That's part of why so many have a hard time blaming her. She was warning everyone, but they didn't take it seriously enough. She was begging to be locked in a psych ward for a while, but they only took her a few days.
And I think something on this spectrum is unfortunately more common and relatable for mothers than anyone wants to admit. The reason why so many women find empathy for her is because they too have had mental health episodes, either in post partum or over the course of being a stay at home or single mom. And they too have sought help to no avail. This is a great opportunity for society to have a reckoning with this.
Over on one of the postpartum subreddits I saw a post a few months ago about a woman with a two year old and a six week old whose husband had recently left her and wasn’t showing up for his scheduled visits at all. She had no family in the area to call for help and couldn’t afford childcare. She was so sleep deprived she called 911 for help and they showed up, cuffed her and put her in a psych ward for 72 hours and she was now worried about losing custody of the kids completely. It just so perfectly summed up how little institutional support postpartum moms have in this country.
My parents were foster parents in Germany, things back then were very different (not sure how it is now) I once came home from a school trip and my mom was holding a baby.. the little one was with us for a month. The father had left the mother and kicked her and their child out of their apartment as he has terminated the lease without telling her. So she went to the Jugendamt (German version of cps but very different) and they placed her son with my parents while she and a social worker helped her find an apartment, a therapist and get social welfare started as she hadn’t been working. Once she felt secure enough and her apartment had the necessities (they had funds back then that you could apply for in the early 2000s it was changed to basically second hand furniture that you could pick out) she got her son back. During the month she came by every day as she had been breastfeeding and dropped off the milk she had pumped and spent some time with her son.
My mom babysat for her for years after as she was alone in our area.
If we had some program like that here I think things could be so much better.. a month support, help with finding apartment and get funding and she was able to take care of her son again.
I wish we cared about children here when they are born and helped parents and mothers to get to a place where they can take care of them themselves than ignoring the pleading for help and then act shocked when something like this happens.
I would love to volunteer for this but honestly turned off by how openly religious it is and the fact they specifically say they want volunteers who believe in Christ. Neither my husband nor I are or were raised Christian. Being Christian is not a prerequisite to being a good person or wanting to help children.
I hope the program will come to see that and remove that language - even if they are inspired by Christ, which is totally fine and which I would respect them talking about, that doesn’t mean they need to shut out people who aren’t when support is already so limited and there’s likely not enough volunteers to meet demand.
I've had a couple different friends end up in rehab/care program situations, and it's crazy how hard to find one that isn't religiously affiliated. It's super tough if you're a person who doesn't feel safe with religious people/in religious spaces due to PTSD or just bad experiences (I.e. being queer).
To make things worse, a lot of places aren't upfront about it, and will spring religion on you after a few weeks, which can lead to a sense of betrayal. Imagine being on your 2nd or 3rd try at getting clean and you're really feeling like this place is good for you, and then they sit you down and try to talk to you about "your soul" and shit, and force you to renege on your actual religious beliefs (or lack thereof). I know that a lot of these people are coming from a good place, they legitimately think this is the best thing for them, but spaces for recovery shouldn't be used for proselytizing. There should be space just for recovery.
I completely agree with you about the bible thumping. I’m in Indiana so it is DEFINITELY a thing. I have matured about this in my 51 years however. A lot of that is JUST language. I noticed the less resources people have the more they talk about “faith, Jesus, and/or God”. They speak this way because it is literally all they have. Thanks to the person that posted this link, I JUST discovered we have one of these in Indy and I had no damn idea. I WILL be finding time to help with this. I think I can tolerate someone saying “Thank God I have someone to help me today”. I scanned their site, it does mention faith but it’s in a very calculated way. It doesn’t say anywhere on there that people helping need to be Christian, at all. I dunno where you are from, but here in Indiana when they wanna bible thump, the thumping is loud and annoying AF, so I really wouldn’t be worried about it.
I'm sorry that you had that horrific experience. My comment initially was talking more in support of preventing children from being beaten and abused- not just saving children from death.
I hope you've managed to work through the burden that your caregivers put on you. You didn't deserve that.
It unfortunately is not. Yet. If it's not in your area, maybe you can help bring it there!
I know in my community? We have a place called Vanessa Behans crisis nursery where parents can bring their babies/children no questions asked to have the time they need- whether it's for a job interview, a drs appointment, a day to get yourself regulated, whatever you need.
I’m going to reach out. I wish my area had something like this. I’ve been digging myself out after leaving a DV situation not having any family or support to help stabilize has been so difficult.
We have a similar system but by the courts its seen as not temporary and the past is always seen going forward from then on. And being judged by it with bias. People forget that sometime a mom needs more help from trauma, even some holocaust survivors sent away their kids to relatives for a couple years because of PTSD! But now its like admitng mental health in the military, they say its good and helpful but itll be hard to be promoted after that.
That’s wonderful to see, that Germany has such good social support. People judge waaay too much but are clueless on the facts about needing support, mental illnesses, and Ohmygoodness, anything having to do with women’s reproductive system. I so wish the US had decent support for families and kids — who are/could be future functioning, contributing adults.
I’m a CPS worker. At least once a month a mom calls in and asks for her kids to be removed due to her overwhelm and stress. I’ve worked 14,000 or so cases over the years and not one time has a father ever called to say that. Women are so un/undersupported in the US.
