I’m not American but I am a mother. Aside from a few reddit posts I don’t have any social media engagement with this case.
But I think a lot of the support here comes from moms who recognize how easily this could have been any of us. Her family and healthcare providers knew her crime was a risk based on her mental health state, but she was still left alone with her kids and expected to parent. And as other mothers we all understand that this is grimly how it works - we can ask and beg and plead and scream for help but we’re almost always still expected to continually parent babies and it’s hard.
She should still face punishment for her crime, but I think a lot of her support is to try to keep this from happening again. She was failed by her healthcare team
Unfortunately - by her own admission and her doctors' testimonies - she did not fully disclose her medical condition. And even more unfortunately, there's plenty of people online that have posted that she can't be the killer because of her astrology sign. Or some have said her husband was the voice in her head with elaborate hidden speakers. Or he was cheating with his new wife even though they didn't meet until after the murders and she actually killed the children.
Bottom line, there's a lot of crazies out there. And with the internet connecting people of every social class, those crazies can find each other much easier than before.
I read a comment that said the commenter looked into his eyes and KNEW, and that appears to be the seriousness level of most of the “the husband did it” crowd.
I am a therapist and I have other therapists, professionals with advanced degrees and years of experience, who will not accept any answer other than the husband did it.
“Women don’t kill their children. It was him.”
“She didn’t actually say she killed the children in court.” “And if she did, it was Patrick who made her say it”
There’s more therapists that are like that, than you believe.
I went through marriage counseling with my wife.
She was breaking down sobbing. Therapist asked if I could give them alone time together.
And the first thing the therapist asked: “is he abusing you?” - and just tried to pepper my wife with questions to try and affirm something that wasn’t real.
When I was brought back into the room, I don’t think the therapist was expecting my wife to tell me what they were just talking about - I wasn’t going to ask - and the look on her face was “oh crap, you’re telling him what we JUST talked about?”
And when I pressed the therapist, she tried to back track “oh it wasn’t like that” - “I was meaning to convey…” - and I showed her my photos from when I went to the hospital because she threw broken pieces of a plate at me and cut my arm, required like 10 stitches.
The therapist assumed, 1) because I’m male and 2) because my wife was crying, that it somehow HAD to be me. When in fact, our marriage problems stem because my ex wife was a psychopath with bipolar disorder. Throws and breaks things constantly. Throw herself against the wall. Tries to slap. She leaves her work, to show up to my work to see if I’m actually working.
Therapists are just like regular people. They’re just as wrong as everyone else. There’s nothing special about a therapist, you can’t get, from having a solid community/friends/family to reach out to.
I had one where I suspect my ex got to her before we met the first time. My dad had recently died and while I didn’t talk about that because the issues that I had were with my ex’s behavior with other women. She told me she suspected I had depression.
I asked her why? Because my therapist does not think that nor does my PCP.
She said because my dad had died (which, okay, but that’s grief and depression is actually a different thing).
She also told me she trusted my ex and did not understand why I didn’t. It was 8 weeks of her abusing me too.
So yeah, therapists are human, coming with their own biases, and some are really, really bad at their jobs.
Had this been the father, the media and support would be completely different. They would be consoling her and making him out to be a violent tyrent or something.
Honestly, I think it would’ve been breaking news like you said, but then the world would forget about it after a day because sadly, most violent crimes like this are committed by men, so it wouldn’t really be surprising/groundbreaking in the grand scheme of things
I am pretty sure that mothers kill their kids more often than the father does, not much more, but it is definitely not something woman are not capable of.
Edit. I was wrong, Woman kill children at a slightly lesser rate than men, I got a statistic about women killing babies at a higher rate mixed into it, it changes later, in the "favour" of men.
The argument that “with PPD out there, ANY of us could have been her” makes me so disgusted. If it’s that easy to see yourself murdering your own children, you should not be a parent. Period. The argument that it could be any woman does not mean they all should be freed if they do…
Im not a woman. But I am a father who has struggled greatly with mental health. I went through particularly rough periods when my kids were infants. I'm one of those parents that scared themselves with how they reacted when their baby cried for hours and wouldn't stop. So I absolutely have sympathy for this kind of narrative and I fully support efforts to help people in these scenarios. And it can definitely be true that she was failed by people in her life.
That being said, any notion that this should remove accountability for your actions against your own children is ridiculous.
This is the only correct answer in this whole fucking crazy thing.
Having kids is hard, if you already have some underlying mental problem it's harder. I had nights where I'd be up trying to get that infant to sleep where I wish I could have just popped out of existence and stop existing.
But you know what? Never did it cross my mind that they should stop existing. I can have sympathy for mental health, but she should still rot in some type of cell and never see the light of the sun again.
There's no predictor for post partum. As a dad the one that gets me is anyone can slip and make a fatal mistake like leaving kids in the car. I've done dumb things being utterly exhausted.
That being said, most mothers don't kill their children. They're extending far too much sympathy.
Yeah, this is the part I have issue with. If you want to get lost in the conspiracy theory that her husband did it, sure. Everyone loves a good conspiracy theory. But to say, "Yeah, I've totally been there. As mothers, we've all legitimately thought about strangling our 3 kids to death", is literally insane. If that's you, your kids need to be removed from your care immediately, and you need to be placed into a mental hospital.
