13/08/2026
As a clinical psychologist, the Lindsay Clancy case is deeply disturbing—not only because of the unimaginable loss of three children, but because it forces us to confront a much bigger issue: how seriously do we, as a society, understand postpartum mental illness?
Postpartum psychosis is not simply “severe depression,” anxiety, or a mother feeling overwhelmed. It is a psychiatric emergency in which a person can lose contact with reality through delusions, hallucinations, severe confusion, mania and profound changes in thinking and behaviour. It is rare, but extremely serious, and requires urgent psychiatric intervention. (CBS News)
The Lindsay Clancy trial should therefore be about more than asking, “Did she do it?” We know the children died. The harder and more clinically important question is: what was happening inside her mind at the time, and to what extent did severe mental illness alter her capacity to understand reality, her actions and their consequences?
Mental illness does not erase the suffering of victims or the responsibility of society to protect others. But justice should also be capable of distinguishing between a person who commits an act with intact reality testing and someone whose brain and perception of reality have been profoundly disrupted by a severe psychiatric disorder.
We need a justice system that can hold two truths at the same time: the outcome can be devastating and irreversible, while the person who caused it may also have been profoundly psychiatrically unwell.
And perhaps the most important question is not only what sentence should follow a tragedy like this, but what could have been done before the tragedy occurred?
Better screening. Earlier recognition. Proper psychiatric assessment. Family involvement. Crisis pathways that respond to warning signs. Specialist perinatal mental-health services. And a much deeper understanding that postpartum psychosis is a medical emergency—not a failure of motherhood.
If we only punish after tragedy, we have already arrived too late.
