Nobody disputes that Lindsay Clancy killed her three young children.
But three years later, her defense attorneys have put another defendant on trial: the mental health professionals and system responsible for her care.
Clancy and her former husband, Patrick, have filed civil lawsuits against several medical professionals involved in her treatment, alleging negligence and wrongful death.
As the 36-year-old Massachusetts mom faces murder charges, her lawyers argue that her worsening mental condition and repeated pleas for help went unanswered, and that too many psychiatric drugs were prescribed by multiple providers with little oversight.
But is there a case for her doctors and care team to answer?
The Post spoke with mental health and legal experts across the country who identified potential gaps in Clancy’s treatment — including fragmented care, the lack of coordination in her treatment, reliance on telehealth, and limited perinatal psychiatric expertise.
Experts say her case highlights broader weaknesses in how the U.S. mental health system treats women with psychiatric symptoms during and after pregnancy.
Where the trial stands
With the defense potentially resting on Monday, Clancy’s lawyer, Kevin Reddington, argued Thursday that the case had exposed a message “reverberating” across the country.
“I think that it’s the mental health system — I hate to use the word ‘health care,’ because unfortunately in this case we can see it hasn’t been health care,” Reddington said.
Dr. Daniel Bober, a psychiatrist and assistant clinical professor at the Yale Child Study Center, agreed the case has put America’s treatment of maternal mental illness under a microscope.
“Particularly for new moms, we need to do a better job in this country with maternal mental health care,” he said.
What is postpartum psychosis?
Postpartum depression affects roughly one in seven new mothers, but postpartum psychosis is far rarer — and more acute, affecting 1-2 women per 1000 births.
“It’s a psychiatric emergency,” Dr. Meghan Marcum, chief psychologist at AMFM Healthcare in California, told The Post.
Symptoms include confusion, hallucinations, delusions, and difficulty distinguishing reality. Severe sleep disturbance and a history of bipolar disorder increase risk.
Yet identifying psychosis isn’t as simple as asking whether a mother has thought about harming herself or her child.
Greenstein said frightening intrusive thoughts can occur without psychosis. The distinction is whether a woman recognizes the thought as unwanted and horrifying, or whether her reality has become so distorted that the thought seems normal—requiring clinicians to probe well beyond a checklist.
However, experts stress that part of the challenge is diagnosing the fear mothers have that if they disclose intrusive thoughts, they will lose their child.
Nobody was quarterback
Clancy had no shortage of doctors. If anything, experts say she had the opposite problem: too many providers treating different parts of her.
“There were many cooks in the kitchen,” Paige Bellenbaum, a clinical social worker and perinatal mental health expert, told The Post. “There is nobody who is in charge of the whole person.”
This fragmented care, Bellenbaum said, mirrors the broader problem in American medicine.
“This is how people fall through the cracks,” she said.
In 2022, Clancy was treated by perinatal psychiatrist Rebecca Jollotta and perinatal social worker Latiesha Dukes through the same South Shore Hospital perinatal program.
Yet Dukes testified that she did not review Jollotta’s notes on Clancy, explaining that she wanted to approach her treatment “with new eyes.”
Greenstein reached the same conclusion after reviewing Clancy’s treatment history: “Nobody was running quarterback.”
Bellenbaum said coordinated psychiatric care requires more than relying on a patient’s medical chart; it also requires direct communication among clinicians and, when appropriate, family members.
“This level of communication is integral to understanding the complexities of the patient,” she said. “This should be a standard of care.”
But an overworked, under-resourced system makes coordination feel like “a luxury,” she said.
Was outpatient enough?
Experts also questioned whether Clancy’s worsening psychiatric condition should’ve been escalated to a higher level of care.
Clancy reportedly saw her provider, Jennifer Tufts, 14 times via telehealth, with 17–30-minute appointments up until the tragedy.
While telehealth expands access, Bellenbaum said it limits what clinicians can observe—missing signs such as agitation or pacing that are visible only in person.
Bober said suicidality, psychosis, or rapid decline can warrant escalation to intensive or inpatient care.
The question surfaced at trial when Clancy’s former psychiatrist was pressed about why she did not recommend a hospital evaluation during their final appointment — one day before the killings.
“Someone should’ve insisted on in-person treatment,” victims’ rights attorney Shari Karney told The Post, calling the care team’s decisions horrifying.
Comparing Clancy’s condition to a “mental health stroke,” Karney added: “If this was a stroke, would we really think a person undergoing a stroke is appropriate for telehealth?”
Greenstein said she would have pushed for an intensive program, given the severity of Clancy’s condition.
“The fact that she was not sleeping at all, that’s really symptomatic,” Greenstein told The Post.
Lack of trained professionals
Experts also questioned whether the clinicians treating Clancy had enough specialized training in perinatal psychiatric illness, especially as her treatment relied more on medications from the same class.
Greenstein told The Post the medication history would have raised a major red flag for her.
“Whenever I see a new patient, I always ask what medications you are on,” she said.
But while medication is essential, Bober said diagnosis relies on history—such as previous racing thoughts, reactions to antidepressants, and family history of bipolar disorder.
Looking at Clancy’s treatment, some medication choices troubled him.
“A lot of the meds didn’t make sense to me,” he said. “There were certainly some of them that could have actually worsened or exacerbated her condition.”
Bellenbaum said perinatal mental-health training is not routinely required for psychologists, counselors, or social workers, leaving clinicians often unprepared—something she has fought to mandate in her CUNY courses.
“Nobody is getting training. Clinicians are out in the community who are mental health providers, but there are not enough specialized-trained clinicians with evidence-based skills,” she said.
But part of the problem is that mental health has long been an area of medicine that is notoriously underfunded yet changing in real time.
“Psychiatry is often based on incomplete and contradictory information,” Dr. Bober said. “In this case, I see a woman desperate for help and answers, but not getting what she needed.”
Accessing specialized care
In an overburdened system, even specialized care is hard to access.
Dr. Yalda Safai, a New York-based psychiatrist, said insurance companies exert enormous influence over care — determining which providers patients can see, what treatments are covered and, indirectly, how much time clinicians can spend with them.
“I’m not particularly thrilled with the system because obviously insurance companies are businesses, so their position is we need to make a profit and minimize costs,” said Bober. “In healthcare that’s not always the best combination.”
Greenstein added that finding highly skilled providers, particularly in perinatal mental health with specialized training, can be difficult to find in-network.
There has been no evidence at trial that Clancy’s insurer denied her a particular treatment.
What did we learn from Andrea Yates?
Clancy’s case may be rare, but the broken system it exposes is not.
In 2001, Andrea Yates drowned her five children in the bathtub of their Texas home while suffering from severe postpartum psychiatric illness. Her case became a national reckoning over postpartum psychosis and the difficult line between mental illness and criminal responsibility.
Yates was initially convicted of capital murder before a second jury found her not guilty by reason of insanity in 2006. She remains committed to a psychiatric hospital today — underscoring, Safai said, that such a verdict is hardly an “easy way out.”
Karney said the real issue is what happened before the crime, and what has changed since.
“What did we learn from Andrea Yates? What has changed since?” she asked. “It seems maybe we didn’t learn enough.”
The jury will ultimately decide whether Clancy was criminally responsible for killing her children.
But regardless of the verdict, an uncomfortable question remains: How many warning signs must a mother show before someone ensures she gets help?
