RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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See the full story · 1 sourcesMoms who have been closely following the Lindsay Clancy murder trial reflect on their experiences of postpartum mental health crises and tell Rhian Lubin why the case has them speaking out about the failures of America’s maternal healthcare system
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Editor’s Note: This report deals with postpartum mental health disorders and includes references to infanticide and suicide, which might be distressing for some readers. Please take care when reading.
With her baby boy sitting happily on her lap, Stormi Griffin looked at the camera and smiled.
The photo, which she posted on TikTok along with images of her other two children, was not about “Pinterest-perfect” motherhood, she said, but to illustrate what she looked like in the throes of postpartum psychosis.
“You can look completely fine,” Griffin, 23, told The Independent. “It's not just a crazy lady rocking herself in a straitjacket.”
The mental health condition of postpartum psychosis has burst into public discussion with the murder trial of Massachusetts mother Lindsay Clancy, a former labor and delivery nurse, accused of killing her three children — 5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson, and 8-month-old Callan — and then trying to take her own life in 2023 at their Duxbury home.
Clancy’s defense team has argued that the 36-year-old is not criminally responsible for the murders, which took placeduring the onset of her postpartum psychosis. The prosecution portrayed the killings as a premeditated, deliberate act.
Griffin was one of three mothers who experienced their own postpartum mental health crisis and spoke to The Independent after following Clancy’s trial.
On one hand, the case has seen an outpouring of support for Clancy with allies flocking to court in pink T-shirts reading: “She Needed Help.” But there has also been fierce condemnation from others who call Clancy “a monster.”
The case has sparked a national conversation about the failures of maternal care — and raised questions about how women are treated by the healthcare industry more widely in the U.S.
Griffin, a former medical assistant and now a dance teacher, has Thomas, 4, Ethan, 1 and stepdaughter Ava, 6.
She was diagnosed with postpartum psychosis last year, a few months after Ethan’s birth. The mental health condition, a medical emergency which occurs in approximately one to two women per 1,000 births worldwide, is linked to hormonal changes, sleep deprivation, and stresses that follow childbirth, according to medical experts .
Postpartum psychosis is temporary and treatable with the right medication. It also differs from postpartum depression, which affects approximately one in seven women after they have a child.
At its most severe, Griffin, from Paris, Texas, said her symptoms included hearing voices and hallucinations that made her “lose touch with reality.”
Griffin, who said that mental illness runs in her family, was one of hundreds of women sharing their postpartum experiences on social media during Clancy’s trial. She posted the smiling picture with Ethan on her lap to show how “normal” you can appear from the outside.
“The main thing was just to show it's not just a crazy lady rocking herself in a straitjacket,” she told The Independent. “You're not just itching yourself and going crazy. You can look completely fine.”
Experts agree that mothers suffering from a mental health disorder around the time of giving birth often keep up appearances.
“She could be going about everyday tasks and errands while having intrusive thoughts, hearing voices,” said Wendy Davis, executive director of Postpartum Support International. Davis said the behavior is referred to as “masking.”
“From the outside, it's often impossible to tell that things are very hard for her, that she's suffering and possibly in danger. And the mother herself might not realize what she is experiencing is a mental health disorder that is temporary and treatable,” she explained.
That was true for Griffin, who began to feel symptoms of depression and anxiety in July 2025, about two months after she had given birth. She was put on antidepressants and anti-anxiety medication, and said she improved for a short period. But then more alarming symptoms emerged in late September, lasting on and off until November.
“I suffered from visual and auditory hallucinations daily; I couldn’t sit still on [some] days; I had thoughts that were not my own, and I met the darkest parts of myself,” Griffin posted on TikTok.
The symptoms did not happen overnight, but “very much crept up” on her, she told The Independent.
“I heard voices that almost sounded like me, and then voices that I've never heard,” she said. “It made me question reality. The best way to describe it is it felt like I had an alter ego who just kept popping up, and the inside of me was like, ‘This isn't right. This isn't you.’”
She was diagnosed with postpartum psychosis and bipolar 2 disorder in September 2025 after her colleagues at the pediatric office where she then worked became concerned. Griffin returned to work six weeks postpartum due to the financial needs of her family, she said, and stressed that her former employer had offered her more maternity leave.
The nurse practitioner she worked for called her husband, Blake, and together they sat her down in a room and asked her what was going on. “I'm hearing voices, and I know they're not there. I'm seeing things,” Griffin recalled telling them.
After that intervention, which Griffin credits with saving her life, she was put on different medication and met regularly with a therapist. But even after getting help, the mom “couldn’t seem to escape” the psychosis. She had a particularly dark period for a few weeks September and October.
“It was like being in a corn maze with no real end in a horror movie,” Griffin explained. “I just couldn't get out of it.”
Mood stabilizers helped bring Griffin “back to reality,” ...
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