Latest / Missing Context / The postpartum psychosis she couldn’t talk about - The Daksha Emson case

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The postpartum psychosis she couldn’t talk about - The Daksha Emson case · Missing Context

• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: I've been thinking a lot about the Lindsay Clansey case.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: For anyone outside of the United States who may not know the story, Lindsay Clansey is a young mother from the state of Massachusetts in the U.S., who in January of 2023 was accused of killing her three children, five-year-old Cora, three-year-old Dawson, and eight-month-old Callan, before attempting to take her own life.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: She survived.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: Her children did not.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: The case has received enormous attention, particularly because Lindsay had been experiencing severe mental health problems after giving birth.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: Her husband had described changes in her behavior.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: She'd been seeing multiple mental health professionals.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: There were medications, appointments, and serious discussions about how she was doing.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: And still, three children died.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's heartbreaking.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: And if I'm being honest, it also makes me so angry.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: I don't quite know where to put all of that anger.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a mother myself.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: I know how quickly those first few months after having a baby can, you know, swallow you whole.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: How little sleep you get, how isolating it can feel, even when there are people around you.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: But there is a point where exhaustion and the upheaval of having a new baby become much more concerning.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: One of the illnesses that has entered the conversation around cases like Lindsay's is postpartum psychosis, a psychiatric emergency that can profoundly alter the way a mother experiences what is happening around her.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I want to be careful with Lindsay's case.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: Her trial is still unfolding, and I'm not going to tell you what was happening inside her mind or assign her a diagnosis that's not been established in court.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: But the questions raised by her case are difficult to ignore.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I started wondering about the women whose stories we hear less often.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: Women from immigrant families, women of color, Asian women.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: Women whose families have their own ideas about motherhood, mental illness, privacy, and reputation.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: For some Asian women, talking openly about psychiatric illness has also meant confronting the fear of being judged, of being seen as a bad mother, or of bringing a private family problem into the public.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to know what one of those stories looked like.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: And that's how I found Dr.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: Daksha Emson.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: There's one photo of Daksha that I cannot get out of my head.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: She's sitting on a bench with her three-month-old daughter, Freya, in her arms.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: Daksha looks tired, but she's beaming.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: Both arms are wrapped tightly around Freya.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: Her cheek is almost touching her daughter's.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: Freya is pressed against her chest, held close with hardly any space between them.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's an incredibly intimate photograph.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: And it was taken twenty four hours before Daksha killed her daughter and attempted to take her own life.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: By then, she'd already bought the acetone she would use.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: She'd already made her plans.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: But in this photograph, there's no indication of any of that.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: There's just Daksha holding her baby, smiling straight into the camera.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: The next day, Freya would be dead.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: And Daksha would be found barely alive.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: You are listening to Missing Context.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: Stories from Asia and the Asian Diaspora.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: Daksha was born in Tanzania in 1966.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: Her parents were Gujarati with family roots in India, but by the time Daksha was born, East Africa had been home for decades.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: When Daksha was four, political upheaval forced the family to leave Tanzania.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: So they returned to Gujarat.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: Five years later, they left again.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: This time, they went to the UK.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: They arrived in London in the mid-1970s, during a period when immigration had become one of the country's most heated political debates.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: White supremacist parties were gaining support all over the country.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: Asian families faced racism in schools, housing, and employment, not to mention daily violence on the street.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: For Daksha's parents, starting again in London meant building a new life for their family from scratch.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: They'd already lost one home.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: Now they had to build another.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: At school, she had another set of things to deal with.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: She learned English.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: She worked on her accent.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: She carefully watched the way children spoke, dressed, joked, and interacted with each other.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: And then there were her studies.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: Daksha was exceptional.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: Her academic achievement was so remarkable that she became the first student from her school to attend medical school.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: In 1984, at 18, she entered the Royal London Hospital Medical School.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: A year later, she attempted to take her own life.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: She was admitted to a hospital and initially diagnosed with depression.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: After a later episode of mania, doctors diagnosed her with bipolar affective disorder.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: Over the years, there would be five psychiatric hospitalizations, three courses of electroconvulsive therapy.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: And between those episodes, Daksha kept going back to medical school.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: Her studies took a little longer, but she won scholarships.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: She received medals and academic awards.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: She continued to achieve at a level that would have been extraordinary, even without the hospitalizations or the medications or the illness constantly interrupting her life.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: Eventually, Daksha chose to study psychiatry.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: She wanted to understand her own bipolar affective disorder and help others who were going through it as well.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: Daksha understood bipolar affective disorder not just as a doctor, but as someone who'd lived through it herself.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: But she also wanted to understand what was happening biologically: the medications, their effects, their side effects, and what happened when treatment didn't work.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: That experience shaped the doctor she became.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: Her colleagues remembered her as incredibly kind, thorough, and empathetic.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: She listened to patients carefully and took them seriously.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: Daksha was good at what she did.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: Good enough that she was invited to teach other doctors.