Lindsay Clancy Trial Casts Spotlight on Postpartum Psychosis; Experts Demand Systemic Progress

Meghan Cliffel was eight months postpartum with her second daughter when hallucinations began. It was a Friday in 2015; she had just finished her workday in New York City when she became convinced she was being followed, recruited into a cult, and targeted by the world at large—including her husband—and that her two daughters were in danger.

Within 24 hours, she was handcuffed to a gurney and admitted to a psychiatric hospital, where she spent the next 12 days receiving treatment for postpartum psychosis.

The condition frequently manifests through mood symptoms such as irritability, mood swings, insomnia, and a delirium-like state, according to Susan Hatters-Friedman, a forensic psychiatry professor at Case Western Reserve University. She noted that psychiatric symptoms typically appear rapidly.

“Psychosis, broadly defined, means a person is out of touch with reality,” Hatters-Friedman explained. “That often includes hallucinations—hearing or seeing things that aren’t there—and delusions, which are fixed false beliefs inconsistent with the person’s culture.”

On the day Lindsay Clancy killed her children, she had been outside building a snowman with them. “She was having one of her best days,” her former husband, Patrick Clancy, testified during the trial. Clancy had previously disclosed to him that she was experiencing suicidal ideation and thoughts of harming the children, but on that January 2023 day, everything seemed improved. When he left to pick up dinner for the family of five, he returned to find his children dead and Clancy injured from a suicide attempt.

That stark contrast illustrates the “light-switch” quality—the waxing and waning—characteristic of postpartum psychosis, experts say.

“A woman can appear fine one minute and be really ill a little bit later,” said Jennifer Payne, a reproductive psychiatry expert at the University of Virginia.

The precise causes of postpartum psychosis remain unclear. Researchers suggest it may be triggered by hormonal shifts and the stress of childbirth, and there appears to be a correlation between prior mental health challenges and the development of the illness during the postpartum period.

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