help” is not a maternal mental-health policy.**
Someone has to listen after she asks.
Someone has to hear her when she says the treatment isn't working.
Someone has to take her seriously when she says she is getting worse.
Someone has to understand the difference between an unwanted intrusive thought that horrifies her and an intention to hurt someone.
Someone has to understand that sometimes a person discloses a frightening thought precisely **because she doesn't want it.**
And we have to create systems in which mothers can tell the truth about what is happening inside their heads without wondering whether honesty itself will destroy their families.
Because losing custody didn't magically make me well.
My mental health deteriorated further.
I was eventually diagnosed with postpartum psychosis.
I don't know exactly when the psychosis began. Looking back, I believe it started after the formal loss of custody of my son. There are things from that period that make much more sense to me in light of the diagnosis.
The paranoia.
Thinking that became significantly more disorganized than was normal for me.
Impulsive decisions that I look back on now and cannot imagine making if I had been in my right mind.
And sleep.
Oh, gods, the sleep.
I slept **so much**.
My suicidal thoughts became much worse after I lost custody of my son.
And still, people could look at me and think I was fine.
My best friend did.
And when I say “best friend,” I don't mean someone who barely knew me.
Tammy and I had been roommates in Navy “A” school. She knew me. She knew my then-husband. She had been supposed to be part of our wedding. This woman knew me better than most people did.
And during this period, she genuinely thought I didn't care that I had lost custody of my baby.
Why?
Because she watched me leave visits with him composed.
When she finally said that she thought I didn't care, my then-husband looked at her in shock.
“You know Di. You honestly think she didn't care?”
Because he knew what happened after we got home.
I would make it through the visit.
I would make it through saying goodbye.
I would maintain my composure in front of my brother, his wife, my best friend and, most importantly, my baby.
Then I would get home.
I would go straight to my bedroom, throw myself onto my bed, and sob into my pillow for an hour.
I wasn't cold.
I wasn't okay.
**I was a mother maintaining composure in front of her child.**
We cannot determine how sick, frightened, or devastated a mother is by how well she performs composure in front of us.
Sometimes composure isn't evidence that someone is okay.
Sometimes it is evidence that she has decided this is not the place where she is allowed to fall apart.
My best friend knew me better than almost anyone, and even she couldn't see what was happening behind my composure.
So perhaps we need to stop pretending we can determine the severity of someone's suffering simply by looking at them.
There is another moment from that period that has never left me.
After the hospitalization, my medication was changed.
On the first day of the new medication, my then-husband had been watching me for a while.
Finally, he looked at me and said:
**“I have the woman I fell in love with back.”**
I had been that bad.
I am deliberately not claiming that a particular medication caused everything that happened to me. I can't establish that, and I won't pretend that I can.
I can tell you what I experienced.
I can tell you what I reported.
I can tell you that I repeatedly said I was getting worse.
I can tell you that I felt dramatically better during those accidental days without that medication.
I can tell you that the person who lived with me saw such an enormous difference after my medication was changed that he told me he finally had the woman he fell in love with back.
And I can tell you that I was ultimately diagnosed with postpartum psychosis.
That is **my** story.
The Lindsay Clancy case is not my story.
I will not say, “I could have been her.”
I don't know that.
I will not use the deaths of Cora, Dawson, and Callan Clancy to make a dramatic point about my own life.
Three children are dead.
Their lives matter.
Their father and everyone who loved them has suffered an unimaginable loss.
We can grieve those children while still demanding compassion and competent care for people experiencing severe postpartum mental illness.
Those things are not mutually exclusive.
Caring about children's safety does not require us to stop caring about their mothers.
**My son deserved to be safe.**
**So did his mother.**
Those statements were never supposed to be in opposition.
And that is why I am talking about Lindsay Clancy's case today.
Not because I can tell you what was happening inside her mind.
Not because I can give you the verdict that the jury itself could not unanimously reach.
I'm talking about it because maternal mental illness should not become important only after something horrific happens.
A mother should not have to die for us to take her suicidal thoughts seriously.
A child should not have to die for us to take a mother's psychiatric symptoms seriously.
A family should not have to be torn apart before we ask whether a struggling mother received the care she actually needed.
And a mother should not have to prove that she is falling apart by falling apart in front of us.
**The absence of death is not evidence that everyone was okay.**
I survived.
My son survived.
We were not okay.
My story didn't become national news.
There weren't reporters outside the courthouse. Strangers didn't debate my mental state on television. Nobody turned what happened to my family into a headline.
But it was serious before I was hospitalized.
It was serious before CPS knocked on my door.
It was serious before I lost custody.
It was serious before I became suicidal.
It was serious before I was diagnosed with postpartum psychosis.
**I was already sick when I was simply a frightened young mother trying desperately to hold herself together.**
So stop asking what a suffering mother is supposed to look like.
Stop assuming that because she is functioning, she is fine.
Stop assuming that because she can smile, speak coherently, care for her baby, attend an appointment, or hold herself together long enough to walk out the front door, you know what happens after that door closes.
Listen to what she is telling you.
And when she tells you that something is wrong, **keep listening.**
For the love of all things holy, unholy, and everything in between:
**Stop waiting until maternal mental illness becomes tragedy before we decide it was serious.**