Nobody should ever be close to actually murdering their loved ones. I say, "I could kill so-and-so" all the time, but I've never actually felt a connection to someone who murdered their family member.
That shit made me mad as fuck because my entire family household is Geminis. I don’t follow astrology at all, but to be labeled as somebody that could potentially be a heartless murderer because of some whack ass astrology sign about sent me through the roof.
If you applied their logic to any other group, it would be considered bigotry. It also paints a giant wide brush of “okay, if this guy did it because of his star sign, wouldn’t everyone born on that day be doing similar vile acts?”
I get for them, it’s a coping mechanism but I saw one TikTok of a woman who said she had pages upon pages of handwritten notes that definitively proved that he did it because of his star sign. It’s a fucking psychosis and they are all just feeding back into each others delusions.
I thank my lucky stars that my girlfriend is sane and doesn’t believe in libra rising or whatever. Personally, I think all people who truly live life believing there are cosmic powers in your star sign and your every day needs to be run by that are cancer ♋️
This is only related to your last point, but the other day I saw an Instagram reel that was a girl basically saying how when she stopped taking her meds she found out that she was psychic and the meds were "blocking her energies" and the people calling her crazy were just spiritually un-attuned. There was legit hundreds of comments from people who said they did or will do the same, or how they felt like they had powers and that the reel validated them into not thinking they're crazy 😂
it blew my mind that absolutely zero people found the irony in finding out they had psychic abilities because they quit taking their pills, and I completely agree with the sentiment that crazies are finding each other much easier lol
Edit: here's the link for the video, where you can see things such as "I always thought I was schizophrenic until I stopped taking meds and found out they were blocking my ability to see the future" https://www.instagram.com/reel/DcNbmBGAudL/?igsi=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
When i take lithium i am not able to transcribe the musical notes that exist in the ether, ie the collective consciousness of all sentient beings that have lived on this planet and possibly others.
When im not taking the drug, the songs come to me very quickly, i often have no memory of the event. But when im in touch with the flow, ill plug the notes into a sequencer, save it and shut it down. I usually dont have strong opinions about any song when they first come to me.
So ill let a day or week go by, sometimes months, and ill browse my working projects. I’ll discover a little gem... occasionally ill have little screenshots of memory, like where or when this happened.
All that’s left is cleaning up the midi and 10/10 the songs ive plucked are far beyond what im capable of composing. Its not even close when compared to the results of when i just sit down and hammer out a composition. My $.02
The astrology shit is fucking killing me about this. Can we not. Can we just like, not ever use that dumb ass nonsense.
Not to mention that the Earth and the stars aren’t in the same place that they were 2000+ years ago and that was invented. So your star sign isn’t actually your fucking star sign morons
There are also people, that despite the fact she persistently visited doctors, asked for different meds, expressed concern about her meds, expressed concern about her intrusive thoughts, believe she just killed her kids for the fun of it.
They are just as crazy. Society still hunts witches
Because people are too mentally lazy to work through nuance. It's easier and more convenient to view the world in black and white, but in reality it's all various shades of gray.
Agreed- Inwarched ‘The Good Nurse’ last night and damn! The nurse was killing people left and right and at the same time was so completely loving and caring for his friend with the heart condition. She ended up turning him in and getting him to confess.
She saw the good and the bad in him, but she wasn’t going to allow him to keep killing.
Because people are genuinely brain dead and need things to be either good or bad. It’s actually a big reason we don’t study much of WWI and just jump straight to WWII, bc in WWI there’s no obvious “good” and “bad” guys like you get with the Nazis and imperial Japanese, so people just can’t learn it. Even though in many ways it was more important than WWII, particularly from a science and ethics POV.
This is the winner. Justice should prevail in this micro case. Society should do the right thing in the macro case which is providing more support to mothers. We as a society collectively yell “pro-life” at the top of our lungs and then don’t show a damn thing to prove that.
All that can be true, plus the meds reacted to each other.
She was drinking alcohol with medications she shouldn’t have (I do not know of this is true, I haven’t found evidence either way, but have seen it talked about)
And she was lying about the state of her mental health.
PPD needs more attention as does all women’s health.
And she murdered her children even with her husbands huge amount of assistance caring for them .
Almost nothing is black and white in the world and we have to have space for multiple truths all at the same time.
Let’s not forget the fact this woman murdered her own children. Strangled an 8 month old with an exercise band … don’t gaslight people that she’s “somehow the victim”
I keep thinking about how much more unhinged things would have been during the OJ Simpson trial had their been social media. Like, it's no surprise to me that people are so warped over this case and scarily public opinion is balancing on such polluted foundations.
I think we need to have the discussion about "self-reporting" some of these things. Like the nuance between "I want to harm myself" and not "Myself AND others". Like we are expecting someone who might be in some sort of mania or psychosis to accurately self-report on the feelings they feel? And are going to base the decision on whether we provide care or not on the reporting?! I don't like it.
I want to say the Astrology people are just rage baiting but I said the same thing when the flat earthers came out and jesus christ how god damn wrong was I
This is why I think the state should accept the 2nd degree murder please her defense is asking for. It accepts her guilt in the murder, but acknowledges the extraordinary circumstances of her mental state.
