The high-profile trial of Lindsay Clancy, who was charged with killing her three young children in an act of what prosecutors called murder, and what her lawyers said was postpartum psychosis, has led to a surge in requests for help from patients and providers.
Support organizations and reproductive health psychiatrists said more patients have reached out, expressing fears that their own symptoms could spiral. Health providers who treat women during and after pregnancy, including obstetricians and primary care doctors, have increasingly been asking maternal mental health experts for consultations, resources and training.
Experts also said the public discussion around the case — which has included some conspiracy theories and misinformation, but also valid critiques of weaknesses in the health care system — has underscored the need for improvements. They said the public should be provided with more information about maternal mental illness, and that there should be more research on the disorder, and more training for obstetricians, pediatricians, emergency department staff and other providers who encounter such patients.
“I think there are gaps in all of those areas,” said Dr. Riah Patterson, medical director of the perinatal psychiatry inpatient unit at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She and other experts interviewed emphasized that they were not opining on the circumstances of Ms. Clancy’s case.
Postpartum psychosis is rare, affecting an estimated one or two out of every thousand mothers, and there have been very few instances of women who kill their children in the throes of the disorder. But other maternal mental illnesses are common. An estimated one in seven women experience conditions such as depression, anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder or bipolar disorder during pregnancy or in the year after having a baby.
Many cases can be treated effectively, and there have been promising developments, including targeted counseling programs and the first pill for postpartum depression. But some cases are complex, with a variety of symptoms that may require trying different medications and intensive treatment, experts said.
“We have to acknowledge in the field that there are nuances here,” Dr. Patterson said.
Patients Are Anxious
Since the Clancy trial began in July, Postpartum Support International, a nonprofit that provides resources and support on maternal mental health, has received more outreach than usual to its help line, said Wendy Davis, the organization’s president and chief executive officer. She said that in August, the help line received, via phone calls, texts and online forms, 1,410 requests for support and referrals, an increase of nearly 70 percent from the 837 requests received in August 2025.
Ms. Davis said many of those reaching out have mentioned the Clancy case. Some women were experiencing postpartum depression or other psychiatric symptoms when they contacted the help line, and many of their calls reflected high levels of anxiety and stress, she said.
“They’re having a really significant increase in fear and anxiety about what could happen,” she said, with patients wondering “could things get worse and worse?” Even more striking, Ms. Davis said, “we’re hearing from people who have already recovered and who feel that they were healed, they were done, they hadn’t had symptoms for years. With this acute awareness and misinformation and judgment in the news, mostly social media, they are feeling a return of symptoms, a return of fears.”
Dr. Julia Riddle, a reproductive psychiatrist at U.N.C. Chapel Hill’s Center for Women’s Mood Disorders, said current patients, as well as some who had children years ago, have been experiencing anxiety and fear. “They just think about what happened, that she actually hurt her kids, and now they are totally scared. They’re like ‘I know what it’s like to have scary thoughts. What if that happens to me again? What if then I actually act on it?’”
She said the patients who have felt especially anxious are those whose symptoms included fears that they might do things that put their children at risk, such as a worry “that they’re going to drop their baby down the stairs.” That can be a characteristic of postpartum O.C.D., she said, and in such cases “when you destabilize a little bit, you go back, so it’s like they can get kind of ill again,” Dr. Riddle said.
“We are seeing just an abundance of suffering and people being on high alert around their own symptoms, which to some degree is good, but also a lot of fear that they might be developing postpartum psychosis, and a lot of misinformation still around that confusing diagnosis,” Dr. Patterson said. “And so, while it could lead to some early detection, I think it’s also just escalating anxiety among patients who are already in a vulnerable place.”
Providers Are Seeking Guidance
A Postpartum Support International service that offers obstetricians and other medical providers consultations with reproductive health psychiatrists has received more questions about postpartum psychosis and how to diagnose different perinatal mental illnesses, Ms. Davis said. “They’re getting an increase in questions and anxiety from their patients and their patients’ families, and they themselves as providers, they feel shaken,” she said, adding “providers are really checking, ‘Do I know enough? Might I be missing things?’”
Dr. Riddle said a resource center for health professionals run by U.N.C. has been getting more calls from social workers, doctors and nurses who work with pregnant and postpartum women. They are requesting advice and materials about how to tell if symptoms like thoughts of self-harm are indicative of psychosis or one of the much more common maternal mental illnesses, said Dr. Riddle, one of the center’s reproductive psychiatry consultants.
Dr. Patterson said that some patients have reported that because of public attention and speculation about the case, “their community provider is no longer comfortable managing things like perinatal O.C.D. or perinatal anxiety.” Those providers seem to feel they are not educated enough about complex diagnoses, so they are referring patients to specialist clinics, she said.
Issues to Address
While women who have experienced these disorders may be reacting to the case by seeking more help, experts worry that with regard to the general public, confusion and misinformation might increase stigma around these conditions.
“Postpartum mental illness, even when severe, in most cases when recognized is very treatable,” said Dr. Allison Horan, a reproductive and forensic psychiatrist in San Francisco. “So my fear with these sorts of cases is that it will make folks who are suffering more afraid of seeking help and getting treatment.”
More efforts should be made to raise public awareness about maternal mental illness and the resources available for patients, she and others said.
This week, the federal government’s National Maternal Mental Health Hotline sent an email asking providers to let people know about the service. “As many of you are aware, recent national news coverage of postpartum mental health has been difficult for many pregnant women, mothers, and families experiencing stress, anxiety, and other mental health concerns,” the email said. “This underscores both the need for compassionate, accessible resources and the important role maternal and child health programs play in helping mothers and families know where to turn. “
The swirl of interest in the case also highlights shortcomings in many aspects of the system for supporting and treating patients, experts said. Those include insurance coverage, parental leave, screening for perinatal psychiatric symptoms and research into the causes of the disorders. “All of those areas have some actionable ways to improve care,” Dr. Patterson said.
Joy Burkhard, chief executive of the Policy Center for Maternal Mental Health, said more specific diagnostic tools should be developed, particularly for perinatal bipolar disorder, which is a feature of many postpartum psychosis cases. She said her organization is convening a meeting in October to discuss a research agenda for diagnostics.
Several experts called for better education and coordination among the many types of health providers who see pregnant and postpartum women.
“We have to train more specialists, but we also need to share more information about perinatal mental health symptoms and resources because there is still a lack of information even in areas that are closely involved in childbirth education, preparation for births and parenting,” Ms. Davis said.
“We’re devastated to know how much there still is to do and how much misinformation is out there,” she added, “but we’re really motivated to respond to the opportunity to share more information.”
Dr. Hailey MacNear, an obstetrician who sees many women with maternal mental illness, said she hoped that attention to these issues “doesn’t die out as the case ends.” The goal is “how do we do this better,” she said, adding that if “we can learn from catastrophe, then there will at least be some meaning in that.”
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