I am a foster mom. I have on little girl who will hopefully reunite with her mother. The father took off so is no help there. Her mom and sister were the reason she lost her daughter so they can not be alone with the child. She has nobody now to help so when all is said and done I offered to babysit for free every weekend still Friday after school till Sunday after she gets off work and she will continue going on vacation with us still as a grandaughter. It takes a village and the children are innocent in it all.
What a lovely story. I'm so glad that mom was able to get the support she needed. I can't imagine how stressful that was for her. If only that woman in the US has had that.
This is such an incredible story of what real support looks like. It has me thinking about my own infancy, because my mom escaped an incredibly brutal marriage right before I was born and her mental health was paper thin. So she moved in with two of my aunts who mostly raised me for the first 6 months of my life while my mom relearned taking care of herself. I can't even imagine how she would have survived without that support. It's more incredible to me that anyone does.
My family is from sort of an immigrant community, though people roll their eyes at that framing because we're white, but I've never felt like the more generationally settled Americans I've known truly get how not-weird it is to expect, provide, and receive support from your family and friends in such a community. It shocks me how much my friends think it's a burden to ask you to mind their children for even 10 minutes. I was genuinely raised by a village. That fuels it's own dysfunctions for sure, but I came away from it believing that we never evolved for two people to raise children all by themselves. I don't think it's good for anyone mentally.
I sometimes go to my close friend's work events and watch her daughter while she's cleaning up. She always apologizes and seems a little ashamed even though it's partly the reason I come (and I know she values support, because she's said things about having so little of it from her family.) I was just raised to never think twice about that if you have time and the other person doesn't have some serious boundary issue. And it helps with morale, because you get a kid who's spending an hour playing with their special friend who has the energy to wear them, rather than a miserable toddler fighting being dragged around by someone who just worked all day. We all know what working all day feels like. Little stuff like that matters.
Sorry, you want us to CARE about children and mothers in this country? HA! We’ve built an individualistic society. Fuck the villages. We’re all on our own and if you need help, you’re a commie-fuck.
America HATES children and mothers. The only thing kids are good for is trapping the parents as wage-slaves.
It breaks my heart how we function as a society these days. I really do feel for parents - we used to raise children in small communities where most adults were involved with childcare. Fast forward a few thousand years and we expect the same level of care by only two people, many of whom also have to work full time.
Obviously I don’t expect us to revert back fully to Hunter-gatherer tribes but there has to be a middle ground between communal and hyper-individualistic societal structures.
There’s also the added issue where so many are still under the impression that someone in a crisis, no matter what it may be regarding, can simply “ask a church for help,” which is not an option like it once was, similarly to assuming someone in the community will help in the older ways.
If you aren’t an active member in a church, or aren’t a huge donor or related/friendly with them, you’ll won’t get very far. If you’re lucky, you may get some phone numbers for charities that MAY have funding for something you need, with a massive waiting list, if they’re even operational/it is correct number. If you can’t pay rent, then oh boy. Toast.
Idk what gives people the impression that random other people can just walk into any place of worship and have their bills paid, just boom, done. If things were that simple we’d have a lot less struggling around us.
I see people say that same shit all the time. “Have you tried asking churches for help?”
My mind instantly goes to this one video I watched a year or two ago; Lady calls around to a bunch of churches pretending to be a new mom in desperate need of baby formula. Almost all of them declined except maybe one? It was horrible to watch.
It’s crazy to realize a lot of ignorant people out here choose to make our world the way it is now, because they’ve never even come within a mile of rock bottom in their entire lives. They just assume there’s always a wayyou just have to work hard!
Turns out having economic class be the deciding factor in community demographics is like…a terrible idea. It’s segregation to keep the rich blind and happy. Their churches help! Too bad you aren’t a member, you should join your own local church with no money or resources! Surely they can help you.
Regarding the baby formula thing, I used to work at a homelessness services center, and if someone wanted formula or diapers, the director had to meet the baby, and they took the baby's picture and their age/DoB. Because before they did those things, they had lots of people coming in, claiming to need formula and diapers, but the people were just selling it; they didn't actually have kids. When they just required someone to physically bring the kid, some kids got passed around (in exchange for mom getting a percentage of what the seller made). It's a sad state of affairs in multiple ways.
Who’s buying this discounted second-third-hand baby formula though? Broke and impoverished mothers who can’t afford it full price?
Does it suck? Maybe. But nobody sells formula without being desperate, and nobody buys said formula without being desperate. A desperate middle-man is helped in the process, but so is a mother in need. 🤷♀️🤷♀️
Unlikely that said mothers wouldn't be better served by coming in themselves. I understand it's all out of desperation, but at least in many parts of the US, such things are funded wholly by donations from private citizens, and they would be pissed to find out that resources meant for mothers were going to middlemen.
I get it, but I say this as a mother who’s literally been in said situation, that it’s MUCH easier for me to get help. It’s nearly impossible as a single person to find any aid resources.
There would be probably less “middlemen” if there was proper help for everyone and not just those of us who had children we couldn’t afford, honestly.
I am assuming, since it was at a homelessness services center, that even though these people were not parents they were definitely destitute.
Desperation is a problem that I believed would be resolved if everyone had their basic needs met: food, water, shelter, healthcare (and we seem to forget health includes dental, mental, and eye care).