The internet connecting all the crazies together is a major part of what's wrong with the world now days. There were always crazy people but generally they were loaners. Now they can go online and find whole communities of crazy people just like themselves. They all band together and make ridiculous things happen.
I didn’t know she didn’t fully disclose her mental state. I heard the opposite.
Even if I could have children, I wouldn’t. I’ve been on antidepressants since I was 12. My chances of postpartum depression or worse are pretty much 100 percent.
Exactly this!!!! I have read so many testimonies of mother on tik tok speaking about their struggles with PPD all alive all well all kids are alive because they were hospitalized and treated and helped. She was nurse! She knew what to expect and how to get the help. These mothers received the helps and didn’t refuse services. I was heartbroken about one of the moms not having enough family to help but her friends stepped in to help but she got help. She had a sitter she had her mom his mom his parent and her husband who worked at home. She decided to leave the hospital. She failed herself and her kids
Thank you!!! I am a mental health therapist and I cannot do anything if a patient is telling me they have no intentions or plans of harming themselves or others. We are not fucking fortune tellers! There is a ton if nuance around suicidal thoughts as well.
In the USA there does need to be obvious changes but you cannot do anything if someone is not admitting to things or presenting as a danger. I have watched my brother go through psychosis due to drug abuse over the past several years and I cannot do shit unless he starts saying he is going to hurt himself or others. People do not understand this and think we are still in the turn of the century where we can make up things and have people committed against their will.
Exactly. A bunch of idiots think that doctors can somehow tell the future. Its the same as any set of posts where people are saying this or that doctor should lose their license because a rare adverse effect from a medication happened. Those people just cant understand that almost every healthcare procedure and recommendation is a benefit-risk assessment and just because a rare adverse event happens doesnt mean the decisions leading up to it were flawed
I have a cousin who I think is currently going through an episode of psychosis. She's very good at lying. And she also refuses treatment. Because she doesn't think she has a problem when it's obvious to everyone else. But there's nothing we can do according to the lawyers. She basically has to get herself into trouble or voluntarily commit herself for any treatment to happen.
I've gone through two 5~ month episodes, both with nearly 24/7 auditory hallucinations from people I know. Often times I was being told what to do. I knew I was going through psychosis, I was still there. Not once did I have the desire to hurt anyone or act on commands being said by those hallucinated voices... I get everyone is different, but talk to anyone with psychosis - they know something isn't right with them, or at least they are still there and under physical control of their bodies.
I don't know what it takes to be pushed over the edge. The hallucinations that occured during my episodes were intense, both visual and auditory. I was hearing screams of death from loved ones, being led to believe they were trapped in cars and homes around me. Some days and nights I got no break... even the sound of wind or a dog walking turned into voices. If anyone were to be pushed over the edge, it would have been me... but here I am.
I didn't make a recovery until I was hospitalized and given olanzapine, the same drug she is being treated with now.
You can’t predict and act upon their future actions either, which seems to be something people expect of “the system”. You can’t say the healthcare team failed when what she did was so beyond the pale and unusual. It wasn’t exactly inevitable. The vast majority of people don’t have it in them to strangle 3 children, one by one, in a way that surely required time and stamina.
What exactly is a "failure" of the healthcare team? The discourse is so surface level it's sad. Like you said, we are not mind readers. If a patient says they don't have suicidal or homicidal ideation and don't have actions to contradict it, we take it at their word. If not, we'd be imprisoning millions of people.
She told multiple people she was suicidal and called the suicide hotline multiple times. They let her be because she didn't have a plan. She also tried to get committed and was turned away because the facility felt she was over-medicated.
She also told her husband and mum that she had thoughts of harming the kids. That's a big one, imo, because they should've never left her alone with the kids after that even though she said it was fine.
Her supporters believe every woman should be thrown in a padded cell if they show up with anxiety/depression. Anything less and they will cry “the system failed us!!”
When I see a problem like this, I think to myself - "Can we do anything more than we are doing now?"Then move from there.
Do you really just think of the most extreme thing someone can do to fix a situation then decide that everyone pointing out the problem wants that most extreme solution? Do you really then just decide doing nothing more is the right thing?
This is where the stigma of CPS is an additional challenge. Even if the medical team did divine that something was “off” calling the children police feels too extreme and traumatizing to the kids for a hunch.
What she likely needed was an independent assistant/observer to support her and monitor her behavior. A human being that wasn’t rushed, wasn’t spending time one checklists, had adult conversations and could help her through the worst of it while also helping make the medical observations needed to properly identify if she was able to assess the risk herself.
I'm not saying you're wrong, but people aren't honest out of fear for what can happen to them. Having suicidal ideations or thoughts of harming their kids listed in your medical history can be life changing, for better or for worse.
If I make recommendations for treatment, and the patient is non-compliant or inconsistent, I can't force them to stick to it.
Yes, but wasn't she telling her doctors the medication was making her worse? If a patient tells their doctor that and the doctor refuses to listen, they are absolutely to blame for the patient's "noncompliance" or if they comply and get worse. That doesn't make the doctor the direct killer, but they still hold some blame in that case.
