The Current - Lindsay Clancy trial shines light postpartum mental health

Episode Date: August 25, 2026

Lindsay Clancy has admitted to killing her three young children. She's pleading not guilty by reason of insanity, saying she was experiencing postpartum psychosis. As her trial enters its fifth week, we look at the global conversation this tragedy has sparked about postpartum mental health care and education.

Between tariffs, trade battles, and an ongoing war in the Middle East, the lazy days of summer seem to have skipped Washington this year. So our podcast, Two Blocks from the White House, is here to keep you caught up, even if you're in vacation mode. Join me, Katie Simpson with correspondence Paul Hunter and Willie Lowry and other journalists from our D.C. Bureau for a front row seat and what this all means for Canadians. Find and follow two blocks from the White House with new episodes every Wednesday in your favorite podcast app, including YouTube.

This is a CBC podcast. I'm Susan Ormiston, and this is the current podcast. A warning, this next story contains details about violence against children and attempted suicide. Lindsay Clancy's former mother-in-law said she was begging for help. She reached out to me in November and told me that she felt unwell. Is she described any symptoms? She did. The jury was what she said.

She felt mostly she had insomnia. She was losing her appetite. She was very anxious and sad. Lindsay Clancy has admitted to killing her three young children, Cora, five, Dawson, three, and eight-month-old Callan. She's pleading not guilty by reason of insanity. Her defense argues she was suffering from postpartum psychosis after months of deteriorating mental health and repeated attempts to get help.

Her murder trial has sparked intense debate over whether or not she should be held criminally responsible. Elizabeth Brinig is a staff writer at The Atlantic. Elizabeth, good morning. Thanks so much for having me. So for those of us who aren't following this closely, the trial, can you walk us through what happened on the day of the murders in January, 2023? Yes. Yes. Lindsay Clancy had been playing with her children earlier that day. But as the day progressed, it seems, according to her defense, that she began having auditory hallucinations. She heard a male voice telling her she had to kill her children.

While her husband, Patrick Clancy, was out picking up medication and food for the family, she strangled her children with exercise bands and then cut her neck and wrists, and jumped out a second-story window in an attempt to take her own life. She is paralyzed now from the waist down, and she is on trial for murder. Gosh, it couldn't be sadder, really. But we know now through this trial that Lindsay was having mental health struggles for quite some time before this. Can you tell us about that?

Yes, for months, Lindsay Clancy had sought treatment for pretty severe postpartum depression She had gone to doctors. She had been prescribed, I think, 13 medications in four months. She had written in her phone notes and her journal about being, you know, pretty much at the end of her rope, about feeling extreme guilt for not being able to treat her third child as her first, you know, with spending that much time with the child. She was sort of consumed by these dark thoughts. And then, you know, postpartum depression sometimes becomes postpartum psychosis.

And it appears her illness started out as a severe and deep depression and then began to take on psychotic features. Was she able to get psychiatric treatment? And if so, what was it? She was prescribed medication, although she has filed a lawsuit against her medical providers for negligence, essentially, for not recognizing how severe her condition was. She was also hospitalized for a few days, but came home. So there was an attempt to access help, but it was not enough. No one seemed to recognize how severe what she was going through really was. Gosh. So that was three and a half years ago.

What's happened to Lindsay ever since then? Lindsay is paralyzed from the waist down. She's wheelchair bound. since then she has been held in custody, and now her trial has begun. She's facing three counts of first-degree murder, which has a mandatory sentence of life without parole. So what's on trial at the trial, Elizabeth, if you will, what are the arguments being made by the prosecution and the defense relating to this not guilty by insanity?

The defense is putting forward the efforts Lindsay made to access mental health care and all of the signs in her writings and interactions with people around the time of the murder to assert that she was extremely unwell. She was psychotic, which means she had a break with reality. She was having hallucinations and she could no longer accurately understand what was happening around her. and she couldn't resist this impulse that developed in her to take the lives of her children and herself. The prosecution, meanwhile, is saying that even though she may have been mentally ill, it doesn't meet the legal standard for insanity. And they're pointing to the fact that Lindsay seemed to plan what took place. She asked her husband to leave the house. And they claim that planning, rational planning, is a sign that a person wasn't legally insoling.

sane. And does the Massachusetts state law cover this idea of postpartum psychosis? It does. So insanity defenses, it's not really important what the specific diagnosis is. What matters per the legal standard of insanity is whether a person could resist their impulses, whether they had the capacity mentally to conform their conduct to the law, and whether they understood what they were doing was right or wrong. So they're arguing in the defense's case that Lindsay meets those standards. You write in your story for the Atlantic

that although she appears to have been extremely sick in the months leading up to this, the jury may still find her legally sane. Can you tell us about that? Is that what history tells us in these cases? It has certainly happened. So in legal cases where a person appears, you know, extremely unwell, sort of inarguably unwell, it's still the case that juries can find them legally sane.