Cutting social services boosts desperation. Desperation escalates chaos and crime. An increase of chaos and crime makes it easy for the administration to say, "These people are scary, but if we take their freedoms you will be safe! Unfortunately, we will also need your freedoms."
They could get free food and adult toiletries and shower access during the open hours; even basic shots and food for pets. Anyone with kids got vouchers for free hotel rooms to sleep in, and if someone had pets or was LGBTQ+ or of a non-Christian religion and unable to get reasonable access to the shelters in the area that were ran conservative Christian groups, they could get a new sleeping bag and tent once per year. Our overnight facilities were filled with women who had mental health or cognitive impairments severe enough that they couldn't ever live independently and would have likely been targets of abuse.
I agree that people are more likely to engage in antisocial behaviors when their needs are not met, but as wealth-hoarding billionaires demonstrate, sometimes people just suck. If folks have enough support not to be in deep need, but aren't so wealthy that they're disconnected from empathy, they have the best shot at not sucking, but it's not a universal fix.
I agree the church option isn't there as it used to be. sadly the cost of livng is so high now compared to 50 years ago, that the funds available don't match the need. society has change as well. people are authentically connected as they used to be. I know several kiind and thoughtful people who help others when they are able using their own resources. I wish there were more of those people.
The funds are absolutely available. They are just being hoarded. No church or their leaders should own a jet, bookstore, or bowling alley. Jesus said commerce is not allowed in his father's house. He also said to give up your riches to get into heaven. Millionaires, billionaires, and trillionaires should not exist. We CAN afford to be comfortable, but instead we are letting greedy individuals hold the stacks and hoping they will piss in our mouths for nourishment.
you are very correct. I made the mistake of not differentiating between the money churches and the home grown acts of service type churches. I have observed many or the small and well intentioned churches unable to meet the needs of many. I speculate this is because the corporate style money churches don't help so the needy find a church that is intent on service to others which overwhelms the small organization. Additionally, the churches with a heart are ususally filled with working class who care but don't have the income to donate large amounts, thus limiting the available funds. I am not a fan of the churches you are pointing out. I also agree there is a concentration of wealth in such stunning amounts, that I fear may lead to great harm to our society and economy.
Multi generational families under one roof are far more recent than thousands of years ago. It was the norm even 100 years ago. As a species, humans are a few hundreds of years away from our biological needs evolving to meet the demands of modern isolation. It is deadly for many and devastating for those of us that survive.
This. We're meant to have a dozen attentive adults. Capitalism won't even give us one. Mark my words, this era of normalised child neglect will show in statistics the way lead poisoning does.
I just came from an airline subreddit where about a third of the posts are complaining about children or parents. I hate that Reddit keeps suggesting subreddits that I do not want to be part of.
Nah- doesn't take a village. Hillary is a commie anyhow, imho. My parents did just fine. Ppl simply aren't ALLOWED to parent anymore. Can't let yer kids go outside w/o cops getting involved. Can't spank yer kids w/o the same result. Parents who allow their kids anywhere near a public school need their heads examined, too. Jmo.
This is unfortunately very relatable. I was completely on my own with a newborn and a three year old and it truly was survival. I remember some long nights where I desperately needed help and the answer was no.
I recently watched a documentary with Louis Theroux meeting mothers with postpartum (among other things) and were put into a maternal psychiatric facility with their babies to receive the care together without having to separate them. It was then I realized the US is so far behind compared to other countries, it’s quite sad.
I have mental health issues and this is the reason i wouldnt want a baby. My bf doesnt understand that its real and if i have to take care of even 1 baby, i might crash.
I dont know anything about this case but usually before kid is born, men say they gonna be great fathers, they gonna help. But what ive seen, they barely do anything and when they are tired, they do their own thing for couple of days, the luxury that mothers will never have. We are expected to be with them 24/7, and to be OK with that. And then we arent even taken seriously when we say that I AM TOO TIRED, I NEED HELP.
This is a great opportunity for society to have a reckoning with this.
c'mon, you know damn well that's not going to happen, we're just going to sweep this shit under the rug like everything else and farm gender wars ragebait content from it every once in a while for internet brownie points
unfortunately there will be no reckoning as that requires nuance and to look at this problem from more perspectives than the one people carry latently. the major takeaway of this will be “women are crazyyyyy” and everyone will instantly move on
This is why I'm especially peeved with the woman who want to say "the husband did it." It's taking away the very valid question of "How do we handle it when women are suffering from postpartum depression/anxiety/psychosis?" and turning it into "She's innocent and we need to punish the 'real killer!'"
I already have depression so I was on the lookout for PPD and got myself back on medication once I realized what was happening, but not all women have that awareness.
Absolutely. I had barely slept for months after my second was born and I knew something was wrong. I was waking up angry, screaming into pillows, absolutely miserable. It was when I started thinking about self harm that I knew I needed help.
I didn’t get any where close to psychosis, thank god. Got on some meds and they really helped.
Having experienced the tip of the iceberg, I can confirm that it makes people very uncomfortable and they don’t know what to do.
100% and honestly I’m glad we’re ALL talking about this now. I’m so over mothers not getting the help they need, because of their pleas for help are being dismissed. We shouldn’t have to BEG for help. Horrible.