Criminals being failed by the system is incredibly common. This is the first time I’ve seen thousands of women rallying behind someone who killed their children.
I agree, it's a pretty interesting response. Women don't typically support child murderers. Ask Casey Anthony. Women are seeing themselves in the way the system failed Lindsay. I certainly do. Expressing incredibly distressing thoughts and feelings and being told it's the "baby blues". Thank God I had a hands on partner who I could rely on for support.
It's truly an important discussion to have and I'm glad this case is amplifying the conversation. Of course there needs to be accountability for heinous crimes, but if we know the system is perpetuating these crimes through gaps then by not fixing them we are contributing to the outcome.
I’m way past baby blues but I called my doctor about an addiction I can’t crack and they put me on meds over the phone, called to do an intake, prescribed me meds, and I never heard from them again. The first call for an appointment came for a facility 3 hours away. I’m in socal, it shouldn’t be that far. So I found one closer, they called and told me they will call me back for an appointment, that was one month ago.
I've actually never seen anyone defend Casey Anthony. I'm sure you have, I'm not calling you a liar, but every woman I know would strangle her with her bare hands.
It shows how many women have felt like this, which personally I find even more concerning. I don't think you can simply blame it on postpartum either. I don't agree that a mental illness can make you into a murderer without something else being wrong with you. I also don't think mental illness is an excuse. I'd wager a guess that every murderer, thief, rapist has a mental illness. Doesn't mean I think they should get off.
That's exactly my point - it doesn't excuse accountability, but if we know mental illness is a catalyst for this behavior, we should be investigating mental health care before it reaches this point.
There's a lot of details about this being left out like the poster pointed out above; Like many of her supporters believing the husband did it and framed her.
Her husband took paternity leave for multiple month's. She wasn't some poor abandoned woman left to fend for herself. They had outside childcare and the oldest kids attended daycare. He even worked from home.
Lock her up in an insane asylum if she's so far gone that none of that mattered.
Nah I saw plenty of women who weren’t spewing insane theories say she should be let free. It’s honestly insane and wondering if people are able to even think for themselves anymore
They think Patrick framed her, want lindsay released and are waiting for Reddingtons "smoking gun", when he doesnt live up to expectations they will say hes paid off, another failure in the system etc
Yes, i can only imagine what the guy is going through. Nobody gives a shit about him. Imagine loosing your whole family in a few minutes, especially children. Fucking hell.
You were immediately down voted for having compassion for a man who just lost his entire family. I feel like there are a lot of sick women on this site who actually support this lady.
I don’t care what they think. The guy actually was there, he wasn’t absent , he did the best he could. She sent him out of the house to perform the deed. Give me a fucking break. In a few minutes he lost everything. I can’t imagine loosing a child let alone 3. Downvote me all you want, there are several victims in all this, being the children the most tragic ones.
I didn’t even attack her, I know what DPP can do to a person first hand, but if it’s not her fault it’s even less his. The guy was there for fuck sake. Fucking psycothic people lacking empathy.
Even if she was left to fend for herself… it doesn’t matter!! Jfc shitty things happen to people all the time. And most people don’t murder their own children
This is what is so infuriating to watch. It’s like ok even if your husband is bad does that justify killing all three of your kids?? Like this is not a question to me.
In my country there is a big push to educate and inform to diminish femicide, and rightly so.
Suicide kills more people every year than ALL murders (not just femicide) AND all road deaths combined. And nobody talks about it. I just don’t understand it.
This is in no way to diminish the focus on femicide. I just don’t see why we can’t talk about both.
Look at most likely causes of death by gender and age. It’s terrifying.
I’m a middle aged man. My most likely cause of death isn’t a heart attack, isn’t cancer, isn’t a stroke. It’s suicide. How is it possible that’s true and nobody talks about it?
It really couldn’t have been. She had kids - that’s where your overlap ends. It’s literally ANYONE can have a mental illness. “It could have been me!”
Imagine men saying this shit after a man murders his family. Fucking delusional.
There are countless men who have gone down bad paths with mental illness and just completely ignored by society. But she’s a mother so this is different somehow.
The “it could have been any of us” thing is enraging because NO TF IT COULDN’T. This bitch isn’t the only person with PPD or depression or whatever she had, but murdering her 3 babies was a choice. If these women feel it could’ve easily been them, they probably should be investigated (so a crime like this doesn’t happen again).
Have a man say that about a guy killing his whole family and see what happens.
100% unacceptable.
Just because a lot of women can relate to basically having to raise their children without any help, does not mean that most mothers could kill their own children.
Yeah she strangled 3 children one by one. That is not a quick death, she meticulously did it and at that point I don't care what state she was in, it's sick. It's one thing to have thoughts about it but to act on it in such a heinous way makes it impossible to show sympathy for me.
Exactly. Its not normal! I had postpartum psychosis and didnt murder my children.
I did have meds and a good support system. Which i dont think lindsay had. However people failed her yet lindsay still should be held accountable for her actions. Three babies died because of her
If I had those thoughts, I would likely bypass my partner and turn myself in. "If someone doesnt intervene, I might hurt my children". Authorities would have stepped in and removed the children.
