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“This is not a public debate about women’s mental health.” So said the prosecutor at the trial of Massachusetts mother and nurse Lindsay Clancy.

Clancy, who admits to killing her three young children in January 2023 before attempting suicide, had been seen by at least six clinicians and treated with 13 medications in four months. She sought help at clinics, ERs, and psychiatric hospitals, even as the medication seemed to make her worse.

So of course, we’re very much having that mental health debate. How could we not be?

Clancy’s defense is that she suffered postpartum psychosis, a condition her defense claims was greatly worsened by inept and excessive medication. By the time Clancy assaulted her children, she’d reported “horrible” intrusive thoughts, emotional numbness, worsening anxiety about her children, and suicidality. And she'd begun hearing voices.

That Clancy was harmed by medication is, I think, a valid argument. Multiple clinicians prescribed at the same time, with little or no coordination; while one diagnosed her with bipolar disorder, another prescribed bipolar-contraindicated antidepressants.

Lindsay Clancy was also, and as tragically, under-spoken-to. The defense attorney seemed surprised by the pages of forms Clancy filled out before seeing her psychiatrist: “Basically they’re all little checks in boxes.” This lawyer, Kevin Reddington, also seemed shocked at the lack of questions from Lindsay’s caregivers, asking clinicians multiple times if it was normal to wait for patients to “just volunteer” information.

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