{"id":816749,"date":"2026-08-17T16:58:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-17T16:58:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/816749\/"},"modified":"2026-08-17T16:58:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-17T16:58:09","slug":"how-forensic-fandom-in-lindsay-clancy-trial-threaten-postpartum-psychosis-awareness-massachusetts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/816749\/","title":{"rendered":"How \u2018forensic fandom\u2019 in Lindsay Clancy trial threaten postpartum psychosis awareness | Massachusetts"},"content":{"rendered":"

Meghan Cliffel was riding the subway in New York City in December 2015 when she became convinced the entire city belonged to a cult that was plotting to kill her and her two daughters. When she got back to her Manhattan apartment she believed the talking heads on the television were speaking to her directly, threatening her, and that the refrigerator was emitting poisonous gas. Her husband, she feared, was part of the cult too.<\/p>\n

\u201cI punch him in the face trying to get to the kids,\u201d Cliffel recalled, \u201cThen I\u2019m ultimately trying to get to the roof of our building because I believe if I get up there and show I\u2019m willing to jump, that that\u2019ll show my loyalty to the cult and hopefully stop this whole thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eight months earlier, Cliffel had given birth to her second daughter, initially enjoying maternity leave and the \u201cconfidence of being a mom the second time around, where you\u2019re not as worried about all the little things\u201d, she remembers. But by the time she returned to her job, dealing with all the stress of being a working mom, she told her husband about creeping feelings of anxiety and sadness. \u201cAnd he said, \u2018All right, if you still feel this way in two weeks, let\u2019s go see somebody.\u2019 That never happened. Time passed and we were too busy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cliffel and her husband, like most Americans, did not have a deep understanding of postpartum depression, a mood disorder experienced by one in seven women after giving birth that can cause extreme sadness. They had no concept at all of postpartum psychosis, a more severe psychiatric condition affecting between one and two women per 1,000 births<\/a>, that can cause hallucinations and paranoid delusions.<\/p>\n

In extreme cases, the condition can lead to incidents of maternal suicide and infanticide \u2013 as demonstrated by the ongoing trial of Lindsay Clancy<\/a>, the 36-year-old Massachusetts woman who has admitted to killing her three children in 2023.<\/p>\n

Clancy is charged with three counts of murder and her team is deploying an insanity defense, arguing that the murders were committed while she was in the throes of postpartum psychosis. Clancy, who allegedly jumped from a 20ft-high window after the murders and was paralyzed from the waist down, appeared in court this week in a wheelchair.<\/p>\n

Cliffel did not jump from the roof of her Manhattan apartment building. Her husband eventually called the police. Two months later \u2013 after struggling to be seen by a reproductive psychiatrist \u2013 Cliffel was finally diagnosed with postpartum psychosis, a diagnosis she called a giant relief. She went from feeling like there \u201cwas something so wrong with me\u201d to understanding that she had just been sick.<\/p>\n

Now, a mental health advocate and writer, Cliffel has been distressed in recent weeks by the sensationalized, wall-to-wall media coverage and conspiracy theories swirling around the trial of Clancy, whose lawyers will need to convince a jury it was her sickness, not her, that took the lives of her children. Clancy\u2019s psychosis, her lawyers have argued, was exacerbated by the treatment she received at a local hospital, where she was prescribed an incorrect mix of over a dozen psychiatric medications.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt feels heartbreaking to have the media kind of so unrelentingly focused on this story at this moment, after not really digging in and caring about this issue outside of that for the past however many 100 years,\u201d Cliffel observed.<\/p>\n

Clancy\u2019s livestreamed trial has become fodder for amateur sleuths, operating accounts on TikTok and other social media platforms, to push viral conspiracy theories<\/a> that experts say threaten to undermine efforts to destigmatize and raise awareness of postpartum illnesses.<\/p>\n

Though Clancy has admitted to the murders, these true-crime obsessives have zeroed in on a particular conspiracy theory: that Clancy\u2019s ex-husband, Patrick Clancy, actually murdered their children, framing her for the crimes afterwards. The videos they post parse purported inconsistencies in Patrick\u2019s testimony. That Patrick Clancy\u2019s alibi seems rock solid \u2013 surveillance footage and phone records corroborate that he was at a CVS during the murders, picking up his then-wife\u2019s medications \u2013 is of little concern. They have asserted, among other claims, that Patrick Clancy may have hired a body double to go to the CVS for him.<\/p>\n

