The Lindsay Clancy Case, Understanding Postpartum Psychosis

0:00We are at Ramams all over the country who've lived through postpartum psychosis. You thought hearing voices that were telling you to kill yourself and your children. I had my son in the baby bath and he began to cry in the bath. And I heard as if a man had walked up behind me and whispered in my right ear, it will stop if you hold him under the water. I started to hear what I called the voice of God. Did you say your daughter was the second coming up, Jesus? Oh yeah. Make Hampe is a labor and delivery nurse who worked with Lindsay Clancy for seven years. She testified on behalf of the defense. How would you describe Lindsay as a nurse, as a friend, as a mother? What was your first reaction when you heard that Lindsay Clancy had murdered her children? The breaking headline outside Boston tonight. It's a case that's captivating the country. This is a case that is subdivided people. I'm going to declare that the jury is deadlocked and I'm going to declare the mistreatment.

1:0136-year-old mother, white and nurse, Lindsay Clancy was charged with first-degree murder for strangling her three children to death. Her daughter, Kora, and two sons, Dawson and Callan. After 21 days of testimony for more than 80 witnesses, the jury was not able to reach a unanimous decision. The prosecution has not yet announced if they will try the case again. Kora was into princesses. And the Chauvin. Using the firefighters and trucks. Happy, baby. The defense argued Lindsay Clancy was suffering from postpartum psychosis and that despite repeated requests for help, Lindsay was over-medicated by doctors and was not provided proper psychiatric care. She was a darn good mother. Her mind was gone.

2:07The prosecution alleged that Lindsay Clancy planned the murders and may have faked a suicide attempt that left her paralyzed from the waist down. She left them, discarded on the beast's mint floor, like broken toys, because she was done playing the game. The trial has divided our nation. Everybody failed that woman. I wholeheartedly think she did not do it. I care what any of you say. Lindsay Clancy is guilty. When I had postpartum psychosis, I had some of the scariest, darkest thoughts to the point where I knew I could not physically hold my baby. I had to give him to my husband. This is a topic that needs to go further than just this trial. I agree with that. That's why we're here. So thank you for joining me here on the Oprah Podcast, along with millions of other Americans and people over the world. I too have been following the Lindsay Clancy case and the loss of three

3:07innocent and defenseless little children who did not deserve to die that way is just too horrific to really comprehend. And no matter what the lawyers argue and the possible future jury decides, how can we begin to reconcile the senseless deaths of three precious children at the hands of their mother? This case is another flashpoint in America that has created yet another divide. And as we watch the country buckle under the weight of such an unfathomable act with all of the opinions and the speculations and the conspiracy theories. And yes, a lot, a lot of vitriol on all sides. The question I want to ask is how did we get here? And how can we best use this moment, this watershed moment to honor the lives of Kora, five years old,

4:17Dawson, three years old, and Callan, who only lived eight months here on the planet Earth. How can we do that and protect families and women and especially children? So let's just have a moment of silence to think about Kora Dawson and Callan. Kora Dawson and Callan. We come to Boston to have this conversation and we're about 30 miles from Ducksbury, Massachusetts, where on January 24, 2023, Kora Dawson and Callan were killed.

5:18And I have to say we're not here to retry Lindsey Clancy's case or debate the my new details or online theories. I've been talking to mothers who suffered from postpartum mental health issues now for decades. And way back when when we first started having these conversations on the Oprah Winfrey show as early as 1986, there was not even a language for it. Nobody called it anything, except these women are monsters or these women are evil. And over the years, I've interviewed many, many, many mothers who have killed their children. And we can all see that the deaths of Kora Dawson and Callan have caused this national conversation to shift and erupt like never before. So that's why I wanted to bring together doctors and psychiatrists and legal scholars and journalists and parents here today to Boston to unpack what has been blowing up on social media

6:19on your family text chains at work and in the school parking lot. And my intention here today is to ask this question, how can we as a culture, as a society, do better? How do we use this moment to move ourselves forward and not just all of our opinions and yacking about it for something this bit? Can you feel it? Something this big in the culture means the culture is supposed to shift. It feels to me like many other movements that I've witnessed been old enough to witness, you know, when there was a time when people just drove drunk and they killed people and nobody said anything. And then what was created, the mothers against drunk drivers and that movement really changed the way we looked at alcohol and the consumption of alcohol and alcoholism in this country. It changed the laws for driving. It saved so many lives. So today, we want to use

7:23this summonable moment to move forward. And I want to start by introducing Meg Hamp. She is a labor and delivery nurse who worked with Lindsay Clancy for seven years and you may recognize Meg because she testified on behalf of the defense. And here's a short part of it. Were you aware of any incidents where Lindsay was with you and a woman did in fact express concern that she wanted to hurt herself or her child? There was a particular patient that Lindsay was on staff when this patient arrived. It was a patient that arrived to the unit that had plans to harm herself while she was pregnant. And we had a conversation. Lindsay was brand new. It was the summer that she had just started. And we had a conversation about mental health in pregnancy and postpartum. And I asked her if she had ever heard of the Andrea Yates case and she hadn't.

8:29And I explained that to her and she cried. And she said how could a mother hurt her children? Hi, Meg. Hi. Thank you. This is Meg's first time that you're speaking outside of the trial. So thank you for being here with us today. Thank you. How would you describe Lindsay as a nurse, as a friend, as a mother? Lindsay loved being a nurse. She was a light on our unit. She brought warmth and compassion to the room. She brought emotion to the rooms that we were in. I loved working with her. I think our team loved working with her. She just she brought a piece to our team that nobody else has been able to bring. I often remember looking up after a baby was born and Lindsay was my second nurse in the delivery and just looking over the mother and Lindsay with tears in her eyes because birth was just so emotional for her and she felt that for so many other

9:31women, not just her friends or her family. And so several medical experts testified that they believed that she suffered from bipolar disorder. Did you ever see any signs of that? And you testified that you'd once brought up to her that you just said there the case of Andrea How did that conversation come about? We had a patient on the unit that was suffering from some mental health challenges and there was just a lot of question around that. Lindsay being a new nurse and there was another new nurse on the floor at the time and I had asked I just asked her if she had ever heard of the Andrea Yates case and she hadn't. Seems like such a big case in the maternal health world. But Lindsay was at that age where she probably hadn't kind of lived through that. I'm a little bit older than Lindsay. So that story is right. I remember interviewing Andrea Yates' husband and doing a whole series of shows around Andrea Yates. Yes. And what I was saying earlier

10:35at the time of Andrea Yates, everyone just, you know, first of all, we didn't have social media then, but a number of people just felt because obviously the first time she was convicted of murder. And a lot of people just thought that he was this evil woman who killed her kids and nobody understood it. So now we're 25 years later. And people still don't understand it. And people still don't understand it. What was your first reaction when you as her friend and as her a comrade in working? Realized or heard that she murdered her children that Lindsay Clancy had murdered her children. First I didn't believe it. Lindsay, how did you hear? I had a phone call from a colleague. We weren't 100% sure what had happened, but the address was hitting the news. And I knew her address. So I knew that something had happened. And then

11:40co-workers were chatting. And that's how we learned what happened. So you heard it and you didn't believe it. Didn't believe it. Because you knew her. She loved her children. She lived for her children. She did everything for them. She wanted all the parenting tips. It wasn't possible in my mind that this was a person who couldn't murder her three children. So what was your reaction when you heard that there was a mistrial? I was devastated for her that she potentially has to go through this again. And what do you want to say to people? And there are lots of them who believe that Lindsay Clancy is just evil. I think mental health can affect anyone. It can affect the person who goes to their dream college, meets the man of their dreams, decides to have a family, buys a house, buys another