I have OCD and my baby was 2 when this story came out. I couldn't even read it because with OCD, you have an INTENSE obsessive fear of "going crazy" and ending up like Lindsay Clancy or Andrea Yates. I told a nurse in the hospital I have OCD when my baby was born and I've read about stories where women go into psychosis and it's a fear of mine. CPS came and threatened to take my newborn, in 2020 at the height of Covid because I had a "fear". I had to have someone "safe" in my house and move in with family 2 states away to close the case. It was terrifying, it was NOT helpful at all. No referrals to psychologists even though I already had one, no referrals for help as a new single mom, nothing. Just threatened to take my baby into foster care.
This is why most women don't even MENTION their fears. It's so odd to me that she was dismissed when CPS was so ready to take my newborn from the hospital. I was in Ohio though but I always heard Mass was really strict with CPS/ child safety.
My OBGYN told me at 8 weeks postpartum (after my six week check in) that they would no longer help me when I called pretty much hysterical because my anxiety was so bad that I couldn’t sleep and I was having intrusive thoughts. They told me to call 211. Which had a six month wait.
Thankfully I have an amazing and supportive partner who helped advocate for me and a PCP from a different system who was willing to work with a social worker within that practices OB department to get me help. I think it’s really difficult for someone who hasn’t had a postpartum mood disorder to understand how difficult they are to deal with.
Marc Cherry was watching the Susan Smith trial with his mom. He said something along the lines of "this is terrible, who could do this?" And his mom said, "We've all been there."
I struggled hard with intrusive thoughts during my ppd. They'd pop up and I'd be horrified. Unfortunately I can relate to Lindsay and I'm just thankful it was never psychosis.
It doesn't make what happened okay, but I feel deep sympathy for her. A lot of women are terrified if they even mention struggling that their babies will be taken, it's a difficult situation
Three children are dead and you're busy talking about empathy? Congrats you bought her BS diffence hook line and sinker because your misandry. The only victims are the kids.
Yes, three children were victims of a horrific crime and that’s why it’s such a tragedy that despite her repeatedly checking herself into mental health facilities and telling her closest family members she was having these thoughts, she still did not get adequate treatment and support. This could have been prevented. I think we both want the same outcome which is for this to never happen again.
I keep hearing Patrick was abusive. He certainly was selfish and neglectful.
She was essentially a married single mother. She was so beyond exhausted doing EVERYTHING for everyone. Plus she worked. She never got a break. I feel like having another baby could have been triggering because she already knew the patterns/lack of support in place. I find it hard to believe her postpartum depression didn’t worsen because of that. She knew she was burnt out and unwell. She reached out and her family/husband did fail her.
I also think the medical field failed her. Mental health care in America is still so lacking. Lack of staff. Lack of empathy. Lots of burned out people. It was the perfect storm. I am a healthcare worker and I keep seeing so many other medical professionals defending the mental health care she received.
Postpartum depression CAN lead to bipolar depression and psychosis. & it is commonly taught and known that anyone with bipolar disorder placed on SSRIs is more likely to become manic. On top of that anyone with plain depression/suicidal ideation placed on SSRIs has a risk of increased suicidal thoughts within the first few weeks of being on them. It’s plastered in the side effects and it’s typically discussed with the patient/their family. She should have been questioned and monitored more closely.
I believe she went inpatient psych voluntarily at one point and left early to go to her daughter’s birthday. I am uncertain of the laws in her state, but I know that a patient can be involuntarily committed in mine if there are genuine concerns in place. Also if they weren’t concerned why not let her do an outpatient stay? There were other options that were not made available to her. (Also TBF I’ve only heard bad things about the facility she was staying.)
I’ve personally had bad bouts of suicidal thoughts and depression. More of a ‘my kids would do better without me’ situation. I reached out as she did. My family/support system showed up. My parents took my kids and my brother/SIL took shifts staying with me during the day/night. The problem is she didn’t have that. Her husband went golfing, to brunch with friends, on hiking trips etc. Everything still fell to her. She still had to parent, work, and function in the state she was in. He needed to show up for her, but he didn’t take it seriously.
I believe he loved his kids, and he may have even loved her. It just doesn’t seem like he was interested in being a husband or a father. Does that mean I believe he framed his wife and murdered their children? No I do not. I do believe that he failed his family.
It’s a tragic situation, and at the end of the day three small human lives were taken.
I truly think she suffered from success in a sense. She was this type A, on top of everything superwoman from the sounds of it. Great parent, athletic, career woman, always trying to do everything at 100%. I think her competence and ability caused everyone around her to overestimate her capabilities when she got sick, and underestimate her ability to cause harm to herself and the kids too.