\u201cIs it possible she wasn\u2019t ever psychotic at all?\u201d a TikToker with 100,000 followers recently speculated about Clancy, adding: \u201cWas Patrick or someone else manufacturing conditions to actually drive Lindsay mad, so that she could seem mad?\u201d The TikToker has posted multiple videos about the Clancy trial, some racking up millions of views.<\/p>\n

At the heart of these conspiracy theories, experts say, is probably a refusal to confront the horrifying reality of the murders themselves: that a mother killed her three children. Additionally, the existence of postpartum illnesses and in particular, postpartum psychosis, upsets the story our society tells itself about being a mom.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe way that misogyny and sort of patriarchy shapes the narrative about motherhood is that it\u2019s this time when you\u2019re supposed to be happy, and this time when you\u2019re supposed to be filled with joy, and that mother\u2019s first and primary job is to nurture and to care for and to protect,\u201d Andrea Clark, deputy CEO at Postpartum Support International, said.<\/p>\n

This idealized narrative, Clark said, often doesn\u2019t \u201cleave room for women\u201d who are struggling with the myriad, everyday difficulties of being a mom, let alone postpartum disorders, and especially the terrifying psychosis Clancy has recounted experiencing.<\/p>\n

Katy Coduto, an assistant professor of media science at Boston University, has another theory for why conspiracy theories about the Clancy case are flourishing: \u201cforensic fandom\u201d. It\u2019s a social media phenomenon, Coduto explained, wherein \u201cpeople engage with media in a way where they think they know more about a story than others.\u201d They treat real-life cases of murder and other crimes with the eye of an obsessive fan of fictional shows like Lost or Severance, looking for small clues and Easter eggs they believe support a particular narrative.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut crime cases don\u2019t follow a clean narrative, even though viewers and listeners really want them to,\u201d Coduto said. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to accept that someone could do something terrible, so citizen sleuths are really trying to make anti-normative behaviors make sense and fit into a logical pattern.\u201d<\/p>\n

The story that Clancy and her lawyers are pushing in court \u2013 that she suffered a known, treatable psychiatric condition \u2013 is not as salacious or a \u201cneat\u201d enough story \u201cfor conspiracy theorists or TikTokers looking for clicks\u201d, Coduto said. Suggesting Patrick Clancy committed the murders, on the other hand, is.<\/p>\n

Coduto fears the forensic fandom in this case, where entire online communities have been formed to investigate the murders, could be \u201cdetrimental to other women experiencing postpartum depression\u201d who are trying to understand what happened.<\/p>\n

Clark agrees. Denying that postpartum psychosis may have played a part in Clancy\u2019s killings threatens to entrench the stigma surrounding the condition, creating a \u201cchilling effect\u201d on women coming forward to get treatment.<\/p>\n

What also gets lost in all the obsessive true-crime fascination around the case, is the human beings at the center of it who experienced the most unimaginable tragedy: the loss of their children. Historically media coverage of infanticide, Clark says, has often \u201cretraumatized\u201d family members. The TikTok conspiracy theories will undoubtedly do the same.<\/p>\n

For Cliffel, the conspiracy theories distract from all of the systemic and societal conditions that can lead to postpartum psychosis going untreated, including \u201cno paid leave, lack of inclusion of women in mental health trials until the 1980s, lack of board exams in reproductive psychiatry despite it affecting half the population, coupled with the ridiculous Instagram-worthy standards of motherhood, more of a focus on a beautiful baby room than mother\u2019s wellbeing \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

The media and social media circuses surrounding cases like Clancy\u2019s, Cliffel said, feel akin to \u201cwitch trials\u201d in the way the difficulties of being a woman are erased.<\/p>\n

Those commenting on the Clancy case, whether in a newspaper or on TikTok, would do much better to show \u201ccompassion\u201d, she said, instead of wild speculation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Meghan Cliffel was riding the subway in New York City in December 2015 when she became convinced the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":816750,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[97],"class_list":["post-816749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=816749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816749\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/816750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=816749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=816749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=816749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}