12:47house as their family grows. And it doesn't matter where you are in life or how many boxes on your life's bucket list, you're checking off as you go. It can impact anyone regardless of where you are in your life. And this has been very eye-opening that someone like Lindsay who was checking off those boxes of her life's bucket list that this could happen to her. Thank you, Meg. Thank you. Thank you. So we heard from moms all over the country and have who've lived through postpartum psychosis to our joining us. Brooke, you say that Lindsay's story actually hits so close to home for you. How so? We share your story with us. When Lindsay's story came across my social media field screen, I literally said, this is an alternate reality. This is my personal life. It's an alternate reality. And up until Lindsay's case went public, I hadn't even told my own husband some

13:53of the darkest thoughts I'd had when I was going through postpartum psychosis. My postpartum psychosis started when my son was 10 days old. And I remember the first hallucination and I was convinced there was a man outside our house with a gun just there to murder me. Could you see him? I could see his shadow through our blinds. Did you tell your husband it's a child? I looked at my husband who was I was standing holding our baby rocking him to sleep and he was in the bed. I was standing next to our bed and I looked at him and I looked back at the window and I was like, I still see the man and I looked at him and he wasn't reacting and I thought he's not reacting is he there. And I turned my back to the window and I just kept I just breathed in my baby and I was like, I don't know if this is happening. And that was the first time.

14:55And they- Did you mention it? No. I did not mention it. I did not mention it at that point. I continued to have hallucinations and around six weeks postpartum. I became extremely suicidal and I still didn't mention it. You were having suicidal thoughts? Yes. I was having suicide, Iations, intrusive thoughts about suicide that would come out of nowhere and it would just be a movie playing in my mind. Okay, so one of the things the prostitution stressed throughout this is how normal Lindsey Clancy seemed during other part of the day. So did you feel feel normal during other part of the day? Yes. Felt normal or were you just pretending to be normal? So postpartum psychosis, waxes and wanes and I wish I had understood that because I was actually gaslighting myself. You were gaslighting yourself? When I was normal. Yeah. That what I was going through

15:57maybe wasn't that bad, that maybe I actually didn't see that and maybe it was like a dream. Can you tell us why in that moment you wouldn't say to your husband? Did you see somebody else by the window? I was- I don't know why I didn't in that moment and I continued to not. I had experienced postpartum depression and anxiety with my previous children. So with the other three children it took the form of what? Because we were going to be talking to doctors later to distinguish there is a distinct difference between depression and psychosis. Yes. So you've been depressed before yeah meaning what you felt down. I felt- I felt- In the old days people didn't have a name for it they just called it the baby blues. Right, which is a separate thing. Yeah. And I postpartum depression for me, man, with a heavy depression, a darkened like it just a weight, a cloud. It's kind of like it's hard to get out of bed but I still want to take care of my kids.

17:01I just- I'm unmotivated too. I want to take care of myself but I don't find the motivation to do it. I have to make myself do it. Yeah. So you felt that before? Yeah. This was different. This was different and this came on sudden. So okay the 10 days you see the man and then what happens? My hallucinations and intrusive thoughts continue to build and get worse. And when my son was three months old was the first time I heard someone talking to me that wasn't there. Can you explain to us what that feels like? I had my son in the baby bath on the counter in our bathroom and he began to cry in the bath. I don't remember why at this point and I heard as if a man, it was a man's voice for me, as if a man had walked up behind me and whispered in my right ear,

18:02it will stop if you hold him under the water. My son had just barely began to cry. And I stopped and I heard it again. Just push him under the water. I grabbed his towel and I picked him up and I ran out of the room crying. And I did not get my son another bath. So at this point did you tell Trevor? No. Why? I was so scared. I was scared my kids would be taken from me. I was scared of what would he think? What would he think? Yeah, what would he think of me? So when the voice, because you're here to help us understand, when the voice says, if you just hold him under the water, it'll go away. The crying stops. Yeah, it stops. Like that's the solution. It stops. Okay. Does that voice then disappear and then you go on and you make lunch? Yeah, literally.

19:05I ran to the family room with him. I didn't even drain the water. That's what you mean by wax and wing. Yeah, I saw sitting on the couch with him and dressed him. I dried the soap off of him. The voice comes in and then it leaves. It's gone. It was gone. And now you're normal again. And I was all like confused by it. And I went and I dressed him and I helped the toddlers with the cippy cups and changed their diapers. I had multiple kids and diapers. I have four children under five and got them a snack and we went in the yard and I pulled out my phone and I googled. I searched the hallucination like seeing a man who's not there hearing voices that aren't there. You googled. I did Google. Yeah. And post-paramocycosis popped up. And I opened the Wikipedia page on it. I'm pretty sure it was Wikipedia and I read the first few lines and I thought, oh my gosh, I think

20:09I have this. Now this is where I should have sent the link or something to my husband or called him and said I think how much time is going on now? He's about three months old. Wow. And I did not get help. Yeah. How often did you hear voices before you got help? My story goes on for 18 months on diagnosed. I... Wow. After I realized how I was fighting a real mental illness, I doubled down. Like it was my mission to protect my family from it, including my husband. And I built up every wall and I faked it like my life depended on it because it did. What was happening to Trevor? I can see that this is hard for you to even hear now. This many years later because your youngest son is now... Nine. Nine. So nine years later, all of this comes out because of the Lindsey

21:13Clancy trial, you feel that you're looking at yourself, that it's a mirror of your life. And when you look back at that time, what do you say to yourself about what was going on? Did you notice a difference? There were things I did notice. But I didn't understand it. Like when she did tell me about the man I'm thinking, I was like, that doesn't make any sense. Why would you think that? And so I would say I was really uneducated in it to catch what was going on. But yeah, I don't like to look back. We have family photos. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe you tell that. Yeah. When our son was about four months old, I was in a really dark place with fighting it. And I knew I couldn't keep going. So I planned family photos as the final gift. I wasn't even going to wait for the photos to come back. When we

22:16got back from taking care of them. You plan to kill yourself? That night. Yeah. Yeah. Because it was my only way of protecting my family from myself. So you thought if you killed yourself, you would do no harm to your children. Yeah. Because you were still having the intrusive thoughts about harm. I'm your child. Yes. Harming your child. Just one child or all the children. I actually only had intrusive thoughts at this point about harming my baby. So when did you get help? Well, I thought maybe it would end on its own. No, we're at that point 10 years ago. Did it ever say it was an emergency online? Yeah. I didn't say it was an emergency. And so I thought maybe it will get better on its own. You thought hearing voices that were telling you to kill yourself and your children. It's not logical. It's not logical. Of course. I understand that. I understand it's not logical to be suicidal and want to die and be terrified. You're going to be murdered. Right. I understand those things don't add up to a normal mind. And that should be

23:20a sign to yourself. Something's not right. Yeah. You're not in your right mind. Yeah. But I thought if I can just fake it harder, maybe I can survive it. So here's the question. When you're hearing a voice that says, if you just hold him underwater, when these voices show up, can you distinguish that this is this is not normal. Were you able to distinguish this is not normal or did that feel like it was real? It felt extremely real. Yeah. It felt as real as my husband were Tuline over in whisper in my ear right now. It was as real as someone walking up behind me and talking on to one side of my head. Yeah. But it's a voice you don't know. So it's not like it's your voice telling you to do it. It's another voice. Right. Yeah. It was for me. Yeah. For you. So you finally got