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: But there was another side to being a psychiatrist who had herself spent time in psychiatric hospitals.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: The medical world Daksha was entering was overwhelmingly white and male at the time, particularly at its senior levels.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: Daksha was a woman.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: She was Indian.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: She was the daughter of immigrants who had come to London and built a life above a grocery store.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: And she was working towards the highest level of her profession, where very few doctors looked like her.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: An inquiry after Daksha's death found that she went to considerable lengths to keep her psychiatric history hidden from supervisors.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: Daksha was open with occupational health, which is the UK's national service responsible for doctors' well-being, but received little support in terms of follow-ups or interventions or advice.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: By the 1990s, Daksha had entered a pretty long period of relative wellness.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: The medication lithium was part of her treatment, and she also took Prozac for some time.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: There was only one documented episode of mania during her residency and fellowship years, but otherwise, she remained well for about eight years.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: In 1991, while training in Ireland, she met David Emson, a soft-spoken radiologist.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: They fell in love.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: Daksha's family initially opposed the relationship, but the couple married in 1992 with both a civil ceremony and a Hindu wedding.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: Daksha now had the life she'd once imagined from the small apartment above her parents' door: a medical career, a husband, and the prospect of a family of her own.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: Then she and David began thinking seriously about having a child.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: For Daksha, pregnancy required a great deal of preparation.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: She knew how serious her illness had been.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: She also knew what the medication had given her over the previous decade.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: Her health, a reputable medical career, and the ability to live life the way she wanted.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: Daksha and David talked a lot about what would happen if she came off her medication as they tried for a baby.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: What should they watch for?
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: What changes in her mood or sleep should concern them?
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: What would they do if her behavior changed?
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: There was another pressure as well.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: Daksha was approaching the level of consultant psychiatrist.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: A consultant psychiatrist is the highest clinical grade in the UK's National Health Service or NHS when it comes to psychiatry.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: It meant leading teams, teaching younger doctors, and making major clinical decisions independently.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: Daksha had worked extraordinarily hard to get here.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: She was terrified that her psychiatric history could jeopardize it.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: So, the pregnancy was planned with extreme caution.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: Daksha stopped lithium while trying to conceive.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: Soon she became pregnant.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: David and Daksha were over the moon.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: But the pregnancy ended in a miscarriage.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: Daksha became pregnant the next month, but that pregnancy also didn't continue.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: Within three months, Daksha suffered three miscarriages, including the loss of twins.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: A few months later, Daksha became pregnant again.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: This pregnancy continued.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: David remembers Daksha smiling constantly as they moved from one milestone to the next.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: After three miscarriages, every week that passed brought another reason to believe they might finally bring this baby home.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: Freya, their healthy baby girl, was born in July of 2000.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: Daksha was elated.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: She finally had the baby she'd so desperately longed for.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: Daksha was also determined to breastfeed Freya.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: She saw it as one of the most important things she could give her daughter, the best possible start in life and part of being the mother she wanted to be.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: With her psychiatrist's agreement, she remained off lithium for another three months.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: During this time, she cared for Freya.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: She began doing some part-time work.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: She started preparing to return to psychiatry.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: The people around her were still turning to Daksha to tell them how she was doing.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: She'd lived with the illness for a long time.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: She understood the treatment and knew the warning signs better than anyone around her.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: David, I know my illness, she would tell her husband.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: So David and the doctors, who knew her history, trusted that knowledge.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: For years that trust had been justified.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: Then, as summer turned to fall, Daksha's sleep began to rapidly deteriorate.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: By September, Daksha was depressed and was barely sleeping.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: But she was still doing an incredible amount of work.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: Daksha was looking after Freya, keeping up with the demands of a new baby, all the while trying to return to work.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: She was also talking to her doctors.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: She was talking to family.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: From the outside, there was still plenty of evidence that she was functioning well.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: But functioning well is not the same thing as being well.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: Daksha's sleep was rapidly deteriorating.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: Her thoughts were becoming increasingly preoccupied with failure as a mother, as a wife, as a woman.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: She was writing about those fears in her diary while continuing to do the things everyone around her had come to expect from Daksha.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: And this is what is so heartbreaking when we look back at those weeks.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: The illness was there, the signs were there.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: But Daksha wasn't a woman lying in bed unable to care for her baby.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: She wasn't pushing Freya away.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: She was feeding her daughter, playing with her, showering her with hugs and kisses.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: She was laughing at David's jokes, answering the phone, going to the store, speaking to her doctors.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: All while her thoughts were taking her further and further from what was real.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: Postpartum psychosis is volatile.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: It moves quickly.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: And sometime during those final days, Daksha began to develop beliefs that were no longer grounded in reality.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: Freya became a part of those beliefs.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: Daksha became convinced that her baby was in grave danger from evil forces, that she needed to protect Freya at all costs.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: By the time this shift in thinking happened, Daksha was no longer simply watching for the signs of relapse.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: She was lying awake at night, caught in a thought spiral she just couldn't quiet, with her fears becoming harder and harder to separate from what was actually happening around her.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: Her illness was no longer something she was managing.