Five-year-old Cora, three-year-old Dawson and baby Callan \u00ad\u00ad\u2013 just eight months old \u00ad\u00ad\u2013 were found dead in the basement of the Clancy family home before a frantic 911 call from their father, Patrick, in January 2023.<\/p>\n
For six weeks, the world watched in horror as details of the almost unfathomable tragedy unfurled in a Massachusetts courtroom, live-streamed and dissected via infinite Tik Tok breakdowns and watercooler debates.<\/p>\n
Permanently paralysed from the waist down due to her injuries, Clancy entered a plea of not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility. Her defence team argued she was in a severe state of postpartum depression and psychosis, as well as overmedicated with psychiatric prescriptions, rendering her unable to understand \u201cthe wrongfulness or criminality of her conduct\u201d at the time of the killings.<\/p>\n
On September 4, after deliberating for 38 hours across seven days, the 12-person jury<\/a> were unable to come to a unanimous decision. The judge was forced to declare a mistrial<\/a>.<\/p>\n At the time of writing, Clancy remains in a psychiatric facility awaiting a hearing to determine whether the state will pursue a retrial or if the case will be dismissed.<\/p>\n But it is the conversation her trial has sparked across the world that experts say needs to continue regardless of the ultimate outcome.<\/p>\n What Is Postpartum Psychosis?<\/p>\n \u201cPostpartum psychosis is a severe mental health condition and a medical emergency. It has a very quick onset, so it\u2019s really important that lots of people are aware of it,\u201d explains Dr Erin Seeto, director of clinical services at perinatal mental health support service Gidget Foundation Australia.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is a condition where a woman loses touch with reality post-birth. They might experience hallucinations, delusions, confusion, mania and severe mood changes. It\u2019s often accompanied with insomnia and being unable to sleep, even when there is an opportunity to sleep.\u201d<\/p>\n Postpartum psychosis impacts approximately two in every 1000 births in Australia, though experts caution those numbers may appear less significant than they really are. \u201cIt\u2019s usually described as a rare condition,\u201d says clinical and health psychologist Narelle Dickinson, director of Lotus Health and Psychology in Brisbane. \u201cBut actually, when you break those numbers down into real terms and think about the fact that 800 babies are born in Australia every day, that actually means that every single day we can probably expect one mum who has birthed is going to develop postpartum psychosis \u2026 I don\u2019t think rare is an appropriate word.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI thought robot versions of my sons had been developed by a technology company\u201d<\/p>\n Canberra mother-of-two Gen Whitlam understands the weight of every one of those statistics better than most. After giving birth to her son, Arlo, four weeks early in January 2020, she experienced a cascading series of health crises that landed her in an acute mental health emergency.<\/p>\n With Covid looming on the horizon, \u00ad\u00adWhitlam, a former epidemiologist, was all too aware of the impact the pandemic might have\u00ad\u00ad \u2013 something that would play into her delusional thoughts.<\/p>\n \u201cFour days after giving birth, I developed mastitis,\u201d she recalls. \u201cI was given antibiotics and told it wasn\u2019t a particularly severe infection, but I was in a lot of pain.\u201d<\/p>\n A few days later, during a shopping trip with her partner and their two children, the new mother experienced a sudden worsening of symptoms.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were in IKEA, and I became convinced there was Covid on all the surfaces, and on a bear we\u2019d bought for our older son,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n After developing a sudden fever and excruciating breast pain, Whitlam headed to the emergency department, where she was admitted with life-threatening sepsis.<\/p>\n \u201cI think I was in there for close to two days while they were trying to figure out what was causing the sepsis,\u201d she says. \u201cBut my mental health started deteriorating rapidly. I thought that the light above my bed was a camera link to ex-colleagues who were investigating Covid. I was beside myself thinking that colleagues could see me in this vulnerable state.\u201d<\/p>\n Whitlam was transferred to an isolation room in the maternity ward for ongoing antibiotic treatment.<\/p>\n \u201cAt one stage my veins collapsed due to the IV treatment,\u201d she explains. \u201cI was afraid, became increasingly confused, paranoid and delusional. I lay in bed in a dark room, alone with my thoughts. I believed that my partner, Lizz, had signed me up to a clinical trial where researchers had wired me up to a medical device that was controlling all aspects of my functioning. I thought the windows were one-way mirrors, that the nurses were researchers, that the television was a recording device, and that the clock and my phone were being controlled by the researchers. I lost complete track of time and became totally withdrawn.\u201d<\/p>\n Thankfully Lizz, a mental health nurse, picked up that something was very wrong, and pushed for a psychiatric review, where doctors eventually diagnosed Whitlam with postpartum psychosis.<\/p>\n \u201cI was confused \u00ad\u00ad\u2013 my thoughts seemed so real,\u201d she recalls. \u201cI was able to hold down a conversation with other patients or visitors. But when left on my own, my mind took me to places that at the time made sense, but now seem so bizarre.<\/p>\n \u201cI began to think that I was rich and famous. This belief led to me uncharacteristically spending more than $100 in the hospital newsagency. I thought that robot versions of my sons had been developed by a technology company, and it was these robots that were visiting me. I thought the magazines I was reading had been published specifically for me, and that music had a new, underlying meaning giving me instructions.