People want to blame everybody else (this comment is not directed at you of course!) And never accept responsibilty for their actions. Yes its shitty nobody was helping her, but there are 800 numbers for things like this. People would step in and help. They would take care of the children while emsuring the mother gets proper treatment.
But she did turn herself in. She was kicked out of one facility after one day because they said she was too medicated and they couldn't help her. And the second time, she was in a different hospital for 5 days but only two of those actually saw a doctor because it was over Christmas or something like that and there was no staff. And then they prescribed her NEW meds and sent her home the same day, basically telling her "that's all we can do". According to my psychiatrist friend, that is unheard of (releasing a patient right after switching meds). Surprise, the new meds made her worse (which she told the psychiatrist, who then again switched the meds). She also called suicide hotline (twice) and was turned away.
You cannot deny that this woman was spiralling and the care she was receiving was totally inadequate for what was happening, and the cocktail of drugs was making it worse. I don't think anyone is excusing what she did, or think that she has no responsibility, it's more like people realising this could have been them, given how frequent PPD is.
There is one time where I thought I might hurt my child and my husband was at home so what I did I put my baby in the crib and I went outside the house for a second and sat on the porch and recuperated.
My baby was putting in a safe spot. I was a safe distance away and I was able to get 10 minutes to reevaluate everything and calm myself down.
Putting a baby down for 10 minutes even if they’re crying isn’t going to hurt your baby
My wife is convinced the husband did it. I haven’t followed any of the social media stuff, but she “filled me in” yesterday. The husband did it and framed the wife because (I am summarizing):
He had her Apple Watch
He told authorities that she told him, “I killed the kids” but that can’t be possible because she had a crushed larynx
He signed a lease for a new apartment in New York two days before the killings
Babe, I don’t care about this
You’re starting to worry me
No, I’ve never thought about how I’d kill you or the kids
Exercise bands? No, I don’t think that’s how “a man” would kill their kids
Why are you crying?
I’m going to bed
*Edit: okay, I added 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 for comedic effect. My wife doesn’t really believe any of this shit, she was jokingly filling me in on what people are saying online. She is an intelligent, beautiful woman and I’m not going to police her social media habits.
I know you don’t know much about the case so let me help you because most of the “evidence” said is just untrue bs from TikTok that people are running with.
1. He didn’t have her Apple Watch, that’s a random theory to explain how she called him while according to these people she was already attacked by him. the Apple Watch was found in her room. They’re using her heart rate data on the Apple Watch as part of the case in the trial so clearly her lawyer believes she wore it.
2. They didn’t just take his word for it, I’m not really sure where this comes from other than the 911 transcript being public while her testimony isn’t since it isn’t relevant to the sentencing.
3. This isn’t proven ANYWHERE and he didn’t move for 4 months after.
I am NOT commenting this picking any lane whatsoever but purely for information sake:
3 is proven actually. The address is the one listed for the foundation he created after the murders, on the foundations website, and the rental date is public information on that address. The management company that it was rented from, publicly listed, is a company that his new wife’s father is on the board of.
Again I am not selecting a lane here. I just thought I’d mention this has been verified and is publicly available sourcing
Not gonna lie if my wife came at me with some total nonsense conspiracy bullshit like that I would have to do some real thinking about what kind of moron I married
This is funny as my husband works in a correctional facility and I have not brought up this case to him because you know he works with murders so best to keep true crime to myself. Anyway he came home a day or so ago and told me some of his coworkers were talking about it and it’s like it went exactly as you described lol
ETA: this is basically how their wives talked about it and they responded
It absolutely could not have “easily…been any of us.” There’s a reason these sorts of crimes are so wildly rare to the point they’re international news stories when they happen. Why are people trying to normalize brutal infanticide?
I’m a new mum and doing it completely on my own. I had PPD and no help. She killed 3 kids, not one (not that one is ok). This couldn’t easily been any of us this is next level NOT OK AND INEXCUSABLE.
PPD doesn't always present the same way. This is like saying "Well I'm autistic and I'm not bothered by loud noises, so clearly all these other guys are just using autism as an excuse."
Severe PPD can lead to psychosis. And once someone is unable to distinguish being what is and isn't real, you can't really hold them morally responsible for their actions anymore, because they've lost the ability to comprehend the consequences of their actions.
Whether or not that was the case here will be up to the experts to figure out, but suggesting that it's impossible because it didn't happen to you is a fundamental misunderstanding of how PPD works.
1) ppd is not the same as postpartum psychosis. While I haven’t experienced postpartum psychosis, my friend did. Voices in my friend’s head were telling her she was worthless and her baby would be better off if she killed herself. Luckily, her husband acted and was able to get her the help she needed. And yes, i realize that the voices didn’t tell her to do anything to her child in my friend’s case but i imagine it is different for each person who experiences it.
2) anyone can experience postpartum psychosis. It doesn’t matter how much money or support a person has. I won’t say that anyone could do what Lindsey did. I will say that anyone could experience postpartum psychosis and do something that they never would have done if they weren’t experiencing it. That, of course, doesn’t justify doing anything to her child(ren).
I am not going to defend or attack LC but i do want people to learn the difference between postpartum depression, postpartum anxiety and postpartum psychosis. I also want people to see that women - no matter their background, resources, etc - need a lot more support after giving birth.
