Lindsay Clancy’s murder trial has centered on the mental health issues the 36-year-old faced after giving birth to her third child.
Defense attorneys for the Massachusetts labor and delivery nurse do not deny that Clancy strangled her three children — Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and Callan, 8 months — before jumping from a second-story window of her suburban home in 2023. Instead, they contend that she is not criminally responsible because she was experiencing postpartum psychosis, a rare mental health condition.
After Callan’s birth, Clancy had taken medication for mental health problems, according to her providers, and had sought help from several mental health professionals who testified this week.
Prosecutors claim that Patrick Clancy’s descriptions of how he found his children and the methods his wife used to strangle them are evidence of “deliberate premeditation, extreme atrocity or cruelty, and the state of mind of the defendant.”
Mental health issues are the most common complication of pregnancy and parenting, affecting as many as 1 in 5 women in the United States during pregnancy and the year after birth. They are also the leading underlying cause of pregnancy-related death in the United States, but they are often overlooked. These conditions — and their treatments — vary widely.