24:21help. When I wrote my husband a letter when I was about 16 months postpartum, it was three pages. I believe front and back. And I laid it all out for him in it. Like I am not okay. I need help. I am hallucinating. I am extremely suicidal. And that night when we were in separate bedrooms talking our kids in, we took our kids in and we switched rooms. I texted him and I said I need to talk tonight. And he responded, okay, like I kind of even tell my person, I was so scared, I was so nauseous. When we go to the bedroom and I shut the door and I walked to my bedside table and I take out this letter that's folded and I throw it at him and I collapse on the bed sobbing. Just all the energy I had put into faking it all those months just the walls came crumbling down. And I just sobbed harder than I've ever cried in my life. And he opened the letter and started reading it. And as he turned the first page, he reached out and he was crying and he said it's

25:24going to be okay, Brooke. I'm going to protect you. I'm going to get you help. And not being alone. Yeah. And you were hospitalized for how long? I was not hospitalized for two more months. My husband worked from home at that point and at that point he babysat me. I was rarely left alone. Like we wasn't just we were on the same floor in the house, we were in the same room. If he had to work in the office, I was in the office. If the kids needed something, he got up and helped. If he removed everything from the house that I was allergic to, anything I could use to harm myself, he asked me very specific questions to protect me. So you were trying to fix it yourself? No. Or were you at this point seeing somebody? When you realize that she needed help and you say, I'm going to help you, how did you do that? So we took the precautions in the house and or not being left alone. But then it was we eventually got an amazing team. So our midwife

26:31was amazing in finding us a good doctor. We had a doctor, we had our therapist who and this team rallied around. But what was really, really frustrating is when you have someone reach out to you and you're trying to help them, like a lot of people would they say, if I only knew, if I only knew I would have done something. This was my, if I only knew, moment. And so we're in this crisis state and we're calling and calling and calling and trying to get help. For three weeks, we couldn't get in to see a psychologist trying to get help. We were leaving voicemail after voicemail after voicemail and no one cared to help. And at this point, it was the doctor that called us back was a referral to our midwife. And he called us back leaving his office for Christmas break. He said, I got your voicemail and it was so important. I'm calling you for my truck. Like, wow, I need to get you help today. Yeah, well, that is great. That is great to hear. And I think thank you for sharing your story.

27:33Very brave of you to share your story, especially in a climate where everybody wants to have their own opinions about what somebody else's life and story is. Were you wary about coming forward and sharing your story? I was, I have been sharing my story for seven years on deaf ears. So I was very grateful for you shining the light on this platform. And I think this is the first time I have publicly shared that I wanted to harm my son. Because now people are going to see you on the street and it takes a lot of courage to be able to say that. Thank you. But it's a lot of courage. I mean, right before I was hospitalized, what actually made me become hospitalized is the night before I was up all night. And I was sitting in one of my sons empty bedrooms because they'd woken up and come to my room. And I was looking around and I was seeing their toys and their toys at all just turned to weapons for me. And I saw this movie

28:37play out at the truth of thought in my mind of strangling my son and me jumping out the second story window. And when I saw that play out in real life, with Lindsey Clancy. With Lindsey Clancy, I looked at my husband and I said, this is lady who had the exact same intrusive thoughts as me. And the reason my story ended differently was because who my husband is. That's the only difference. Bravo. Iana and her husband, Wagner, went through a similar experience. What happened to you, Iana? So I knew about post-traum depression and post-traum anxiety. And I knew just from like having friends who'd walked through it that I might not feel like myself after birth. But after I gave birth, I felt euphoric. I felt I didn't sleep anymore. My C-section incision didn't hurt. I felt angry that people had told me to prepare for post-partum because I felt like it was the easiest thing that I'd ever been through. That's lasted very, very shortly.

29:37About five days post-partum, I started to experience really violent mood swings where I was going up and down. So for sure, you were just manic and not sleeping and thinking, you don't need to sleep. Yeah. And then? Yeah. I started to experience mood swings. My husband noticed that something was off. My parents noticed that something was off. I just wasn't. I was very irritable. I just wasn't acting like myself. But I'd never been post-partum before. Even I could feel like this isn't what I expected it to be, but maybe it's just hormones. I became very paranoid, very suddenly, that my husband wasn't safe for my baby. That my mom wasn't safe for my baby. That only I could protect my baby. Feed her, change her all of that. And at this point, this was seven or eight days post-partum, my husband called my psychiatrist and told her, hey, I think something's really wrong. And she told him, if she doesn't improve, she might need to be hospitalized. I'm preparing you for the possibility. This was the summer of 2020. So this is kind of the peak of the pandemic. My baby was

30:37born early. So I was very worried about her health. So it just would not ideal for me to be in a hospital, but my psychiatrist was kind of adamant that it might need to happen if the paranoia built. And then you started hearing voices? Yeah. So then I started to hear what I called the voice of God. I told my husband that I was going to be a famous author. That my daughter was a second coming of Jesus. Did you say your daughter was a second coming of Jesus? Oh, yeah. That's what the voice told you? Yes. So I'm hearing all of these things that I'm a special prophet. And all the things that I was hearing were almost like, so well. Brook described, was it a man's voice? It was, it's so hard for me to explain it. It felt kind of like when I used to pray and want God to speak to me, what I'd always wanted to hear. Yeah. So it almost felt like it was coming from within me. Yeah. But yeah. And he told you you were a prophet, a special prophet. And your child was a second coming of Jesus. Yes. Okay. And you believed that? Oh, I was ecstatic. I was over the moon. I was upset that he did not seem as excited as I was

31:40when I welcome up to tell him this. Obviously he's thinking what is going on. But what did you think when she told you that? Wagner? Well, I think the hard part about all this was it when you're in that post-partum period, you don't really know what to expect, especially with your first child. It's like all of, you know, the mood swings or what have you. Like she was maybe talking a little faster, talking a little bit more, all this stuff. And so like it feels unusual, but doesn't necessarily feel like maybe this is not something that I shouldn't expect. Didn't feel dangerous. Yeah. And that's why we're having this podcast because we're going to talk to a doctor, doctor later, who says, those are all the pink flags before you get to the red flag. So all of you, you, Trevor, were seeing the pink flags, you were seeing the pink flags. You all were experiencing the pink flags, but didn't know it was a pink flag. So you were, you know, something's off. And that's what the pink flag is knowing something is off. Yeah, exactly. And so when the delusion started coming

32:44out, like, you know, I think she was talking about rewriting the Bible and just, just these things of like hearing the voice of God and all these different things, that was when I knew like something is seriously wrong. And so I kind of took the approach of, I think very similar to like maybe what Trevor experienced, but maybe like on an accelerated timeline. Like I was like just kind of watching her nonstop. But it got to that point. Like she mentioned maybe seven, eight days in where we just reached a breaking point. I had to call the psychiatrist. Did you, in any point, feel that you could harm your baby? I was very worried that other people were going to harm her. So I was ready to hurt or, you know, try to hurt anyone who even mentioned my baby. So my delusions and my mind frame was centered around her being so special because she was Jesus that the world was going to try to kill her. So that's, I mean, but I feel lucky because you don't have control over how post-hermence psychosis manifests, you know, so lucky. I mean, it's still not a great situation to be in, but I

