In the wake of my two pregnancies, I didn’t find myself in need of mental health treatment, and for that I am very thankful. But though my postpartum story is nothing like that of Lindsay Clancy’s, her experience reminds me of my own struggles because we have one thing in common: Health care providers didn’t listen to our cries for help.

In a 2025 survey, 93% of women reported feeling dismissed when seeking medical help. In 2005, I became one of them. After completing my undergraduate studies and while awaiting the start of graduate school, my nervous system crumbled overnight. I went to bed one evening in the fully functioning body I’d always known, only to awaken the next morning with angry pain and stiffness running down my legs.

“Have a banana,” the emergency room physician suggested upon finding my potassium was slightly low. “Everything else looks fine. You’re OK.” Those words were repeated by countless doctors for more than a decade, but they were far from reassuring.

Like Clancy, I knew something was wrong, but my words weren’t enough to receive the health care I so desperately needed.

I know what it's like to have cries for medical help go unanswered

From September 2022 until January 2023, Clancy repeatedly sought help for severe postpartum depression, insomnia and anxiety. From seeing outpatient providers to emergency room visits to calling a suicide hotline multiple times and receiving voluntary inpatient treatment, she sought help for her overwhelming mental health symptoms.

Like me, Clancy knew she needed help, and she wanted to get better more than anything.

Dr. Alia Goodheart, the psychiatrist treating Clancy during an inpatient stay at McLean Hospital, said she "probably" has not treated anyone with postpartum psychosis. Goodheart also didn’t run any labs or use any type of standardized scale to determine the severity of Clancy’s postpartum depression. Providers didn’t do everything they could have for Clancy.

During the summer before graduate school, I began a........

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