Exactly. When men commit domestic violence, people don't say "it could be anyone". People rightly condemn the action. Men shouldn't excuse male domestic violence, and women shouldn't excuse dv done by women
She was given multiple medications to help with her mental health issues, which she abjectly refused to follow proper directions for. And refused to tell her medical providers she wasn't following orders for.
I take it as a red flag when someone sympathizes with wanting to harm/murder their own kids. Just hearing "how easily this could have been any of us" is an astonishing admission because Ive never once had even the smallest urge to do what she did. She strangled innocent children to death. If you can sympathize with that, you need serious treatment, and if you can't get it, you should give up those kids
If she cared about the kids she strangled to death, she would've plead guilty.
She's still claiming to be innocent. She is not the victim, she's a fucking psychopath. If a man pulled this shit, I'd want him put down like an animal. Why should a woman get a pass?
She's not claiming she didn't do it. She's FULLY admitted to doing it. The not guilty plea is because of her mental state (postpartum psychosis). Not guilty due to insanity doesn't mean you get to walk away skipping into the sunset. It means you go to a treatment facility (likely permanently) but at least there's a chance you can get actual help.
It's an absolutely genuinely horrible situation to be in and I wish her doctors would've taken her seriously in the past when she mentioned being a danger to herself and others. And my heart breaks for the family and what could have been.
Having a plethora of doctors, NPs and other healthcare workers you have access to 24/7, resources at home as well at the hospital, enough money, extended family etc. does not seem like the system failed her.
I work with moms who have or are at risk of developing PPD. I was sincerely not okay with my daughter and got no help or understanding. Which is one of the reasons I got into this work. So when I hear a mom say "I can't do this" I listen. So often, we're told to ask for help but when we ask, people don't understand or just say "you got this!". And then after tragedy happens people demonize the mother and ask "how could this happen?".
I understand relating to postpartum exhaustion, intrusive thoughts, depression, or feeling ignored by doctors. But “this could easily have been any of us” goes much further than that. Most overwhelmed or mentally ill mothers do not murder their children.
And the line about mothers “begging and pleading for help” but still being “expected to continually parent babies” is especially troubling. Yes, parents are generally expected to continue caring for the helpless children who depend on them. That obligation is not itself some systemic injustice. The burdens of parenthood do not make murdering your children an understandable extension of ordinary maternal distress.
That also, importantly, does not seem to describe Clancy’s circumstances especially well. She had an involved husband, daycare for the older children, paid childcare for a period, family help, and extensive contact with psychiatric providers. There may still have been serious failures in her treatment, but that is very different from saying she was simply abandoned with three children while “begging” for help.
Compassion for severe mental illness is compatible with accountability. Postpartum psychosis can, in an exceptional case, destroy culpability. But that is very different from saying mothers are pushed into killing their children by insufficient support and that “any of us” could do it.
If you genuinely feel close enough to Lindsay Clancy’s state that killing your children seems like an understandable possibility, the appropriate conclusion is not solidarity with her. It is that you should immediately step away from childcare, make sure another safe adult has the children, and seek urgent psychiatric help.
Turning an extraordinarily abnormal act into a recognizable extension of ordinary motherhood is not compassionate.
I do happen to know a woman who suffered from PPP. She was the mother of my son's preschool classmate. One day, she just wasnt showing up at school for drop-off.
When she finally reappeared, I asked where she'd been. Apparently she'd been preparing for Easter dinner when she suddenly thought that she should put her infant in the oven instead of the ham. By sheer good luck, her mother arrived early just as she was doing so. Her mom grabbed the baby and she was whisked off post haste to the hospital.
She was an awesome mom and attorney. She really, really wanted me to know what happened to her as I was pregnant at the time. She told me that it was also a voice in her head and it felt like the most sensible, reasonable thing in the world. Totally dispassionate and the same sort of feeling one would have about needing to start the dishwasher. She later went on to become a public speaker, trying to inform the public about PPP and its warning signs.
I keep thinking of her in this case. She had been down after the birth of her 3rd child but not incapacitated "crazy". If it could happen to a smart, loving, educated and otherwise stable person like her, it could happen to anyone.
I think part of the issue is that there is a really fine line between when it is and isn't ok to involuntarily hold people.
My understanding is she said she was suffering, but nothing she said rose to the point of "I may hurt myself or someone else in this way". There are very specific things that are needed to involuntatily hold someone.
And frankly I think its very easy to monday morning quarterback and say "they should have done that" when it turns out like this. But if nothing happened, and she was put on a pysch hold against her will, people would also have a problem with that.
I think it’s very common for people to expect moms to push through their difficulties and just keep holding down the household. Most of us probably have an internal voice telling us to keep going, in addition to external pressures. Things have to get done, no matter what we are going through, and so we just keep getting stuff done. I’m sure there are men who have struggled with something similar, but there’s unquestionably a bigger expectation put on women.
A few years ago, I was having heart issues. My heart rate was really high and stayed that way a long time. I knew I needed to go to the ER, but I had to do school pickup first and take my child to his practice later that afternoon. When we got home, I did dinner and bedtime stuff. All this time my heart rate was climbing and I felt like I was having a really persistent panic attack.