33:49didn't have delusions about harming her, but I could have, you know, and I'm very aware that my story could have ended differently. What are your thoughts on the Lindsey Clancy case? I think, I think that it's important to hold space and mourn and acknowledge like this incredible loss of life, this unthinkable thing that happened while also looking at a mother who, you know, we have documented evidence tried to get help raise the Fred flag that something wasn't right. So I think that, I think that it's really hard especially to be online right now because it's like, you know, there's no room for nuance or at all ever, but I, because I feel like, because I've been through post-hermence psychosis and because I lost control over my thoughts and my actions, I have more empathy, I think, than maybe the average person was. Did you have to be hospitalist? I did. Yes, for how long? 17 days. 17 days. And after 17 days, you're giving medication and you're better? Well, I wasn't delusional anymore. So I mean, yes, as far as the psychosis went,

34:55the symptoms, the symptoms stopped about, you know, 14 days into my hospitalization. I struggled so much about being away from my daughter for that time because I wasn't a lot of visitors. I wasn't allowed. Anything, you know, as far as I'm concerned. 17 days, you're better. Yeah, well, yeah, well enough to go home. Yeah. Well enough to go home. Well, to help us understand what post-partum psychosis is, we invited top experts in their fields to be here. Dr. Burndoff is a reproductive psychiatrist and the CEO, co-founder and medical director of the motherhood center in New York City, which treats pregnant and new moms. And we welcome you here to this conversation. So let's start with the basics. I think people are confused by the difference between post-partum depression and post-partum psychosis. What is the difference? Well, first thank you for having this conversation on the national stage and for your stories. I really feel for you and know how hard it is to get help. The difference is post-partum depression

36:01is what we know as depression. It's happening in the post-partum. It can happen during pregnancy. You're not interested in things used to be low mood. You may be exhausted, not motivated, not really wanting your barely pushing yourself out of bed to get things done. But you can look quite fine. And in the worst cases, you can feel suicidal. Okay. Post-partum psychosis is completely different. Does, okay, so for you finish that answer, does post-partum depression lead to post-partum psychosis? It can. It can. It can. You can have psychotic thinking within a depression. Can you have psychotic? Can you have post-partum psychosis without ever being depressed? You can. You will also have mood symptoms at some point, kind of like you described. I don't know, right? That you start with the psychotic symptoms. And then we haven't heard your whole story, kind of how things end up. But post-partum psychosis is a medical emergency. It is a break with reality

37:09that requires almost invariably hospitalization. Okay. I think that's really important for everybody who's ticking and talking to get the word out that it is a medical emergency. Yeah. And when you googled nine years ago, it didn't note that. It's what you're saying. Yeah, it did not. Had it noted that? I think that would have changed how my story went. I don't think I would have been another year before I got help. Yeah. Okay. So, and how do you know whether you are in psychosis or whether it's just depression? Well, as described, psychosis can be paranoia, hearing things, seeing things that aren't there. But you believe them. There's a delusional quality to it, right? A fixed false belief that what you are seeing or hearing is absolutely true. It wouldn't have mattered if you asked your husband if he saw it. And I love how you said that.

38:12You were gaslighting yourself. I mean, so well said. And it's really true that you so unchakably believe what you are seeing, hearing, and feeling is true. Nobody else may. And that's why people don't share. You seem to somewhat incredulous as you were hearing. She didn't tell her husband. That's not uncommon. People feel crazy. They don't want to be labeled that way. They don't want their kids taken away. Should they tell a medical professional, right? We have the responsibility to, you know, call child protective services. If we think there's harm that could come to a baby. Not think, but you know, I always wondered if someone tells you that I'm thinking of harming my children, you should believe that. 100%. One billion percent. Okay. So if someone says I'm thinking of harming my children and they're willing to admit that they're thinking of harming their children, shouldn't their children be taken away? I wouldn't say that. I would say it is there you've got your emergency right in front of

39:15you. You need to get to the hospital. You do need separation. I mean, Trevor, you did all the right things. I'm just sorry. You had to make a home hospital. Yeah. Right? You did the things we say. It is protocol to say don't be alone with a baby. Don't be alone yourself. So you should be immediately separated from your children. Correct. Correct. But not taken away. I don't want to scare anyone with that. Okay. You need treatment and you often need hospitalization for your safety and for your baby's safety. Okay. You need treatment treatment and hospitalization. Okay. And so you're we talked about the pink flags. Yeah. So the pink flags are. Yeah. Well, this is red. Yeah. This is by the time you're in psychosis, you're in red. You're in red, right? When people are acting out of character, when they start to not be behaving like themselves. Yeah. When you're there a little off and you're thinking to yourself, huh, that doesn't seem right. That those are pink flags. And I know we're going to hear more about that. But you are discussing a red flag when someone can say,

40:22I am worried. I am going to hurt my child or I could do not pass go directly to the emergency room. Or if you hear paranoia, I had a patient once I heard on the phone seven days after she delivered. I'd seen her in the hospital doing great. Her husband called me. I could hear on the background. She was in the background and she said, who is that woman you are on the phone with? You're having an affair with her. And I said, we have an emergency on our hands. You need to, can I meet you at the hospital? Can you get an attack seat? Do you want me to call an ambulance? Where are you? That was it. She was done. She was going to be hospitalized for that emergency postpartum psychosis. Okay. I want to show you this Lindsey Clancy's attorney, Kevin Raimton gave an interview this week on Good Morning America. Take a quick look at what he said. A lot of the interlaced between the medications between the selective serotonin, re-uptake inhibitors, the SSRI drugs, in combination with that, it's horrific what these people are

41:25dealing with. And what do you say to those critics who say, this is a rationalization? What we're talking about here is just plain evil. Oh, please. It's not evil. These people don't understand. They don't know what she went through. They didn't see her text messages. They didn't see her journal. They didn't see the notes that she wrote. They didn't see the text she sent to a mother in October saying, Mommy, can you please come to here? I am sick. Something's wrong. And it was a result of the medications. They don't know about the number of times that she reached out. She went to the woman in infants. She went to the suicide hotlines. She reached out to everybody and anybody that would listen to it and kept saying, I am not good. I am not well. And it was ignored. So Dr. Burndoff, what about SSRI medication for depression? They're wonderful medications. What tell us what that is? Okay, selective, serotonin, re-uptake inhibitors. Those are medications like prozac or zoloft or lexapro. They're the most very commonly used. Okay. For postpartum depression. Sure. What kind of impact do the SSRI drugs then have on psychosis? So you're in

42:32depression. You're taking the SSRI drugs. And what happened? So these medications in a certain population that is predisposed biologically, if they are given, this medication can flip into mania. It is a known side effects slash something that can happen. If someone is not responding to a medication like this, they have kind of an agitated, sometimes euphoric, experience or dysphoric, where they don't feel good. You think to yourself, huh, that's not working. What's going on? They're having an unusual reaction to this. But isn't it the case that I've known several people who've suffered from mania? And the case with mania is you're feeling so good, you're feeling so high, you're cleaning the, you can stay up all night, you can party, you can do all those things. You don't know your manic. No, I've never told someone. I've never told mania, a person who realized they were manic. Many people really enjoy this state. Yeah, right? It can also be quite irritable or it can be you for it. Yeah. But you have no insight. You don't know