And Lindsay is facing that very real possibility. The jury may decide that even though it seems sort of incontrovertibly true that she was very sick in the months leading up to the murders, that she nevertheless showed a degree of planning and understanding her actions rationally that suggests she was, even though she was mentally ill, sane. So this whole idea of insanity is sort of being tried here in this case, and that's receiving an enormous amount of attention. You know, there's a global conversation around her actions and whether she should be

committed to a psychiatric hospital or locked up in prison. What's that been like? I think this trial has really captured the attention of the entire country here in the USA. And I think there are a lot of reasons for that. One is that a lot of women can relate to the idea of having been unwell, having been very depressed, or having been struggling in the months after giving birth, and have found health care providers to be less than receptive to the idea of taking their illness seriously. And so I think Lindsay Clancy has sort of taken on a symbolic meaning to a lot of women as someone who tried very hard to get help after giving birth and was turned away essentially or failed time after time.

So I think that makes her case relatable in a certain way. And I think also it's horrifying. It's a nightmare. The idea that any person, even a very, very good attentive. mother could be overcome by these forces outside of their control, I think is very disturbing for people, and a lot of people are struggling with that. It's very frightening immensely. Of course, the dark side of this in our social media landscape, as many TikTokers are following it, and some are spinning unfounded conspiracy theories. What's that been like?

So that's also been a background issue as this trial has progressed, where a lot of Internet sleuths, people who are following this trial in sort of tick-talkable clips, have come to the conclusion that Lindsay Clancy didn't commit the murders at all, even though that's what she and her defense are stipulating. But rather, it was her husband. I think there are a lot of reasons for people to go in this direction. I think people are frustrated that in the months leading up to the murders, it appears he did not recognize how much she was struggling. And so I feel people are frustrated with him on that count. And I think also because Clancy is somewhat relatable because of what she went through with her postpartum depression and eventually psychosis,

that people have decided she's a good person. She couldn't have done this. But I think the really nightmarish aspect of this is that good people do things like this. What are the options, depending on what happens in the trial, what will happen to Lindsay Clancy? If she's found guilty, she's facing, like I said, a mandatory life sentence. She will be in prison for the rest of her life. If she is found not guilty by reason of insanity, she'll be held in a psychiatric facility instead of a prison. Periodically, she will come up for reconsideration.

So there will be hearings on whether she's well enough to live outside the facility on her own. even if that happens, she will be under an incredible amount of surveillance. It's sort of ultra-parole probation. She will have to check in with the authorities. Her options for the way she lives her life will be limited. And it's possible that in all of these hearings, she will never be found competent to exit a psychiatric facility. Andrea Yates, a woman who drowned her five children in 2001 under similar. circumstances is still in custody today.

I was struck by the final line in your excellent story. You write, regardless of what the jury decides she's already in hell and has been for some time. It's absolutely tragic, the whole thing. Do you think from looking at this case that there is something good that could come out of this trial in general for the way we think about insanity and more importantly, the way we prosecute insanity? I hope so. And, you know, if nothing else, I think it's brought a greater awareness of how severe postpartum mental illness can be. I think lots of people have heard of having the baby blues, you know, for a few weeks or a few days after giving birth, there's a sort of hormonal crash and a lot of women experience symptoms of depression. And I think that understanding of postpartum mental illness is sort of, um, is sort of, um, it's a sort of, um, it's a lot of women experience. And a lot of women experience symptoms of depression. And I think, um,

It's reductive and it's dismissive in a certain way because it treats these experiences as minor and temporary. But if anything good can come of this trial, I hope it's introducing people to how severe and how serious postpartum mental illness can be. I hope health care providers take this as a notice to take these illnesses much more seriously. and I hope people who are in the lives of women who have just given birth or who have just given birth themselves learn about signs that they may not be doing well and may need help. Thank you so much, Elizabeth, for shining light on this. Such an important topic, we appreciate it.

Thanks so much for having me. Elizabeth Brinig is a staff writer at The Atlantic. Something is happening in Dawson Creek. A wave of violence. has swept over this community of just 13,000 people. It's like the kind of stuff you only hear about on TV. 15 murders in the last five years. Some criminals, I put them into the category of supervillains.

