Why Do So Many Mothers See Themselves in Lindsay Clancy?

Words by Liz Hammond

On Thursday, August 20, hundreds of women dressed in pink gathered outside a courthouse in Duxbury, Massachusetts. The women rallied, raised funds, and held a moment of silence in support of Lindsay Clancy, a mother on trial for the murder of her three young children, Cora, Dawson, and Callan. Clancy does not dispute that she killed her children. Her defence lawyer, Kevin Reddington, argues that she was experiencing postpartum psychosis—a rare disorder that occurs in one to two out of 1000 childbearing women—and should not be held criminally responsible for their deaths. And yet, there are hundreds of women gathered around a courthouse not for Lindsay’s children, but for her.

Online, thousands more have rallied around Lindsay, sharing messages of support, following her trial, scrutinizing every detail of her psychiatric care, and sharing their own experiences with postpartum mental illness. Some are even saying they see themselves in her story.

While I never experienced postpartum psychosis, I struggled with two bouts of postpartum depression and anxiety. Like Lindsay and many millennial mothers, I had intense guilt about not being able to exclusively breastfeed my son which put me in a fog of shame and depression that made it hard to function and feel any joy in early motherhood. When my son turned one, the depression and anxiety came back and I struggled to get help because many of the mental health resources offered to Canadian postpartum mothers are no longer available after their child is one. This time frame is generous in comparison to the DSM-5-TR, which defines postpartum as depression that begins during pregnancy or up to four weeks after birth.

I can’t help but wonder if Lindsay faced some of the same barriers to help given her youngest, Callan, was eight months old at the time of the killings. What we do know is that despite fiercely advocating for herself and, as her ex-mother-in-law Sue Clancy said, begging for help, Lindsay’s mental health deteriorated to the point of tragedy. Regardless of where you stand on this case, it has raised undeniable questions about the gaps in maternal mental health care.

Most women are now screened for symptoms of depression and anxiety during postpartum care, but this doesn’t guarantee that they will receive adequate treatment. While one in 8 mothers report symptoms of postpartum depression, 75 percent of women experiencing maternal mental health conditions don’t get the treatment they need to recover.

In the four months before her children’s deaths, Lindsay was prescribed 13 psychiatric medications by at least six different providers. She saw a psychiatrist multiple times, received care from other psychiatric clinicians, went to emergency departments, saw a therapist, and admitted herself to a psychiatric hospital. It wasn’t so much that Lindsay was struggling to access care, she was struggling to navigate fragmented care. Testimony suggests her many providers often weren’t communicating or coordinating her treatment, leaving no one with a complete picture of her mental health, her medications, or what was—and wasn’t—helping.

One of the challenges of postpartum illness is that there’s rarely a clear path to recovery. Diagnosis can take months and even when treatment starts, it can take up to five-12 weeks for mothers to report improvement or reach remission.

As a Canadian, I’ve also experienced significant delays in simply accessing care. In a national survey of Canadian perinatal mental-health providers, 42% said their patients had to wait over two months to access their services. I have spent those months waiting. I’ve self-referred to a rapid-access psychiatric clinic, called crisis lines, and taken myself to the emergency room because help wasn’t available quickly enough. For a mom in crisis, being told to wait weeks or months for care just isn’t an option.

Underlying both of our experiences is an impossible expectation that mothers must advocate for themselves and navigate a fragmented system even when they are suffering. This case has illuminated that the system failed Lindsay as it does many mothers—especially women of colour. A U.S. study found that among people reporting experiencing symptoms of postpartum depression, 67 percent of white mothers received some form of mental health care, compared to 37% of Black and Hispanic mothers.

LaTarsha Sanders, a Black mother from Brockton, Massachusetts, was convicted of first-degree murder after killing her two young sons in 2018. But in August, 2026, Massachusetts’s highest court overturned her convictions and ordered a new trial, finding that the jury had been wrongly prevented from considering psychiatric records that could have supported her claim that she was not criminally responsible because of mental illness.

The parallels between Clancy and Sanders’ cases are difficult to ignore, but so are the differences. Lindsay repeatedly sought help and had extensive contact with the mental health care system. Latarsha never received a psychiatric diagnosis before killing her sons, despite evidence that she was experiencing severe mental illness. And while Lindsay has become the focus of a highly visible movement of maternal solidarity, no mothers rallied outside the courthouse for Latarsha.

I think that Lindsay’s case has captured the attention of mothers around the world because her story represents an extreme version of what so many of us recognize. I have never experienced postpartum psychosis, but I see myself in other parts of her story: the sleep deprivation, the intrusive thoughts, brain fog, feeling completely overwhelmed by motherhood but appearing totally fine on social media. The sense that if I could just get motherhood right, I might finally start to feel like myself again.

My empathy for Lindsay isn’t an exoneration of what she may have done to her children. It comes from the way her story illuminates the contradictions inherent to motherhood and maternal illness. Her case has brought to light what many mothers know intimately but are afraid to share: that you can love your children deeply and become seriously mentally ill. I think mothers see themselves in Lindsay’s fear, her exhaustion, her knowledge that something was wrong, and her desperation to get better. They know how much courage it takes to say “I’m not okay,” and that getting the right help shouldn’t depend on how many times a sick mother is capable of saying it.

Liz Hammond is a freelance copywriter and essayist whose work has been featured in Vogue, Huffington Post, TODAY, and more. She’s currently working on a novel inspired by her experience with postpartum depression and lives in Vancouver, Canada with her husband and son.