Lindsay Clancy fans fool themselves with false – Latest News
“I could have been Lindsay Clancy.”
That’s been the chorus of numerous girls who see their own postpartum struggling in Clancy, the Massachusetts mom now on trial for the homicide of her three babies.
They characterize it as empathy, however they miss a essential distinction: Recognizing your self in somebody’s story isn’t the identical as understanding her thoughts.
“I was depressed too; I felt dismissed by doctors too,” they are saying, in public rallies and on social media. “I know what she went through.”
But two girls can undergo in comparable methods with out having the identical sickness — or the identical relationship to actuality.
Clancy’s supporters are overlooking these distinctions.
That’s distorting how they perceive the Clancy case.
Their reactions risk reinforcing the stigma surrounding postpartum despair — and push her three kids to the margins of the story.
Too many of us are discussing postpartum despair and postpartum psychosis as if they’re the identical factor.
They aren’t: Postpartum despair, which impacts roughly one in eight new moms, can convey profound unhappiness, nervousness, hopelessness and problem functioning.
Postpartum psychosis, which impacts just one or two in a thousand, can contain delusions, hallucinations, extreme confusion and a break with actuality.
Clancy’s protection attorneys argue she was psychotic when she killed her three kids and subsequently isn’t criminally accountable; prosecutors argue she deliberate the killings and understood what she was doing.
A jury will determine.
The girls demonstrating exterior the Plymouth, Mass., courthouse, recognizing the exhaustion, despair and isolation common in early motherhood, see one thing acquainted in Clancy’s story.
“I know what that feels like” turns into “I know what she felt” — and shortly, “That could have been me.”
But the overwhelming majority of girls who expertise postpartum despair don’t change into psychotic, not to mention kill their kids.
Those variations are central to understanding this case — and Clancy’s supporters are blurring them.
That’s perilous.
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“I could have been Lindsay” places postpartum despair in the identical dialog as a triple murder.
Yet despair isn’t psychosis, and mental health struggles post-childbirth don’t make a lady harmful.
Rather than lowering the stigma surrounding postpartum despair, Clancy’s fans risk worsening it.
And whereas their identification with her makes psychological sense, it will possibly additionally intervene with judgment.
Defending Clancy can change into a means of defending one’s own expertise.
Supporters yell phrases of encouragement to Lindsay Clancy’s lawyer, Kevin Reddington, as he arrives at Plymouth Superior Court on August 20, 2026. Supporters of Clancy stood vigil exterior the courthouse. USA TODAY Network through Reuters Connect
If I see myself in Lindsay, questioning Lindsay can start to really feel like questioning me.
Asking whether or not she was really psychotic can sound like asking whether or not postpartum struggling itself is actual.
Even contemplating the likelihood that she was liable for her kids’s deaths can really feel like blaming girls for being mentally unwell.
The query, for them, then modifications from “What was happening in Lindsay Clancy’s mind?” to “Do you believe women when they say they’re suffering?”
As nicely, over-identification carries its own psychological risk.
The more we see ourselves in one other particular person, the better it turns into to project our expertise onto theirs — and shared emotions can create an phantasm of shared psychology.
But recognizing your own ache in another person doesn’t imply you perceive her state of thoughts.
There’s one other troubling consequence of Clancy supporters’ over-identification: The kids begin to disappear.
We and the jury are listening to about Lindsay’s struggling, her drugs, her therapy, her docs and whether or not anybody listened to her — legit questions in a trial involving prison accountability.
But amid all that testimony, Cora, Dawson and Callan change into supporting characters in a story organized round their mom’s struggling.
That illustrates an important corollary about empathy itself: We naturally give attention to the particular person whose expertise we will think about.
A mom can keep in mind being exhausted, depressed or overwhelmed after childbirth.
She can see items of herself in Lindsay.
It’s a lot more durable for her to determine with three kids who’re no longer right here to inform us what occurred to them.
Healthy empathy shouldn’t require that commerce.
We can imagine Clancy suffered profoundly — with out declaring that she was or was not legally accountable.
We can imagine postpartum sickness deserves higher consideration — with out turning one defendant into a image for each lady who has struggled after childbirth.
And we will have compassion for mental sickness — with out permitting that compassion to erase troublesome questions on company and accountability.
A girl who acknowledges herself in Clancy’s story may select to attract a totally different lesson:
I used to be depressed, and I wasn’t Lindsay.
I used to be overwhelmed, and I wasn’t Lindsay.
I felt failed by docs, and nonetheless I wasn’t Lindsay.
Feelings show nothing about Clancy’s prison accountability.
“I understand some of what she went through” is empathy.
“I could have been her” is a a lot broader declare.
The actually empathetic response is solely this: I imagine you suffered.
But I’m not you.
Jonathan Alpert, a psychotherapist practising in New York City and Washington, DC, is the creator of “Therapy Nation: How America Got Hooked on Therapy and Why It’s Left Us More Anxious and Divided.”