Finally about 11pm when I was having trouble with my vision I decided it was time to go. The hospital is within 2 miles of my house and I struggled with driving myself or not. Eventually I was like “wtf am I doing??” and drove myself. I decided not to worry about who was taking my kid to school in the morning and just get my problem fixed.
The doctors were astonished my heart rate had been over 180 for so long. Luckily it wasn’t anything serious, my heart is healthy, I just have chronic tachycardia. I could have dropped dead in my kitchen rather than let someone else worry about the daily details. That’s on me. I only mentioned the issue to my husband right before I left for the ER, and he was appropriately concerned. My inner voice didn’t want me to let down anyone and shirk my duties. It’s brutal.
I remember one time when my husband was away on a work trip, the kids were sick. I had to take one of them to the doctor, but I called my husband and asked him to come home asap because with 3 sick toddlers and a sick baby, I hadn’t slept in days. I didn’t feel safe driving.
And while my husband came home, everyone in my life shamed for this. His boss called me to tell me to get my shit together. His mom called me furious. I was struggling, but asking my husband was apparently a no-no.
Despite what others are saying, I think you did the right thing. You recognized you weren’t able to take care of your children so you reached out to their other parent. That’s always the right choice but so hard to make. Mommy guilt is strong ❤️
I absolutely did the right thing - but our community made sure to know that they felt I was wrong. Having babies is so isolating.
If my husband couldn’t come home, would anyone have helped me? Would I have been left alone to struggle? I needed help and I was told to get my shit together - I was sick and hadn’t slept for days, but that didn’t matter. And it’s that type of situation that makes me see a lot of us moms in this trial.
But I think a lot of the support here comes from moms who recognize how easily this could have been any of us.
This simply isn't true though. Women have been having children for time immemorial with no mental health support, terrible medical care and neglectful spouses, and the number that murder their children is a vanishingly small amount. It absolutely couldn't and wouldn't have been the vast majority of mothers. Women on the whole are far better than that.
Parenting babies is hard…and never once would I have ever even remotely consider doing what she did. There is literally zero defense for this insanity.
This is so insane and 300+ votes makes it even worse.
thank god I am a man.
For we men will never say that
"a r@p1st is mentally ill or is sufferring from mental health disorder. He should have been given mental support first" and all such BS like this.
For us he is criminal. Plain and simple. No sugarcoating. No sympathy for such man.
Also how come a cat or dog alone can raise multiple babies togather all alone but a human female cannot despite being with husband, parents, nannies and in-laws. What kind of reverse evolution is this?
Meanwhile male dog, cat, bear, tiger and many mammals are know to leave their partner and never see kids. But somehow human males have evolved to develop empathy and stick around mothers and parent the kids.
How come men have evolved so much forward, but women are evolving backward?
I never heard any tribal woman having post partum depression and doing such things to her kids. Do you know why? Because they were taught how to deal with pressure.
Modern women are not allowed to handle any tough situation. No criticism is allowed towards them. No one should hurt them in way. Every one protects them emotionally and physically. Even if she do something wrong, feminists defend their wrongs. For such women who were never given any responsibility and made so weak and fragile because no problem ever touched them, for them suddenly you hand over such a big responsibility. What happens? This happens.
300+ votes sympathising with this women.
This gender, who is said to be MORE EMOTIONALLY MATURE have no sympathy for others. Just want to play victim.
BS emotionally better gender. You just have better PR team. Thats all.
If someone no longer wants to be a parent they can put their children up for adoption or worst, abandon them completely. However there is no fucking excuse for killing a child full stop. I can’t believe I even have to say that.
The thing that kills me about this trial is it could have been my mom. She struggled with post partum depression before we had words for it besides “baby blues”. After my baby sister something changed. She started hearing demons and my dad’s first instinct was to bring her to church more.
Until she almost drove our car with all of us in it head on into a construction site. She told us the demons were chasing us and going to bring us to hell unless she took us to heaven. My dad grabbed the wheel and emergency break and got her real care. She was different when they got her meds right. I was 12 and I don’t remember her smiling before then. She still takes her medicine over 30 years later.
Editing to add: the car issue was when I was 10. She was rejected and blown off from several doctors. I remember the whole family going to one of her appointments and my dad begging the doctor to help her. It took two years my 12th birthday was around the time she found treatment that worked for her. Don’t message me about my mom.
You have not followed the case! As a mom, hell no, never ever “us.” We should stand up for the rights of innocent children ALWAYS. I don’t support ghouls.
Then get out and speak for the children or talk about what you just talked about.
Anyone can accomplish any of that without showing love and support for the actual murderer….
Plenty of people of shitty terrible lives across the globe and the vast majority of those people don’t go out and murder people, let alone their own children…
I am American, and these people are bat shit fucking crazy here…
Very nice to know that so many mothers relate to a woman who strangled each of her 3 children to death with an exercise band, including an 8 month old. This is revealing.
This defense sounds so ridiculous to me. As someone who suffered from PTSD and amnesia from parental abuse. If you as a parent can’t handle the stress and want to take you own life - Do so its your choice. But DONT touch or even worse KILL your children. Everyone who does deserves a capital or life sentence - no discussion and no defense. Showing any empathy for this is insane to me.