43:37what's happening. And this medication can trip people into what it does is it exposes a previously unearthed bipolar disorder. And what happens if you are on an SSRI drug and now you are also psychotic? The SSRI drugs impact psychosis? How? Well, when you're manic, you can also become psychotic. So if you think the medication is working, you might increase the dose. You may not recognize that it's not working. Oh, it doesn't seem to be helping with the depression or the anxiety. I'm going to increase the dose. The exact wrong thing to do. You actually need to bring another medications and get someone off that medication that's stimulating, activating them into a state of bipolarity. So are you saying SSRI drugs stimulate or activate psychosis? They can. They can. Okay. Dr. Kimiola Phillips is an obstetrician and gynecologist. So what happens in the

44:39brains of moms with this, or do we call it a disorder or is it a mental illness? What do we call it? Well, it's a spectrum, really, right? And I think the quick answer is we don't know. Okay. And that's the problem. We don't have enough funding and research to really understand what goes on in the postpartum. What the data suggests, though, is that it is multifactorial. When you think about the significant drastic changes that the postpartum brain experiences, a decrease in progesterone, a decrease in estrogen. If you know anyone who's experienced puberty or menopause, you know that the human brain is hormonal. Yeah. So those are profound shifts. We also have to consider things we don't think about. And that's what you mentioned, the serotonin, the dopamine, the norepinephrine. These are the signals that your brain sends to other parts of your brain that act with emotion and rationalization and understanding of your behavior. We know very little about

45:43that. There is data that shows that the postpartum brain for someone who has depression versus psychosis looks very different than the brain of a postpartum woman who doesn't. So there are some structural components there that are likely really important and genetics, right? We have millions of women who deliver every year. Only about 10 to 15 percent go on to have postpartum depression and even fewer psychosis. So there is probably a genetic component in the brain that when you combine new baby hormones, sleep deprivation, really tips them over and exposes their vulnerability to psychosis. Yeah. I heard that the statistic for psychosis is about 8,000 women a year. One to two, but that's still a lot of women. New moms. Significant. Yeah. It's really significant. And when we see the repercussions of what

46:45that psychosis can lead to when it comes to children, parenting, family relationships, jobs, this is a medical emergency. Well, it was presented in court that the day Lindsey killed her children. She took her daughter to the pediatrician and she played in the snow with her kids and she called CVS about a medication and ordered takeout for dinner. Everyone who interacted with her that day said that she appeared normal. And Dr. Hader is a perinatal psychiatrist and I think people really struggle with this idea that they can't wrap their brains around. How can someone appear to be functioning so well as these women have described, but then have those dark thoughts? I think that's what we don't understand. Yeah. That's a great question. Thank you for having me. So it's interesting. Speaking very broadly about postpartum psychosis, it in fact, it's a spectrum. And someone

47:50with postpartum psychosis does not have to be continuously psychotic in order to have postpartum psychosis. Okay, I think it's really important, Dr. Camille, you just said that and you just said that. I think it's important for everybody who's weighing in on this to understand many things in life are on the spectrum. And the fact that both of you have said it and I've read it many to other places that it's a spectrum. Not every one woman's case is not like another woman's case. It's not like another woman's case. So we need to look at it in a more broad view. And I'm so glad you highlighted that, Oprah, because in fact, one can be experiencing postpartum psychosis and still be highly functional. She can be doing pickup, drop off, getting on through her day, making chocolate chip muffins with her toddler, and have organized functional thoughts and behaviors at times and still fit within this spectrum. Yeah. And, you know, having organized. Here are the voices and then go make lunch. Absolutely. Or

48:51during lunch, or maybe the voices are telling her not to tell anyone, right? Maybe that's why she hasn't spoken up. And there's also the component of shame and guilt. And thank you for sharing that. So I think it's really important to emphasize it is on a spectrum. And so when I had talked about the pink flags, I'm so glad that a lot of people are talking about it because I originally wrote it in my op-ed in Time Magazine. And it took off. And I really wrote that from a strong point of education, where I wanted to teach others that pink flags still is on the spectrum of postpartum psychosis. Pink flags is where lives can be saved. And I really refer to them as quieter signs and symptoms of postpartum psychosis that often go missed. And, you know, this is the illness that kind of happens in plain sight. So it's so critical to talk about the subtle signs and symptoms that develop like you two had mentioned, you know, early onset paranoia, maybe some early onset hypomania, the mood is changing, especially in the context of disrupted sleep and sudden

49:56interrupted sleep after having a... Yeah, I read your article and this is a thing. I read that, but I'm thinking isn't every new mother having interrupted sleep or not getting enough sleep? So how can that be assigned when everybody is just so many people, I won't say everybody, but a lot of women who don't have help and don't have support and even those who do, the sleep deprivation is just like... Yeah. Top of the list. You want to... You want to... I was just going to say, I don't think people realize how much insomnia and sleep deprivation plays into this. Sleep is actually a human right and we forget that. And when you're sleep deprived, that is a form of torture. Right. Your brain literally cannot process, make decisions, have any form of executive functioning. And so when you are having a changing hormonal brain, your body is aching, you're charged with taking care of this newborn and then you inject insomnia or sleep deprivation, it literally

50:56becomes a form of torture. And so we tell people, I do it all the time, sleep when the baby sleeps, sleep when the baby sleeps. But what happens is you go clean the kitchen because you have to, you have to feed yourself and dare you want to take a shower and so it compounds itself. Within that first 24 hours, if you're not used to sleep deprivation, you can start having disorder thinking. By three days, hallucinations, delusions can easily set in. So we joke, oh, she's tired, she's a new mom. Delusion variance. And once that sets in, does that lead to psychosis? It's not going to happen in the person who isn't predisposed, right? You're just going to be a mess. If three days in, you haven't slept. If you are somebody who has a history of bipolar disorder, or this is going to be the break where you are going to become bipolar, we didn't know it, you're going to have a different response. And I want to make another really important point,

51:59I think postpartum psychosis, the waxing and waning has really fascinated people and it makes you feel like, is this believable? It is different than schizophrenia. Or it gets a affect of disorder, primary, psychotic disorders. We don't think of postpartum psychosis like that. It's the same word, but it's a different presentation. These moms are not walking around, talking to themselves, hallucinating, stopping you on the street. That's not what we're seeing. That's a chronic illness. This is a temporary, treatable and fully recoverable illness. That's postpartum psychosis. It's different. And it's happening because of the hormonal, because of genetics, because of biological predisposition, and because of the hormonal change, different people are sensitive. All combined. All combined. And I want to bring in our audience now. Jocelyn is here with her daughter, Brittany. And I hear the two of you also don't agree about this case.