I'm Timothy Sawa and from CBC's On Cover and the Fifth Estate, an investigation into deaths and disappearances in Dawson Creek and what's behind it all. I'm not saying another word, leave me alone. The Mile Zero Murders, available now on CBC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts. Hundreds of people have been showing up to support Lindsay Clancy rallying outside the courthouse. The trial has brought maternal mental health to the forefront of public conversation. I deeply feel like Lindsay was failed by the medical system.

Ospartum can look like one thing for one person and completely different to another, same thing with psychosis. So I just hope they kind of take into play that everything is different for everyone and that Lindsay was severely struggling and she was severely failed. Megan Cliffell is a writer and mother of three children. She experienced postpartum psychosis eight months after giving birth to her second child and has since become a mental health advocate. She's in Cleveland, Ohio this morning. Megan, hello. Good morning.

Thanks for joining us. You've said that you saw yourself in Lindsay Clancy. That's very frightening. And it might have been you, you say. Can you share with us what you went through? Sure. So eight months after the birth of our second baby girl, I had been not feeling like myself since about four months postpartum after I went back to work and went back to a bunch of stress, honestly. And my husband was like, what do you mean you don't feel like yourself? And I said,

I don't know, I just feel anxious and a bit sad. But we were two working parents in New York City. We had a lot of responsibility. We didn't have a lot of family support. So I kind of just kept going and honestly out on the outside it looked it looked good you know our kids were doing well i was doing well at work um but i kept on like that until you know four months later one um friday evening i um step onto the subway to go back downtown and it is just as if my rational brain is left behind with the shutting of the subway doors uh people glance at me as i enter the subway as they often do when someone new enters. But instead of sort of seeing that as a normal behavior, all their eyes on me, I suddenly

believe I'm being watched. And then a second later, when they turn their gaze back to phones and have earbuds in their ears, I'm then believing I'm not just being watched. I'm being surveilled. And that's about 5 p.m. on a Friday night. And the next essentially like 16 or so hours, things just get more and more terrifying. And my brain is knitting things together into this kind of complex reality where I believe there's some kind of cultish scheme running the city.

And I am the center of it in some way. And they're out to get me and my kids. And eventually, you know, I was planning to head to a gathering. of friends, and I did, but I left when a woman there said, who's watching your kids. I thought she was threatening me, and she was threatening the lives of my two baby girls. And I thought this gathering of friends was actually a recruitment event. And so I essentially leave. I run, walk through the streets of the lower side, back home, picturing my girls, honestly being killed in my apartment. And my husband was expecting me to be out with friends. So when I kind of threw open the door,

He says, you know, why are you home? But I think, why are you home means he wants me to, he wanted me to join and that he's in on it. And so essentially, you know, from about, probably about 6 p.m. on a Friday night until, you know, Saturday morning when I'm handcuffed by the NYPD. It's like a battle with my husband, but I'm keeping everything I believe I know in because I don't want him to know that I know he's out to get us because it will reduce my chances of getting out alive with the kids. And so. So, you know, he has no idea I'm unwell until Saturday morning when things kind of turn physical. And I land punches on his face, trying to get to our two baby girls that he's now kind of stowed in our bedroom safely. And then alternately, I'm running to the door of our apartment building to try and get to the roof to show I'd be willing to jump to prove my loyalty to this thing we're up against because at that point I thought I had no other options. And, you know, at that point, he's on the phone with a friend of mine. And she says, listen, if you're afraid she's going to hurt somebody or herself, you've got to call 911. And so he does. He was worried I'd lose custody of the children.

So he delayed. And also, we had no idea, something called postpartum psychosis existed. So eventually the NYPD enter and I'm taken to Bellevise Psychiatric Hospital, but I'm still deeply diluted. You know, and I believed people were coming to get me in an effect. People did come to get me. And so I'm still lost in this kind of web of delusions. I am sedated at the hospital and then I wake up in a twin bed in the dark and I think I've been captured. I try and escape several times because I think maybe my baby girls are still alive and I've got to get to them.

I'm then sedated again and, you know, it kind of goes on like that until somebody convinces me to take medicine. Megan, it sounds like a psychotic break as we know now, but did you know anything about that possibility? I knew nothing about it. You know, I had access to health care and it was my second child, but I knew nothing about it. And, you know, I now know as an advocate that that's sort of by design, honestly. It's not included in the DSM, which is the main handbook here in the United States that psychiatrists use to identify and treat mental health conditions. And so as a result, we're decades behind on research, investment study, doctors knowledge, and parent community knowledge, honestly. And, you know, when I experienced, it, I sort of thought, oh, if everybody knew about this, everything would be different. But when I actually became an advocate, I learned that the reality is more terrifying. It's like, we've documented this for, you know, hundreds of years, and it's still not included in the DSM. And actually, psychiatrists are not required to learn about mental health conditions related to being a woman, i.e. reproductive psychiatry, because there's no board exams in it, so they're not assessed on it.