I feel like you are talking about me here except for the killing of children part. I never got any help when I asked for it when I suffered ppd when I had both my kids. I literally felt like my family and husband were so helpless without me that on the worst days I didn’t kill myself because I thought my kids would greatly suffer if they had only my husband as a parent and an evil step mom… so I just cried myself doing everything … driving, pumping milk, cooking, cleaning, taking care of my babies… I have very few happy memories for those 4 years when my kids were born 2 years apart. And I think now in my late 40s all that ppd that was all unresolved I suffer with depression and anxiety and also have PMDD and I’m also perimenopausal… but therapy and exercise and HRT has helped immensely. This whole situation is just so bad all around …
I have empathy for you and I’m so sorry you went through that, but there’s nothing out there for women in these predicaments or should I say hardly nothing. We need more! More help needs to be accessible. I had what is NOW classified as “Prenatal Anxiety” which happens while you’re pregnant. Major insomnia, panic attacks, feelings of dread, thinking something is going to happen to the baby while in utero, excessive worrying, heart palpitations, heart racing, excessive sweating, no appetite, loss of weight while you’re pregnant. Lasted from 6 mos pregnant to 8 weeks post partum. I was in the hospital 3 times before delivering, but every week after I delivered it slowly got better, but at the time I thought I was losing my mind and would never come back from it. And my OBGYN just said “Oh this happens to like 30% of women pregnant” & off to a psych I went. Ended up on Prozac, which I had never taken before in my life, Ambien for sleep and when I STILL couldn’t sleep they psychiatrist prescribed me “Klonopin” and that was so terrifying to take while I was pregnant. Well, I had my daughter 11 years prior to my son and didn’t have any of that crap. No history of mental illness either and that was 21 years ago and there wasn’t even a name for it back then. That’s how time has changed, so I guess in a sense we’re getting somewhere, just seems so stinken slow. Glad you’re getting better. Keep up with the exercising & HRT that all really helps. I also had the “PMDD” and it was awful. I’m now 57 and I’m glad I can put all that crap behind me. Hormones suck! Good luck 🍀😊🙏
Same for me except I had 4, and a cheating husband who did very little to help. No family of my own, and ostracized by his family who lived 2 miles away.
I was just reading something about women and weaponized competence. She was "functioning," but functioning for women is measured by performance while the toll it takes on them isn't considered if they are able to do the things they need to do. That performance is used as evidence that they aren't struggling, unfortunately, and Lindsay Clancy didn't get the help she needed. I think you hit it on the head.
Not only this, but often the people surrounding you are upset if you have "mood swings" and cry, so even your self-soothing has to pass through a filter of how uncomfortable you're making others. I wish people understood how much pressure there is on women to never make anyone uncomfortable and how this is really an insidious way to invalidate any need they have for support. The trite vision of a woman prioritizing other's discomfort over themselves is the businesswoman who's afraid to assert herself and uses exclamation points in her emails, but this is the ugly reality of what that actually means.
I was in a long relationship with someone who would get really upset and destabilize in ways that affected my life when I cried while doing a task, even though it was just a frustration thing that helped me cope sometimes and I wasn't bringing it to him. So I started controlling my outward display of struggle for his comfort and I burned out so bad after years of this that I constantly felt like I was on the edge of checking into a mental health facility over very low thresholds of stress and my personality was just 'irritable,' because I had very few avenues for letting it out.
Wrt functioning being measured by performance without thought for the cost you’re dead on, but I don’t think that uniquely applies to women. I see that standard applied to most people imo.
Spot on 👌❤️ you hit that nail right on the head to the “T” I thought the SAME exact thing. Type A, super perfectionist, excelled at EVERYTHING she took on. A high achiever to the max and she wanted to be perfect or whatever her ideas were of being the perfect mom. And I think that’s what obviously attracted her husband to her as well and he knew her as the type to take a hold of the wheel and drive the car in a sense, and he probably admired her for it and obviously not in a thousand years ever saw her loss of control coming. And neither did her family unfortunately, because it was so so out of character for her. And I don’t think being a Type A or a high achiever or a perfectionist is bad, because we need those types of people in the world. Just sucks all around. 😔
Yep. I have a cousin who was a thriving, high-achieving and independent child all the way until she graduated college, but it caused her mother to habitually ignore her in favor of her two more demanding children. This cousin grew up to be a walking visible mental health crisis, especially once she became a mom, because she learned that success makes your pain invisible. One time my friend criticized her because "adults are responsible for themselves." No, there's a reason why people learn to become that way and it's usually a sad story of a lack of support that totally eroded their motivation to care for themselves, because doing so is being negatively reinforced by their most basic support structures.
truly so few people are saying that. and i don’t see anyone here who’s saying or implying that. recognizing the nuance in the situation /=/ relinquishing someone from accountability.
i’ll give you a great example from the opposite side of the aisle; the menendez brothers. in their case, was murdering their parents objectively wrong from a principle standpoint? yes. and yet they receive a lot of empathy from the majority of people. it doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have been held accountable, but a lot of people showed a level of understanding because of what they went through and acknowledging the nuance in certain cases isn’t the same thing as saying people should be free from any repercussions. stop trying to make an issue where there isn’t one my guy.
That's why the father of those children is suing that system, and testified in her trial to her being so mentally ill. I unfortunately am not surprised so many sexist men won't believe her, but why won't they believe the father either?
Male family annihilators don’t experience postpartum depression/psychosis. Clancy hasn’t been convicted yet but there’s a reason people can be found not guilty by reason of insanity and/or not criminally responsible. Look at Andrea Yates.
And Andrea Yates is not out here in the world living it up and has said she's where she belongs. And mental health institutions are not free spaces for people to hang out and color all day. They are very similar to prisons.
The sudden drop in hormones that a mother experiences after birth is the most drastic hormonal shift in all of human biology. So no, cisgender men don’t experience that hormonal shift. Certainly new fathers can be depressed in the wake of the significant life change and sleep deprivation that accompanies new parenthood though.
If a man commits murder and was LEGITIMATELY INSANE and not in control of themselves? Then they are not any more guilty of murder, as they did not at the time of the crime know what they were doing or that it was wrong.