52:59Mother and daughter. Yes. Hi, up. Hi. Thank you so much. I'm so happy that you bring it up. This conversation. Yes, I'm, you know, my daughter, Brittany. And we have two different thoughts on this topic. Me having gone through postpartum depression when I had her kind of like I filled for Lindsay and where she's going through. Did you have a word for it when you were going through it with her? Did you know what it was? Well, no. Well, back then, postpartum depression wassing a thing. So going to a doctor was like literally you're depressed. You'll be fine. You'll get over it. But you know your body. And I knew something was totally wrong with me. Didn't want to get up. They didn't want to eat. Couldn't stop crying. And the saddest thing is like, I didn't want to take care of my baby. I mean, I'm so glad that mine wasn't as bad as some of these. So you never went into psychosis? No, not where I heard voices. But I just didn't, the bonding with my daughter, it was just not there. Like I didn't even want to hold her or you know, never mind like

54:03feed her or anything like that. So you all are in differing about the case. We are. Yeah. Yeah, we have opposing views. We do. And I think that you know, I say to her, I think so she hasn't gone through it. She's not a mother. So she doesn't know how it feels to have a child. And you disagree? I disagree. I feel like I'm not with the majority right now. I do believe she's a murderer. I'm in all you've heard today. You still. I'm an advocate for mental health. Yeah. It's just unfortunate. Like and she's so quick to say it's she's like, you've never had a baby. You don't understand what it's like to go through all the hormonal shifts. But I just feel as though these were not instant deaths. They weren't gunshots to the head. She was there strangling her kids three times. You're telling me like even after the first time she couldn't snap out of it, you're watching the life leave your kids eyes, you know. So I know I hear everybody's opinions and God bless mothers. But at the same I just don't understand how we can empathize with somebody that

55:09they weren't strangers. They were her kids. And she was able to grab those exercise bands that that took a lot of effort. And it breaks my heart that these young kids gone through that. But it's I'm grateful that this conversation is happening because I do believe like woman they are on the back burner when it comes to mental health. If this was a man like there would be like a law the next day or something going on. But they would have been research. They would have been funded. Something right away. But it's just I just feel like with her it's becoming she's becoming a mascot for just I feel like so many mothers empathize with her so much that they want to put her out there make her a mascot. And they're turning something so negative into a movement. Okay I hear that. So y'all will continue you all will not be agreeing no time for it. No, no, no, no, no, thank you for being here. So Alicia's in the audience. Where do you stand,

56:14Alicia? Alicia. So I do believe that she had was going through mental health and I'm sorry for all the women that that happened to. But I feel as the though that just because you have a reason kind of doesn't give you an excuse. Yes, there needs to be more funding. Yes, you know like this is a real thing. But at the time when she was reaching out for help not the time when she was in psychosis killing her children. You didn't get the help. She wasn't enough state of mind. Was she new that she needed help? Why didn't she just remove herself? Yeah. You she had a husband living there. She could have left the house act like she was going to the store and came back called hey I can't come back home because this is how I'm feeling. Yeah. And I feel like sometimes that's a hard choice for someone to make you know but you can't just like now that it's got to psychosis now we have to give her an excuse for murder and that's where I stand with that.

57:16So I think one of the lessons from thank you for sharing that Alicia. One of the lessons from this conversation if you are a mother or no of a mother or at some point in your life are going to encounter this experience is to know the moment you start having those thoughts you are in trouble. You are in trouble that you that you are in a state of emergency and need to get help. And anybody who hears your friend your mother your sister say I'm having these thoughts you then that is the red flag that has gone from pink to red you then need to take action. So if you know her husband who were like was like you was like you didn't know this at all. When he heard her say I want to harm the children that was the moment to do something. Is that is am I accurate here? Yeah I also want to say it's it's not acknowledging the pressure on women though right when you're

58:19not well to ask for that help or when you believe that you're supposed to do it all and you're carrying the mother load society expects you to be perfect. So what are we supposed to do? It's a very confounding position this bliss myth of what it is to be a mother is so societally ingrained that it is very hard to come forward and I don't think we can ignore that in this discussion. Yeah Michelle Oberman wrote in a Pagan piece in the New York Times title I study women who killed their children Lindsey Clancy deserves mercy. Michelle is a professor at Santa Clara University School of Law and the author of When Mother's Kill Interviews from prison. Michelle why do you believe Lindsey should be acquitted by reason of insanity and can you break down what that means for us? Yeah so I'm going to start with the way in which we judge insanity which even though we're in 2026 dates back to 1843. Our standard for insanity the way that we drew it up in 1843 is could she

59:29know the difference between right and wrong? And the like just to set the stage when a criminal would come in to be tried in 1843 and there was a question about whether or not they understood the difference between right and wrong you would bring an expert into the court and they would take a measurement of the cranium and that's how you could know they would apply on whether the size of the brain would indicate that this person is criminologic in their intent. So that's our legal standard. Around 60 years ago Massachusetts, one of literally less than a handful of states in the country, modernized its insanity defense to include could she control her behavior? So does she know right or wrong and could she control her behavior? And I mean thank you so much to both of you for telling your stories because I think that answers the question of why this insanity test doesn't really map on to postpartum psychosis? I mean clearly you both knew the difference between right and wrong and there were moments at which you could control your behavior and then moments at which

1:00:34you really couldn't and the intrusiveness of the voice made it unbelievably difficult to control your emotions and when we put somebody like Lindsay Clancy under that legal test we end up with the debate that we're having right now in social media throughout the country and indeed throughout the world. Like did she know right and wrong? Did she have the ability to control her behavior? While she took the child to a pediatricians' appointment they made snow angels and honestly like the reason why I feel like this should be a not guilty for reasons of insanity is that I think anybody looking at the case has a really hard time thinking that she was anything but really mentally ill and that raises the question of what's the purpose of punishment? When you believe that because 11 of the 12 jurors reportedly were in favor 11 of the 12 reportedly were in favor of a not guilty by reason of insanity verdict that this is a real watershed

1:01:38moment. Why do you think so? So I'm old enough that I actually have been studying these cases almost as long as you've been interested in them and in fact I was on your show talking about Andrea Yates way back when and the difference between that moment and now is the watershed moment because while in both cases it's so hard to look away from the dead babies the difference between Andrea Yates coverage which was just like make us not look at this we can't look at this anymore and this moment where there is an outpouring of conversation around mental health and mental illness that is the watershed moment and for those of us that have spent time you know the stay at home jurors if you will watching this case no matter how much time we've spent it's not as much time as those jurors sitting in ductsbury and the fact that 11 out of those 12 sat and listened to the terrible details

1:02:42of the case and walked away saying this person is not guilty we cannot blame her we we must excuse this terrible crime that means there's a shift in the culture yeah for being open to even hearing what women have to say right yeah I mean then I think it's it's like a little bit related to COVID as well like we all lived through a time where mental health and mental illness became really legible right like we were just struggling and then that plus social media has women telling these stories that until now we're so shameful that we kept them locked up one and five women experienced some sort of perinatal mental illness OCD insomnia anxiety right I mean it is real that it is a struggle for many women to get through the pregnancy that's why I think it's unfair as we were saying earlier as you were saying earlier that it's on a spectrum it's unfair for a woman to judge another woman based upon what happened to her 100% to say well when I went

1:03:46through it and I was able to stay up all night and I was I didn't have any sleep and I didn't want to kill much I think it's unfair because it's a spectrum it's not just about what's happening in your brain it's about what's happening in in everyone's brain and there is a spectrum in everyone's different I read that many other countries have guidelines for postpartum women who kill their children can you explain what they are doing differently than we are doing differently yeah so in England which is I mean it's sort of a surprising thing over a hundred years ago they passed a law called their infanticide act and when a mother kills a child under the age of 12 months even though it might look like an intentional killing first degree murder she's charged with infanticide and the infanticide statutes says that the you know because the balance of her mind was disturbed by reasons of childbirth or lactation it's prosecuted as manslaughter and the presumptive