So we have a real perfect storm where the health care system is not set up to meet the needs of women. And yet maternal mental health complications are the most common, you know, a side effect of birth affecting one in five women. Postpartum psychosis is only one to two and a thousand. But, you know, instead of having a system that kind of wraps around women and families during this vulnerable time, we sort of are like, you give birth and it's like, see you in six weeks. and you're not prepared with understanding the range of conditions or the range of things that can happen. There's no paid leave. So it's a real perfect storm. So this case was not a surprise to you.

Do you think that there is some way that through this current tragic case and through your experience, that we will look at mental health after birth for mothers, and particularly the psychotic part of it, as a real concern? I am deeply, deeply hopeful that, you know, that will come from this public attention at this moment. Yeah, I'm hopeful. I'm really hopeful. And, you know, I will also say when I became an advocate, I, you know, I've worked with women who, you know, had kind of been screaming about this. It was a really thoughtful press even in like 1987. I was six when it was written outlining all of the problems and 40 years later those same problems still exist. So I'm hopeful that this case

helps spark real change, but I think it needs to be a systemic reckoning. And I'm hopeful that it will be rather than just kind of fade with the media cycle. Are you seeing within the trial that Clancy's mental health is being questioned that people are not, some, that certainly the prosecution is relying more on her instability, her approach as a mother as opposed to the deeply medical issue at hand? Yeah, I do think people are not, you know, really honestly understanding what psychosis is and how one can be, you know, in my experience, I was behaving very logically. I was keeping everything in, not telling my husband, but I was in a deeply diluted state where I thought everyone was out to get us. And so I don't think people really understand

psychosis or postpartum psychosis and, you know, that's not okay. And I'm hopeful that this case will re-center on the very real nature of postpartum mental illness and postpartum psychosis specifically. You had another baby after you went through this experience. How did you approach that? How did you deal with that? Yeah, so the risk of recurrence for us was one and three unmedicated. And so I took medication immediately after birth, prophylactically. I took lithium for a year. I had a good reproductive psychiatrist.

I had a therapist. I left the labor force, so I minimized stressors. I set kind of boundaries with people and things that stressed me out. And then I prioritized helpful habits. like connection, joy, movement. And honestly, it was like I lived in another country where we cared about, where women's well-being was sacred. And, you know, we not only staved off recurrence of postpartum psychosis, but we experienced so

much more joy the third time around. And, you know, it was because we had resources and we were able to do it, and we had knowledge, and we were scared. And I actually believe having a proactive plan in place like we did for our third child should be standard care for women. And, you know, it would look different. based on somebody's risk profile, but in effect, we kind of know if you have anxiety of depression outside of the postpartum period, like before, you're more likely to have it in the postpartum.

We know if you're known bipolar, you're more likely to have postpartum psychosis. And so there's a lot we know that we can kind of, we almost have like a crystal ball. And we can use that information to build a plan centered around women and families to support them through this kind of life-altering transition of welcoming a new human into the world. And I really believe that should be standard care rather than care that's just kind of centered around the baby and women almost left in this desert afterwards and not prepared with a range of things that can happen before. In just 30 seconds, we have left here.

What would be your one thing to tell mothers who are struggling? Don't forget, there's free support out there from Postpartum Support International is a great place to look for. knowledgeable providers, which can be a great game changer, postpartum.net. You don't have to have a diagnosis. There's free online support groups. If you've been through it, I actually volunteer to lead those. And being in community with other people who understand it can be so, so healing. And by dedicating your time to your own healing, you can totally get better and even come back a better version of yourself. It was brave to get into pregnancy again, Megan. And I'm so happy

to hear that you have a happy family of three girls now? No, two girls and a boy. There you go. All right. Well, thank you so much for sharing your story on this incredibly important trial going on. Thank you. Thank you. Megan Cliffell is a mother of three who experienced postpartum psychosis.

She's a writer and mental health advocate. If you or someone you know are looking for resources around postpartum, you can call or text postpartum support internet. National, 1-800-944-4773. And Canada's suicide crisis, helpline can be reached by call or text at 988. You've been listening to the current podcast. I'm Susan Ormiston.

For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca.ca.