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Discourse has focused on the “right” diagnosis for Lindsay Clancy, as if that would've prevented the tragedy.

Effective mental health treatment may require both sustained psychotherapy and medication.

Psychodynamic therapy engages with the whole person, not just symptoms, and offers sustained healing.

The Lindsay Clancy case fascinates us as a society in part due to cultural splitting over motherhood, as I addressed in a previous post. But it’s also acting as a lightning rod for other issues.

A quick summary of the case: Lindsay Clancy admitted to strangling her three children before she threw herself out of her bedroom window in a suicide attempt that left her paralyzed from the waist down.

Beginning in September 2022, she was seen by at least six clinicians, treated with 14 medications, and sought help at clinics, ERs, and psychiatric hospitals, yet her symptoms became worse. Her legal defense claims she suffered from bipolar disorder and postpartum psychosis that, ultimately, led her to believe she heard a voice telling her to kill the children and herself.

While the cultural discourse is segmenting into two camps—Clancy as an evil mother or victim of mental illness—the case is also acting as a spotlight for another issue: How we have come as a culture to understand what constitutes effective mental health “treatment.” Her case highlights the difference between “psychiatric diagnosis” and a rarely used term, “psychotherapeutic diagnosis.”

The public discourse has focused on “What diagnosis did Clancy have?” For example, whether she was suffering from postpartum depression, postpartum psychosis, bipolar disorder, or some combination. It’s as if identifying her precise diagnosis—or diagnoses—could have definitively prevented the fatal outcome. This focus elevates the status of psychiatric diagnosis and assessment, asking them to explain, inform, and predict far more than they often can, while minimizing—or even eclipsing—questions about the actual service, care, and mental health treatment a person receives.

Was Clancy Really ‘In Treatment’?

Clancy had frequent appointments, numerous medication trials and adjustments, hospitalization, and acute treatment. Yet she also........

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