1:04:49sentence is probation and counseling there's no public spectacle there also is no higher rate of infanticide in England it's not like ooh without this without brister re-emerder everybody's killing their children that that law has been replicated in between 20 and 30 countries around the world and it's not a perfect law I mean to be sure some of the mothers deserve a full out not guilty for reasons of insanity rather than a manslaughter conviction and maybe some of them actually don't deserve the manslaughter they weren't insane or mentally ill at all and they deserve a guilty verdict but what it does is it acknowledges that there is something so different about these cases that are conventional tools of first degree murder or the insanity defense that binary choice that the jury and ductsbury faced like those tools are just not up to the task and so it doesn't have to be the kind of media circus that we're seeing in this case we can actually

1:05:53resolve the cases as you know within a healthcare system and and find ways to focus on prevention and mental health care and also can we talk about the fact that we are a culture that expects the woman to do every freaking thing yeah you know we should take a lesson from some other cultures for whom for whom the the women come together the sisters help the mothers help the people in the community help the village help when the child comes into the village you know that takes a village to raise a child we're the culture that thinks we are the only ones who should be responsible for the baby yeah and it wasn't always like that I mean industrialization like the late 19th century changed everything people moved to cities they have smaller families they're in the house they're far from extended family they don't know before that women were throughout human history the women gathered to help other women this is the way humans raise babies

1:06:55like throughout human history there was somebody there to help that new mom right there was always somebody else to hold the baby and then we move into these little places right and like I'm moved by both of your stories because you've got supportive spouses and enough money to access mental health care I mean how does this look when you're just by yourself in the house with your two little babies and no health insurance makes me more a weep yeah yeah yeah I was thinking about that yeah yeah go ahead from a different perspective as an immigrant and also I grew up with a family of 12 and what I hear the expert been saying from the started is sleep in community so I grew up and I raised most of my nieces and nephews because I was the youngest of 12s and what I learned from my mom is when my sisters will give birth the first time after they come from the hospital the babies only give into my sisters when they need to breastfeed after that we take turn at the sisters to make

1:08:01sure the babies is taken care of and the mom slips slip is very very very important and I think here in the United States coming from Senegal I see how much we work and how much we're depending in the society to pay the bills that we forget about ourselves we work year round back home you have a year off paid year off and we are an underdeveloped country and we get paid a year off when you give birth and here in the United States you can't even have three months after you give birth so that is an acceptable well you were exactly what I was talking about the village of village yeah so I think if we change our mindset we will believe in a better world yeah thank you for that thank you all of our guests today have husbands who were supported but if you're trying to do this by yourself yeah on my mind is this what happens you try to do this by yourself and you're here you seeing the man outside yeah it's I mean Carol Coronado is this she's a woman serving three consecutive

1:09:06life sentences in California the facts are so similar to Lindsay's Lindsay Clancy's case except that there was no money and no ability to acknowledge what was going on and if you ever want to like just experience sheer horror at the trial they played the voice message is she was leaving her mom screaming you know mommy mommy come help come help there was just no help to be had and and what we do is first degree murder prosecutions and an insanity test that doesn't fit host part on psychosis she know what was wrong she called her mom she said mommy come help so she knew it was wrong so she's guilty we want to invite other points of view on this Nicole Russell is an opinion columnist for USA today and she recently wrote an op ed title Lindsay Clancy isn't a motherhood martyr she's a killer she joins us from her home in Texas Nicole you've been listening to us what's been your reaction to this whole case thank you for having me Elpra yeah I think this is

1:10:10been an incredible conversation I'm really glad to hear all these points of view especially for the women who shared their stories I am a mom of four I at one point had four kids under the age of six and I do remember the sleepless nights and the exhaustion but I do see an online reaction that seems very extreme the women who are cheering her on outside the courthouse and the sort of chick talk moms as as was mentioned it seems like we've gone online at least maybe not in this conversation from compassion and empathy to kind of harrowing her as a hero and I think it's important to remind people that we can acknowledge and we should acknowledge all the struggles of postpartum mental health without offering kind of toxic empathy that excuses the murders of the of the three innocent children

1:11:19other than what you mentioned that the outset that hasn't really been you know a topic of even this conversation sort of what what will demand justice for those kids and what does justice for the kids look like to you Nicole what do you think I've been wrestling with that especially as I watched you know the decision Friday along Miss Trial I think it is clear that she needs help it seems like she did get a good amount of help about you know I wasn't in the courtroom I didn't see every single testimony but I do think she needs to be held accountable for what happened to her children or you saying she should be punished for it I do think so I think our justice system and the lives of the three innocent children demand that especially now in light of the fact that there will have to be a new trial and her ex-husband will have to endure the same thing all over again he too has lost his children and I just feel like especially online again not in this conversation

1:12:22that we're having but online especially I'm just seeing you know kind of this movement of toxicity of making Lindsey Clancy sort of a poster child and I don't think she's the right poster child for this conversation because her children are still dead issue poster child for and just using your term but you know I started this conversation with the idea and intention of sharing with the audience how do we use this moment to move ourselves forward I mean so is she a poster child for as I was sharing and Michelle was sharing she's been around long enough to talk having talked to enough mothers over the years who have killed their children and the court system the society just said oh these are evil women the fact that we are actually divided in this moment with other

1:13:22women saying that was my story or that could have been my story says to me that perhaps this this is a time to use this for the medical profession for the legal profession to look at the laws to look at what insanity laws how they're defined particularly for women who have killed their children or and men but also to look at ourselves as a society how do we use this moment how do we use Kora and Dawson and Kalan's lives to move ourselves forward have you thought about that Nicole absolutely I think you're having the right conversation because you are asking those questions how can we look at what happened if Lindsay is a sign of a system gone wrong or postpartum mental health struggle that we need to talk about I think that's one thing that is the conversation you're having so you're probably making the women in the pink shirts and the making her a martyr you as you said yeah my specific takes at USA today as an impending columnist for simply that

1:14:27what I was seeing online this sort of a TikTok fan base of women holding their babies and saying same Lindsay I'm wondering what is that mean do they mean they're struggling with mental health do they mean they're in the middle of postpartum psychosis if so they should log off and they should get help okay but they shouldn't be just posting same Lindsay holding their newborn for clicks if they're really struggling yeah they need to turn inward go like you said go to your family go to your medical professionals but I'm kind of kind of looks like I'm seeing again especially an online fan base that's gone away too far and I don't think there's any amount of online sympathy for the hardships of motherhood that should overshadow the if horrific actions that stole the lives of those children well thank you thank you Nicole your opinion got my attention thank you so much thanks for sharing Caitlin Flanagan is also an author columnist for the free press and she wrote

1:15:29an article that also caught my attention title the Lindsay Clancy fan club the same thing that you're saying and Caitlin joins us from her home in California high and welcome Caitlin it's been a little over a week since you wrote your piece and the public reaction is getting even louder what do you want to say well I think you said everything with that first word and the conversation when you use that word reconcile it really struck me how do we reconcile these two things I you know the fact of these dead children you know we're often asked to look beyond them Michelle who wrote that great piece in the New York Times a very considered piece and spoke with you just now said it's so hard to look away from the dead babies I think we need to look at them we need to look at what happened and these are three very small children and they were killed in a very very painful terrifying way by the person in this world that they learned to depend on the most