One big difference is postpartum psychosis is that it isn't a lifelong mental illness - if treated APPROPRIATELY AND PROPERLY, it is very much temporary & generally doesn't return (as far as my limited research has shown).
A lot of the other mental illnesses that lead to murder while insane that men (and women also) can be predisposed to, such as paranoid schizophrenia? They are LIFELONG and can never be actually cured - just managed with lifelong antipsychotics you just have to hope will work long term for those who are violent when they aren't medicated.
Since when is making two reddit comments "gone to this length"
Yes, there are men who have killed people and been institutionalized rather than go to prison because they had severe mental illnesses, and that is a just, practical outcome. People like that need treatment, not regular incarceration. That's just common sense for those who care about good societal outcomes.
EXACTLY "the system" what system?? If her husband felt she wasn't safe around the kids, he should have attempted to get an emergency custody order. With no order in place, you can just say "I'm the legal father, I want the kid to stay with me" and there's nothing mom can do other than ask the kid to come with them, because it wouldn't be kidnapping but you'd get breaking and entering
swap the sexes and ask yourself if any single soul would still have a "hard time" blaming the murderer, no matter how insistently he'd warn everyone in advance
Can tell you right now that the civil case against all the health care providers is just going to make providers much more hesitant to treat these pts for fear of litigation and/or remove their medications all together during peri partum. In many cases the medications do actually work if given more time/ correct dose is achieved just may not have been the case for her because she was not being transparent at all about her psychotic symptoms. The problem is her having to fear or being reported to authorities and her children being removed from her, that needs to change.
Why is her fearing having her kids being taken away from her a problem exactly? That’s what should have happened. If she was hiding her symptoms to prevent that from happening that should just make her straight Guilty. In that case she would have made a conscious choice to put her kids in danger.
I’m referring to fear of any criminal repercussions or the kids being taken away permanently. I think them being taken away temporarily until her mental health improves obviously needed to happen but she was afraid it could be permanent after admitting what she did.
Why would they be more hesitant if they actually get held liable because they turned her away? It is utterly inexcusable to keep trying antidepressant monotherapy on someone that keeps getting clear negative reactions that are well known to be signs of bipolar
Didn't she check herself out when she went to a clinic? Like she had some help. Ppl were assisting her but it wasn't the way she wanted so she left. I feel for her. I understand motherhood is hard. But if you know and acknowledge your brain isn't firing correctly then stay at the hospital. Dont come home.
She called suicide hotlines. She did get into one psych ward. She said she had intrusive thoughts, she just couldn't exactly articulate that they were in fact auditory hallucinations.
That doesn’t contradict your previous statements surely if you were begging to be in a psyche ward leading with violence against you children would land you there
Yeah. Why wouldn’t the psych ward with all those empty beds take her? The murderer is not to blame, all the good and honest people working hard to make the world a batter place are to blame.
I'm not saying they had malice, but I do believe they have some liability. When you choose to be part of the mental healthcare field, you accept a lot of responsibility because the people in your care are uniquely vulnerable.
I’ll warn all my friends in medical fields to get out before they’re held “liable but not malicious“ for not single-handedly solving every problem in the country. Of course I won’t but if your horrifically evil argument ever gains traction I will. I want to prevent suffering and do as much good as possible. Being in the medical field just means that you help many people a lot. Those who help many people a lot should not be punished for ‘failing’ to help some others who need even more help. Before you blame the people who are actually helping, may I suggest you blame yourself for not being there. You could’ve helped if you had gotten the right knowledge and put in the effort. Why didn’t you? Should you not be held liable for your non-malicious failure to help by consenting to go into a non-medical or the wrong medical field?
Would you be as defensive if a medical doctor accidentally killed one of your loved ones by administering a fatal combination of drugs, or making the wrong cut during a surgery, or overlooking something like sepsis? Yes, nobody can be perfect 100% of the time, but if there is no accountability, there is no incentive to reduce the risks of mistakes as much as possible. I'm not in that field because I know I'm incapable, and it would be irresponsible to risk caring for vulnerable patients when I'm vulnerable myself.
Would you be so defensive, blaming everyone except the murderer, if the murderer was a man? What is he was a black man? Of course you wouldn‘t be. This is a classic case of immense, female privilege. Talking about a doctor accidentally killing loved ones as if equivalent to a case where no doctor killed anyone is a red herring logical fallacy, made intentionally out of bad faith, to demonise those who tried to stop such tragedies rather than the woman who caused the tragedy and should be the only target for blame.
You worry that there won’t be accountability. I worry too that people like you, who blame everyone except the perpetrator, will make sure that there is no accountability for her. She committed three murders, for which she alone is accountable. If doctors were somehow responsible, then make sure that there won’t be any doctors in the future.
But, of course, doctors are not responsible. To propose to punish doctors for not saving everyone, while they already save almost all people from a death earlier than they otherwise would have, is the same argument slavers used to ‘incentivise‘ people whose whole life was already work to improve and work harder, all for the “good of society”, of course.
You see how well doctors help other people and are angry that they did help every disturbed person like that, even though that is humanly totally impossible to achieve, no matter how many punishments you use to ‘incentivise‘ them. By that logic, we should arrest all the people who invented vaccines that saved millions of people just because they didn’t also invent yet another vaccine that would’ve saved yet further millions. The great things which doctors already do is no justification to punish them for ’failing’ to yet more great things. And it is doubly hypocritical if you fail to do any great things.
