By Jamie Maguire, Lauren M. Osborne, and Jennifer PayneAug. 12, 2026
Maguire is a professor of neuroscience at Tufts University School of Medicine. Osborne is an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology and psychiatry and a reproductive psychiatrist at NewYork-Presbyterian and Weill Cornell Medicine. Payne is vice chair of research and a professor at the University of Virginia in the Department of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences, as well as the director of the Reproductive Psychiatry Research Program, UVA Health.
The Lindsay Clancy case has become one of the most painful and polarizing stories in recent American memory. At its center are the unimaginable deaths of three young children and a mother whose mental state has become the subject of intense legal, medical, and public scrutiny. The criminal justice system will determine legal responsibility, but regardless of the trial’s outcome, the case exposes a larger and uncomfortable truth: Our understanding and treatment of postpartum psychiatric illnesses remain profoundly inadequate.
For many observers, the debate has become a binary one. Either Clancy was suffering from a severe postpartum psychiatric disorder, or she was not. Either she is guilty of murder or she is not. Either the system failed her or it did not. And, despite numerous attempts to seek medical care, she was either inappropriately medicated or not.
