As Lindsay Clancy’s murder trial moves through a Massachusetts courtroom, the country is talking about postpartum psychosis. It’s a conversation I know well, and something important is missing.

Eleven years ago, I lived the illness now being argued over in a court of law. I had given birth to my second child five and a half months prior. I was a registered nurse and had been seen by health care professionals throughout both pregnancies. And I had never once been taught that postpartum psychosis could happen to me.

Neither had my husband. When I became severely ill, he didn’t know the term. He just knew something was terribly wrong. After days of almost no sleep, I grew increasingly energetic and hyper-religious. Then came paranoia, hallucinations, delusions. I lost touch with reality.

My husband called 911. That decision may have saved my life.

I spent two weeks in a psychiatric unit with a 24-hour sitter. Yet after all that, when I was discharged, there was no collaborative planning meeting with my family. There was no warm handoff to a perinatal specialist. I followed up with my obstetrician because I understood the importance — not because any system made sure I did.

I recovered. Saying that matters, because cases like mine rarely make the news. Postpartum psychosis enters the national conversation almost exclusively through tragedy. Clancy’s case, in which her attorney plans to argue insanity tied to severe postpartum illness, is only the latest example.

By reducing the Lindsay Clancy trial to viral commentary and dramatic courtroom spectacle, we trade genuine horror for spectator entertainment while missing the entire point of postpartum psychosis advocacy. This is not advocacy for murder, but for prevention — a call for families and providers to recognize warning signs and deliver critical psychiatric care before an emergency becomes an unfathomable tragedy. Most postpartum psychosis stories don’t end the way hers did. Survivors are all around us. Our experience belongs at the center of this conversation, and so do the lessons it can teach.

First, awareness has to happen before tragedy — not after.

Families cannot recognize an illness they’ve never been told exists. A person in psychosis often doesn’t know she’s ill, which makes educating partners and extended family just as urgent as educating the patient. Health care professionals across every discipline that touches a new mother — obstetrics, pediatrics, emergency medicine, primary care — need training to recognize warning signs and respond fast. A trial can produce accountability and, to some degree, raise awareness. It cannot produce prevention.

Second, the gaps in our prevention system are bigger than any single case or verdict can show.

After a devastating outcome, it’s easy to point to the one moment someone should have acted differently. Accountability matters. But fixating on individual decisions in one case avoids a harder truth: our maternal mental health care system is fragmented by design.

Gaps exist in education, screening, recognition, emergency response, access to specialized care, and continuity of care. Even our definition of “postpartum” contributes to the problem. It implies that the problem fits neatly inside a six-week or three-month period after delivery. My crisis did not. Other women with later symptoms may not believe it can be happening to them.

Systemic failures are playing out case by case. A trial, however closely watched, will not address most of them.

Third, survivors need to be front and center. We know what the warning signs looked like before anyone else recognized them. We know what helped, what was missing, what our families needed, and what recovery looks like once the crisis has passed. Our stories aren’t a substitute for clinical expertise. They are an essential part of it — and they’re largely absent from the news coverage of a murder trial.

The next time the country pays attention to postpartum psychosis, it shouldn’t be because of another tragedy or verdict. We already know enough to do better: listen to survivors, educate families before symptoms appear, equip health care professionals across every specialty that sees new mothers, and strengthen continuity of care. Make maternal mental health education routine — not an afterthought delivered in a hospital hallway or reconstructed later in a courtroom.

The goal should never be simply to understand what went wrong after a catastrophe. The goal should be preventing the next one.

***

Kristina Dulaney, RN, PMH-C, is a postpartum psychosis survivor and the founder and executive director of Cherished Mom, a nonprofit organization dedicated to perinatal mental health awareness, postpartum psychosis advocacy, and ending maternal suicide.

Menu

I Survived Postpartum Psychosis — What Nobody Warned Me About