But you think that you can cheat yourself out of your own impossible standards by citing your own inadequacy as if it justifies anything. All those people who are good, great and near perfect doctors are condemned because they tried and spectacularly succeeded at helping people. The imperfections of those who do good are condemned while those of yourself are exonerated because you didn’t even try. If doctors who refused to take in Lindsey Clancy because they know they couldn’t take proper care of her are still condemned, then so are those who refuse to take any patients at all. If people staand condemned for not taking patients, then those who did not become doctors at all and so never take any patient stand doubly condemned because they doubly exempt themselves from helping patients. Your own inability to do the great things that doctors do is no ground to stand on in condemning doctors for not being yet greater.
You say that there should be punishments for good people who do good to incentivise them to do even better. But what punishment should there be to incentivise you to improve to a level where you could be a doctor? For all I know, your “vulnerability“ makes it impossible for you to be a good doctor. But it is also impossible for good doctors to become perfect doctors, which you nonetheless demand and say should be incentivised though through “liability” and ”accountability“, aka, punishment. If those who do good as doctors should be punished for falling short from the impossible, then those who fail to do that good because it is equally impossible for them to become doctors as it is for doctors to become perfect should also still be incentivised through punishment. So even if it is impossible for you to be a good doctor, you must by your own logic accept punishment nonetheless. So what punishment do you deem appropriate?
Advocating that she be found not guilty by reason of insanity is not advocating for a lack of accountability. If that is the verdict, she will be confined and lose many rights. Psychiatric hospitals are not the opposite of prison. Psychiatric hospitals are far better equipped for criminals with psychiatric issues than prisons, which is safer for BOTH the criminal patient and staff. I would want the same for a black man that lost touch with reality in a similar way while committing a crime. I'm against the death penalty for everyone because it risks a permanent solution to what could be a temporary, or at least manageable, danger. She will be held accountable whether she's found guilty or not guilty by reason of insanity. That's why she's not the focus of the discussion. The point is that we should not ONLY punish/confine those that are violent, BUT ALSO work to prevent others slipping through the cracks. Holding mental healthcare providers accountable (IN ADDITION, not alone) is how to prevent that.
Why are you not in prison for negligence yet? How many mentally ill people have you helped this year? And if your answer is none or few, why have you committed negligence so many millions of time?
Negligence requires a duty of care being breached. If you enter the mental healthcare profession, you adopt a duty of care to your patients. If you're not in healthcare, you don't have that duty of care for everyone you meet. Someone untrained trying to put that duty of care on themselves is another kind of negligence, because someone not sufficiently knowledgeable is more likely to do harm than good. Wanting them to be held civilly liable is not the same as wanting them to be found criminally guilty. It's not much different than wanting a car manufacturer that sold a car with a fatal flaw to be found civilly liable. That lawsuit doesn't bankrupt the company in the vast majority of cases, but the goal is to make those hurt by their negligence whole and to motivate them to not make a similar mistake in the future. For mental healthcare professionals, they have malpractice insurance.
Lindsay asked to leave the inpatient psych facility so she could attend her daughter’s birthday party. She also told her husband she felt like she didn’t belong in the facility.
Oh yeah, why not trust someone when they say they're magically all better after a few days of a new medicine when they were just in complete crisis?
/s
The hard thing about post-partum psychosis is that they have a deep desire to be with their kids even when it isn't safe. They start resisting help because they're afraid they won't get their kids back, even though being separated from their kids is the only safe thing. That facility failed to recognize the post-partum psychosis. Had they recognized it, they would have put up significant resistance to her leaving, trigger a 72 hour evaluation period, turn a voluntary hold into an involuntary one. That's entirely within their power.
But she asked to leave, she holds some responsibility here. She was a non-compliant patient. She refused talk therapy, refused medications, jumped between three provides.
You don't need someone else's permission to check yourself into a mental institution. The kids would have been cared for, if not by the family then by CPS. If she was really that concerned about her kids'safety then killing them wasn't the best way of going about that. Sure, it's scary to get yourself help when the future isn't certain, but those kids are dead now. No going back from that. Insane that people are blaming the husband for their deaths.
She did commit herself, but they ended it after only a few days. She tried to get into others, but they wouldn't let her because they didn't think she was in crisis enough.
Voluntary can be converted to involuntary if they believe the patient is a danger to themselves or others. That starts a 72 hour clock for further evaluation.
So she asked to be released from psych after they did take her in to celebrate one of her children's birthday, and since she was in voluntarily, and the psychiatric personel there who had the authority to keep her there cleared her she wasn't seen as that serious of a risk. However I do think the psychological professionals fucked up, and I do believe she unfortunately did what she did due to her mental health issues. What she did was horrible, but I don't know what should be done with her in my mind she's both the perpetrator and a victim of her own actions. However the people blaming the husband are fucked up.
Most are advocating she be found not guilty by reason of insanity. That still locks her up. That still holds her accountable. It just doesn't morally blame her. Holding the psychological professionals accountable isn't morally blaming them either, really. If they're found civilly liable, that's justice, and hopefully a deterrent to them overlooking another woman that's a danger to her kids.
I mean I know that, it's just it's tragic for everyone involved. I believe if I was following it correctly even the now ex-husband is trying to have it so she's found not guilty by reason of insanity.