\u201d<\/p>\n Still, her perception of postpartum psychosis, based on the sensationalism she\u2019d seen in media reports about it, left Whitlam with the overwhelming feeling of stigma and shame.<\/p>\n \u201cMy head went, \u2018That\u2019s not me. What are you talking about?\u2019 Denial, shame, self-stigma\u00ad\u00ad \u2013 I just sort of plummeted \u2026 because I knew from the media the implications of what that meant. Or at least I thought I did.\u201d<\/p>\n What We Need To Talk About When We Talk About Postpartum Psychosis<\/p>\n This, Dickinson explains, is why stories like Lindsay Clancy\u2019s can be simultaneously valuable and damaging to the conversation around postpartum psychosis.<\/p>\n \u201cPsychosis is not inherently dangerous or violent in that way,\u201d she says. \u201cIt is not an automatic thing that a person in psychosis will try to harm another person. It\u2019s actually far more likely they\u2019re going to harm themselves. Psychosis does not mean someone is necessarily dangerous, but the very extreme outlier situations are the ones we tend to see reported on in the media.\u201d<\/p>\n Seeto agrees: \u201cA lot of the time, women might be having these thoughts but continuing to appear functional on the outside. There\u2019s a fear that their children [will be] removed from their care. There\u2019s a fear that something worse might happen. So that causes a level of hesitancy that will stop people seeking help early on.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s why both experts, along with Whitlam, are so committed to ensuring accurate, non-sensationalist information lands in the hands of new mothers and their support networks.<\/p>\n A \u201cHighly Treatable\u201d Condition When Families Seek Help<\/p>\n \u201cI really want people who have given birth to understand that this is a highly treatable condition,\u201d says Whitlam, who, after a few weeks in a mental health unit, was able to transfer to a mother-and-baby maternal mental health centre with Arlo to continue her recovery.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s had any long-term impacts on my connection or ability to parent, which was another thing I was initially worried about. He\u2019s now six-and-a-half, and he\u2019s a beautiful little boy, and our connection is just as strong as with our eldest son.\u201d<\/p>\n Another issue all three women agree on: women and their families require significantly more support in the postpartum period than is currently being offered.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve been working in this space for almost 30 years, and while some things have improved, I don\u2019t think it\u2019s any easier for women to access the level of affordable care and intervention they need than it was 30 years ago,\u201d Dickinson says.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s still just horrendous to try to get someone to see a good-quality psychiatrist, and to be able to offer them the level of psychological intervention they need, and also to get them an appropriate inpatient stay if that\u2019s what they require, particularly in a mother-and-baby unit.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s one of the issues Senator Marielle Smith, chair of the just-announced Australian Senate Select Committee on Women\u2019s Health, would like to see improve.<\/p>\n \u201cI want a national conversation about how we can better care for mothers in the postpartum period, and how we support their families,\u201d she says of the inquiry that will focus primarily on three historically overlooked pillars: postpartum healthcare, chronic pain and medical dismissal, and assisted reproduction.<\/p>\n \u201cThis committee represents a powerful opportunity to elevate women\u2019s experiences, to spark a national conversation on what needs to change and to build an evidence base that can\u2019t be ignored,\u201d Smith says.<\/p>\n \u201cWe know too many women are finding themselves suffering in the darkest of places because of challenges with their mental or physical health during this period.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t Sign up for our newsletter<\/p>\n Sign up for the latest news from Marie Claire including offers and discounts we choose to share with you<\/p>\n By joining, you agree to our Privacy Policy<\/a> & Terms of Use<\/a><\/p>\n About your privacy Are Media Pty Limited collects your personal information through this site to process registrations, send out newsletters, communicate offers, discounts, competitions, or surveys, and to provide you with targeted advertising based on your online activities. Our Privacy Policy<\/a> contains information on how you can access or correct your personal information, which entities we may disclose your personal information to (including overseas recipients), how to opt out of targeted advertising, and how to lodge a complaint.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Trigger warning: This story discusses perinatal mental health, including anxiety and depression, which may be distressing for some…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":933557,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[49,48,84],"class_list":["post-933556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/933556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=933556"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/933556\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/933557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=933556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=933556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=933556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/mc-lindsay-clancy-6ac6f40194e56.jpg\")
Lindsay Clancy during her trial in September 2026. Image: Getty<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t![\"Profile](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e.jpeg\")
\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n