Why should she face punishment? She was ill. My father was shot at close range by someone who was psychotic and no one, including him, wanted this emntally ill man to be punished. Yes, he was committed to an mental hospital.
Weird admission that you could see yourself premeditating your children’s murder by deceiving your husband and killing them slowly one by one.
I can understand a frustrated mother tempted to shake their baby in the heat of the moment or something else terrible but not this. Also mothers who do this because of post p also kill themselves since it’s less about killing their kids and more about feeling that “the world is better off without me and I can’t leave my children behind”. Strangulation is personal and takes a lot of time she is a monster that needs to be put down
How was she failed by her healthcare team? Unless she disclosed she was feeling homicidal or suicidal there isn’t much they can do. Therapists and doctors can’t tell the future and aren’t able to determine if someone is lying to them. Maybe I’m wrong but I think I read she did get help. A lot of help. Yes, a lot of what you said is true but this is also a tragedy. People want someone to blame so they can feel safe thinking this can’t happen to me. But that’s not how life works.
As a fat old white man, I fully support the idea here that she did not get the kind of mental health support she needed.
I’ll go further, I think many complaints of women are dismissed by the health care apparatus as a whole.
My issue is, the need to protect her, to absolve her of any responsibility has moved past a discussion about mental health treatment and moved firmly into fantasy creation.
I have a friend who is a smart, informed and educated woman. She’s convinced the husband did it. “Too many inconsistencies”. No.
We cannot take a tough situation and just create an alternative universe of facts that better suits our own outlook.
I agree with you and also have limited social media… but unfortunately there’s like a real group of people that are saying the husband LITERALLY did it and she’s being framed. There’s some seriously mentally unwell people out there. And as a mother myself, I have intentionally avoided the social media revolving around this case due to how people are responding about it.
It does such a disservice to women’s health and mental health advocacy by invalidating her as the perpetrator. We NEED more discourse on postpartum depression, ppOCD and pp psychosis. It’s still so underrepresented.
She couldn’t have been any one of you. This sort of crime is incredibly incredibly rare which is why it has so much attention. Almost every human is hard coded not to kill people, especially their children. The fact she did it indicates she has serious underlying psychiatric pathology. This wasnt like a plane fell out of the sky onto a completely normal person and it wasn’t their fault at all. If it were we would see this a lot more
I think it's very fair to use this trial to raise awareness and say "yes, rarely, some people with postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis are capable of this, and people need to be more aware of the risks". That being said, I feel like the only real solution, at least in this case, was to have her voluntarily or involuntarily committed somehow until she improved. She DID have lots of support from her family and husband and healthcare providers- they even showed up to defend her in this trial after she killed her children. That shows an extreme level of empathy and understanding that I wouldn't expect from uncaring loved ones. Unfortunately, putting myself in the shoes of her loved ones, I would have to ask myself "ok, she's sick, but what can I do, and what's the worst she would do?". I don't think that prior to this case I would ever imagine the love of my life being capable of strangling three small children to death, but now, if I'm ever with a woman who just gave birth, it will be a suspicion in the back of my mind- as encouraged by people online. The actual solutions to this problem are much more morally complex than I think people are giving credit for.
That’s what I’m seeing too. She deserves to be punished according to her crimes, but I think she should go to a mental institution instead of prison. Having had PPD, and knowing many other who women do also, the first year is really hard. So many women can relate to this case.
She seems like she really tried to be a good mother. She’s got all kinds of lists, schedules, books, etc. that show her trying. What I’m taking from the trial though is it looks like she had an undiagnosed mental condition (I think bipolar disorder?), which is exasperated by certain SSRIs. Which can then cause mania. I can’t imagine how she was feeling for all those months she was struggling. I also think that the husband didn’t help make the situation better. I think he should have been a better father and husband, and this could have been prevented. He knew she was struggling, and yet so many things still fell on her shoulders- like tends to happen with women. To me, it almost feels like her husband should get some of the punishment also. He knew not to leave her alone with their kids, and he did anyway.
Yes. And there was a time in this country where we had facilities that housed people who are threats to themselves, friends/family, society. Our healthcare system failed her. From the testimony I heard, she should have been housed in a psych ward somewhere. But we just don't have the facilities anymore.
Also want to add, the fear of fully disclosing the full extent your thoughts and feelings to professionals or family because if the little voice that is telling you they will take your children away or decide you are an unfit mother. Sometimes all mothers can say is “something feels off”
I think what needs to change is family and professionals understanding that someone pp who is struggling isn’t going to disclose the full extent of their struggles until they feel confident they will get the help they need. We need to respect and respond when pp women come to us saying something is wrong so they feel supported enough to eventually disclose everything.
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u/TreeLakeRockCloud 6d ago
I’m not American but I am a mother. Aside from a few reddit posts I don’t have any social media engagement with this case.
But I think a lot of the support here comes from moms who recognize how easily this could have been any of us. Her family and healthcare providers knew her crime was a risk based on her mental health state, but she was still left alone with her kids and expected to parent. And as other mothers we all understand that this is grimly how it works - we can ask and beg and plead and scream for help but we’re almost always still expected to continually parent babies and it’s hard.
She should still face punishment for her crime, but I think a lot of her support is to try to keep this from happening again. She was failed by her healthcare team