Rare condition affects 1 to 2 per 1,000 women after childbirth
Lindsay Clancy, a former labor and delivery nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital, is on trial in Massachusetts for strangling her three children in 2023. Both the prosecution and defense agree that Clancy killed the children, but they disagree over whether she should be held criminally responsible.
The defense argues that postpartum psychosis — a rare and severe mental health condition — left Clancy unable to distinguish reality at the time of the killings. Postpartum psychosis affects an estimated 1 to 2 per 1,000 women after delivery, according to medical estimates. The Cleveland Clinic describes it as a mental health emergency that affects a person’s sense of reality and can happen to anyone after giving birth, though the chances are higher for people with certain preexisting mental health conditions.
Researchers at the Medical University of Lublin in Poland, writing in a 2023 journal article, found that about half of people with postpartum psychosis have a previous history of psychiatric problems. The most common risk factor associated with the condition is bipolar affective disorder, which causes extreme mood swings, the researchers said.
Clancy and her ex-husband, Patrick Clancy, have filed separate civil lawsuits accusing her medical providers of failing to properly diagnose and treat her mental health condition before the killings.