1:16:37and who would always they trusted her they loved her and that out of her mind face was the last they saw on this earth and I think that it makes sense that a lot of people are having there's almost an unanswerable question morally here in terms of what should we do about this legally what's the punishment for this criminally but I think the fact is you know those little kids you know they had their things ready for their clothes or everything ready for preschool the next day people their friends were waiting for them to show up they were life in session and that little eight month old baby we can't look away from him so I'm not saying this in terms of oh only a guilty verdict would be right I think it's more in the sense of can we ever reconcile these two things I don't know I just don't know I don't have an answer you you in your article you wrote compassion for a woman who

1:17:41says she was driven by mental illness to commit the world's greatest form of evil has turned into something strange and almost exultant celebration of Lindsey Clancy so what do you think is behind the women rallying around Lindsey Clancy well there's been a lot of misinformation that I hear it still being echoed today that that you know she couldn't get the help and she kept trying to get the help the perniciousness of this illness is that she got a ton of help but I sat down yesterday and I read through the transcript and I read through the two complaints and that she lawsuits and she didn't tell one professional that she had thoughts of harming her children she was very guarded about that she told her husband twice she told her mother once but she really guarded that information which I presume is you know part of a psychotic response in sort of knowing that you're keeping two books of business if you've been listening to our conversation today you hear

1:18:46that is pretty normal I mean Brooke didn't even tell her husband she saw the man outside the window and she was having those thoughts for months so are we gonna judge her because she didn't tell or how she told I'm not talking about judging her in any of what I've had to say in a writing about her but I'm just saying all of the interventions that sound so wonderful because we're so eager to never have this happen again we talk about more mental health services that doesn't seem to really help we talk about more family around she had a ton of family I think this is so deep and pernicious and illness and I understand completely why in other areas it was understood to be a kind of demonic possession for this short period of time so I'm not saying that you know I've never thought she should be be called a murderer I don't you know I think every single mother the minute

1:19:46you heard a glimmer of this case every woman said oh I know what that is and that's the darkness and we all know about the darkness to whatever extent it came up and that's why the women are rallying around her that's what that is I think so but as mothers are other obligation I think and women is to really care about children and so when I see women in these Lindsay supporting t-shirts but not talking about those three children I think you know we're just more polarized than ever and about how do we reconcile it I don't know if we ever can okay you know it's not by it's not by punishing these women very harshly um they weren't in that right mind thank you thank you thank you thank you I can't say anything definitively because it's just like I keep thinking of your room how your as expression how do we reconcile it's in it's one of those human things that maybe only God understands we can't reconcile it we don't know what to do

1:20:51and and I think of having in a way you think it's showing itself to us so that we can figure out what to do don't you think that this is a moment for us to start thinking about what to do so reconcile perhaps is the wrong term we can't but how do we now move forward from this how do we use this moment to elevate the way we think about it can we do that I think there were a lot of us and I'm in the side of this actually who can understand oh she wasn't in her right mind she didn't she didn't know what she was doing and I I think something obviously was driving her um the whole time something terrible was driving her but I haven't heard anybody you know it's so rare it gets our attention it must be a very human response to police ourselves um I think that's why the angry side is so angry I think there's something deep in us that says nobody should

1:21:57kill a baby um and we're just all here and there's been this kind of horrible spectacle made of it and it's almost like it's a true crime show yeah we're getting on TikTok and getting excited and it's just it's a grotesque yeah you're yes all right dr. Burndoff did you want to say something to that many things yeah um if as I understand it and I didn't evaluate Lindsay but based on what you're saying Meg based on what we know about her history her love of her kids her job as a labor and delivery nurse she would never have killed her kids if she were not severely ill I understand that we cannot look past and we should never it is horrific it's unspeakable it makes me cry to think about those kids but to punish her for something that that's illness we are not

1:22:59taking women's mental health seriously we can't bear to think that moms can struggle in this way and until we believe that until we understand that women's mental health around reproductive times of change pregnancy childbirth and the postpartum can cause severe and potentially lethal illness we are nowhere yes all right yes each of you want to say something yes I was going to say postpartum psychosis it's a medical emergency and a medical emergency requires treatment not shame and the only way that we can move forward is to have amazing interactive conversations like this reduce the stigma acknowledge that it is hard for mothers to speak up and there's guilt and shame and maybe in fact they're experiencing hearing of voices telling them not to say anything because it is such a spectrum and I just want to say that I the one message I would like to share

1:24:00is I want to galvanize everyone here I don't want everyone to feel paralyzed because in fact there's a lot that we can do with postpartum psychosis and early detection unfortunately we can't change the past and we can't take back the lives of those who were lost in the tragedies but what we can do is we can recognize early signs and symptoms of postpartum psychosis in the next mother and overall reduce that as we talk about it more as we have more conversations so I think early detection the the pink flags before it progresses to red flags the three teas for for postpartum psychosis temporary treatable timely it's very timely if we get moms help immediately we can save lives I think those are major things so you know there's a lot we can do post and parental leave in the postpartum period and I have to say have hundreds and hundreds of women I have treated over the years and dads too there are two things they always ask me one is validation am I doing okay am I a good enough mom from the mom who's in the sea suite that I treat to the mom who's in state

1:25:02legislature to the mom who's incarcerated in a single mom they ask that but secondly Dr. Hader can you help me sleep and I wish I could sign a send a prescription for a newborn care specialist to help them sleep but unfortunately we can and you know economically we need to talk about that and society as a whole we need to move forward and we have to talk about early detection the pink flags and empowering the village family husband spouses grandmother's sisters neighbors account list number of people connected to just one mom because it is in fact countless empowering the village we are the village yes doctor and what I was just going to add finally is when you see your obstetrician you're thinking about pregnancy start to have these conversations it is not shameful to talk about your risk factors which could be depression bipolar disorder not having a supportive spouse limited resources all of these are little risk factors that when you take away at them and add a baby sleep deprivation on top can't really have you tip over and the other thing that I would

1:26:06just be remiss to not say is I I hope this never happens again we know statistically it really will it will I want us to have the same passion for people who don't look like Lindsay who don't have her same access yeah yeah who don't have her same access and education her melanin her privilege there are women of color sitting around this country in prisons for the same thing that we've never heard of and I just want to remind us to have the pink shirts and the energy for them as well you can Michelle what changes would you like to see in terms of in terms of how cases are tried and sentenced so I think the British model is an imperfect one but certainly doesn't take all of

1:27:12the money and the hoopla that we've invested in the clancy prosecution and perhaps reprasecution but the short term easy fix is to allow judges to have discretion again it's sentencing so that if you have a district attorney who like the district attorney in Ducksbury is like I need to prosecute in order to vindicate the lives of these children then at least the judge could say what they won't be able to say here which is this just doesn't seem like a life in prison punishment is just and to allow that judge to deviate from the required sentence for first to be murdered and to make a sentence that seems perhaps a bit more merciful I thank you all so much we'll have to end it here thank you to all of my guests thank you for having the courage to speak up thank you audience before you we all leave here today I want to again just speak their names of the beautiful children

1:28:12Kora Dawson and Kallen go well everybody thank you our listeners tell us that the podcast is resonating with you and is serving as a bright spot in your day that means a lot to me so here's the thing I would really appreciate it if you like and subscribe to the Oprah podcast on YouTube or wherever you podcast it's it's just a quick tap of the subscribe button and that way you won't miss an episode in your queue you don't have to pay anything I know subscribe usually means you're paying something but this time it means you just are notified when there's something new there are many more to come that we're excited about so thank you for watching and listening some sort of