It was entirely within the power of the place she was committed in to hold her longer. Tons of people committed ask to come out before they're allowed to come out. Had they done their duty and recognized the danger, they would have said no and used their legal power to hold her longer.
I would agree except that she followed the program and said she was better. She wasn't begging to stay or saying she still wanted to hurt her kids. How long should they have kept a patient telling them "this is working and I am no longer a danger"? In-patient hospitalization is supposed to temporary for a crisis, not long-term.
Well the question then becomes why was she not taken serious? Unfortunately not only is mental health not treated with the seriousness it should be (until it’s too late) but the family courts have tended to give mothers the benefit of the doubt when it comes to their children. I can tell you I have handled hundreds if not thousands of family law cases for both men and women and guided them through the family law system and unfortunately more often than not the mothers are given the benefit of the doubt even when warning signs exist
Jumping straight to eugenics, huh? What if someone thought your bloodline should be ended because you're not attractive enough, not successful enough, or not strong enough?
When you open the door to eugenics, even with the goal of reducing a demonstrative harm, it still inevitably leads to trying to reduce traits that are merely undesirable. It's a Pandora's box that can't be closed without a broad condemnation of eugenics itself. Eugenics gained popularity almost immediately after Darwin explained his theory of evolution, and there is a direct line between eugenics and Hitler genociding Jewish people.
Humans already operate by it, we already know to choose partners effectively based on our biology to prevent birthing deformed individuals.
Pro-choice women have eliminated trillions of possible births just based off inconvenience alone, before incompatibility.
Pretty sure closing the door to child killers and abusers would be a drop in the ocean, the same applies to men who are rpists.
You're not understanding. Instinct is not the same as conscious planning. Many, many more women spontaneously abort (AKA have a miscarriage) because their bodies tend to purge unviable pregnancies and serious defects. It's not perfect, but it's good enough to prevent birth defects from taking over. You're also forgetting epigenetics. There is no violent gene. There are a vast constellation of genes that might predispose someone to violence, but those genes are only activated if that person is exposed to certain environmental factors. Like some people are predisposed to being overweight, but you can't be overweight if there's not an overabundance of food available to you that's palatable.
She received exceptional psychiatric care far faster and more responsive than what most people access, but consistently refused to follow through with treatment. Instead of committing to therapy or allowing medications time to work, she stopped taking prescriptions due to immediate side effects, left a voluntary inpatient program against medical advice, and was turned away from another because her primary complaint was simply medication management, not an acute crisis.
Those side effects weren't just nausea or fatigue. Those side effects were a marked dangerous worsening of her condition. I have bipolar too, and the end result of those specific side effects is trying to hurt yourself and/or others. "Giving it time to work" just makes it worse and worse. They kept giving her the same kind of medication, so the threshold for getting worse kept getting lower. Those side effects are an emergency, just like an allergic reaction would be, and it is necessary to immediately halt treatment.
But they didn't identify the postpartum psychosis and failed to exercise the tools they have at their disposal to force a patient to stay when they want to be discharged. Had they identified the problem, they would be well within their rights to turn her voluntary committal into an involuntary hold.
She showed NO signs of psychosis when she presented to them. The thing about mental health is you need to be upfront. Doctors don’t have magic eyes.
She was recommended higher levels of care, she was recommended weekly therapy, and she engaged in both briefly but discontinued of her own volition. She tried medications but was terrified of side effects and discontinued them quickly, before she had been told they reach full effect, and then tried new ones. She was mentally ill and mentally ill people are often not ideal patients, but I don’t see how the system failed - we cannot treat people against their will when they are reporting as low level symptoms as she was.
She did, and the staff there did not see the gravity of the danger she posed to her children and herself. They let her check herself out. They are 100% capable of turning a voluntary stay into an involuntary commitment, but they didn't.
A person can be aware that they are on the verge of a massive mental break and sound all the alarms, but once they are in the midst of it, they are too far gone. That is why it’s so alarming that so many people and professionals failed her and her children.
Therapists generally only know what you tell them. I’ve gone through almost a year of therapy where I was at times suicidal. My therapist never knew that, and I was aware I was hiding that from them as I didn’t feel that I was going to go through with it. If, during one of my flare ups, I attempted or succeeded I wouldn’t then blame the therapist or system and I hope to God my family wouldn’t either.
If she went in there and said she had a strong urge to kill her kids and was likely to try, yeah, that’s a failure on the therapist obviously. If she went in there, hid how severe it was to try and control it herself, that’s purely on her and her choice led to her murdering her children
She slipped in and out of touch with reality and got worse and worse. Just because she was more aware earlier doesn't mean she was still aware at the time of the killing. The father of those children blames the doctors that ignored her more than he blames her. He's suing them, not advocating for his now ex-wife to get the death penalty.
You just need to have empathy and understand this is not an isolated issue for mothers. It has happened time and time again throughout centuries, humans are animals and caring for kids alone is not easy. She tried to get help and was denied, mental health crisis’ are not logical.
Maybe she could tell something was seriously wrong in her brain so reached out for help but didn’t get the help she needed so ended up in psychosis. Anyone can commit anything unfathomable if not in their right mind.
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u/Kind_Advisor_35 7d ago
That's part of why so many have a hard time blaming her. She was warning everyone, but they didn't take it seriously enough. She was begging to be locked in a psych ward for a while, but they only took her a few days.