Dorothy

The trial of a Boston-area mother charged with murdering her three small children in 2023 is leading to calls to improve postpartum mental health care. While the prosecution paints her as a deliberate killer, Lindsay Clancy's defense team argues she was in the grips of severe postpartum psychosis, and didn't receive proper medical care.

Clancy’s attorney Kevin Reddington does not dispute that she killed the children. But he says the jury should not hold her criminally responsible because she had postpartum psychosis, a rare mental illness linked to the stress, sleep deprivation and hormonal changes that follow childbirth. He said she also had bipolar disorder and that antidepressants prescribed after the birth of her third child worsened her condition.

Clancy’s attorney Kevin Reddington does not dispute that she killed the children. But he says the jury should not hold her criminally responsible because she had postpartum psychosis, a rare mental illness linked to the stress, sleep deprivation and hormonal changes that follow childbirth. He said she also had bipolar disorder and that antidepressants prescribed after the birth of her third child worsened her condition.

Now, a mental health advocate and writer, Cliffel has been distressed in recent weeks by the sensationalized, wall-to-wall media coverage and conspiracy theories swirling around the trial of Clancy, whose lawyers will need to convince a jury it was her sickness, not her, that took the lives of her children. Clancy’s psychosis, her lawyers have argued, was exacerbated by the treatment she received at a local hospital, where she was prescribed an incorrect mix of over a dozen psychiatric medications.

Mom and sister testify about Lindsay Clancy's declining mental state before she killed her children Clancy's mother and sister recounted how they saw her become increasingly anxious, paranoid and suicidal in the months before she killed her three children.

The page details how Clancy’s retired mom and photographer dad have blown threw their life savings in order to attend her court proceedings over the past two-and-a-half-years since she strangled her three young kids and paralyzed herself in a suicide attempt.