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: It was beginning to dictate what she saw, what she believed, and what she feared.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: This is important because a symptom like deteriorating sleep can actually be an early warning sign of bipolar relapse.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: But in a new mother, poor sleep can look like part of the job.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: There's no routine screening test for postpartum psychosis that can simply tell a doctor whether a woman is developing it.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: Doctors and family have to recognize risk and changes in behavior.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: In Daksha's case, there were several things happening at once.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: Her worsening sleep, like I mentioned, was one of the clearest warning signs, but at the time, it was not being treated with the urgency we might place on it today.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: Daksha's doctors and David knew she was struggling with depression, with sleep, but they were also seeing a highly functional woman dealing with what could easily look like the exhaustion of new motherhood.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: What they could not see was where those symptoms were taking Daksha.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: Part of that was because Daksha's care was not happening in one place with one person.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: She'd chosen not to become a formal patient of the local community mental health team because of her fear that her psychiatric history would become known.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, she spoke to the people she trusted.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: A psychiatrist friend often visited Daksha at her house and they discussed her symptoms.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: She spoke with a few other trusted colleagues.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: She talked to David.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: These were people who knew Daksha and cared about her.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: But the issue was that they were not talking to one another about what Daksha was sharing.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: And there were very few and sporadic notes about these conversations.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: So there was no comprehensive assessment.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: Her care was pretty devoid of any context of her bipolar disorder, the recent birth, the lack of sleep, the depression, the fact that she was off medication, and finally the changes that people were beginning to notice in her behavior.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the other complication was Daksha was seen as a highly respected doctor first and foremost, rather than a vulnerable patient.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: That made it easier to believe that she would recognize when she needed help and just ask for it, that she didn't need the level of care and monitoring that a patient with her medical history might normally receive.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: But that assumption had a major flaw.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: Because the very illness Daksha's confidants were relying on her to recognize was beginning to affect her judgment severely.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: Daksha actually did tell her doctors that she was depressed.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: She did seek help.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: And that makes these final weeks extremely painful for us to go through and look back on.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: Because she was reaching out, she was telling people she wasn't well.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: There were people around her who knew she was struggling.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: But she was still keeping the worst of it to herself.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: Daksha was lying awake into the early morning hours, her thoughts churning.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: She was frightened and vulnerable.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: She was beginning to believe she was failing the people who depended on her: Freya, David, her patients.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: On October 5th, Daksha met with her psychiatrist friend.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: She told him about her depression and talked about the pressures at work and the demands of caring for Freya.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: Her psychiatrist recommended that she restart her medication and consider weaning Freya.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: Daksha reluctantly agreed.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: She would stop breastfeeding.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: She would begin taking the medication.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: Her psychiatrist wrote out the prescription.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: Daksha was due to start her medicine on October 10th, five days away.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: The next evening, Daksha and David were supposed to go to a concert.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: Her sister-in-law was going to look after Freya.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: But that afternoon, Daksha changed her mind.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: She told David to go on without her.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: The following morning, Freya woke early for a feed.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: Daksha was already awake.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: She fed the baby and brought her into bed with her and David.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: The couple had a small argument about who should go to the grocery store.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: They needed groceries.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: They also needed baby formula.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: David wanted Daksha to begin weaning Freya so she could restart her medication that week.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: Eventually, Laksha got dressed and went to the store.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: The inquiry that I mentioned earlier records that she left around 8:30 or 9 that morning.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: It is possible she bought the acetone she would later use that day during this same trip.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: But what she was definitely buying was formula for her baby.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: Later that morning, Daksha's mother called.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: She offered to come over with Daksha's sister.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: Daksha said no.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: She didn't want them to visit.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: Now, on its own, that might not have seemed alarming at all.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: A tired new mom declining a family visit isn't really that unusual.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: But by then, Daksha was withdrawing.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: And her thoughts about Freya were becoming more concerning.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: She'd become convinced that her daughter needed protection from evil forces.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: She hinted at this to David over the next couple of days.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: On the morning of October 9th, David kissed Daksha and Freya before leaving for work.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't know that this would be the last morning he would see his wife and daughter alive together.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: That afternoon, when David returned from work, he expected the usual sounds of home.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: His wife talking to the baby, Freya making those little three-month-old noises babies make, gurgling, cooing, answering Daksha's voice with a sound of her own.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: He called out for his wife, for his daughter.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: Then he smelled smoke.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: It was coming from upstairs.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: On the kitchen table was a note from Daksha.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: The writing was in capital letters.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: Daksha wrote that Freya was in danger from something really bad, that she loved her daughter and had to protect her.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: David ran upstairs.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: The smell of smoke and burning became stronger as he reached the bedroom.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: Freya was dead, lying on the bed.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: She'd been stabbed.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: Daksha was lying on the floor, badly burnt, one eye open.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_00: David called to her in panic.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: She looked at him and said his name.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: Then she lost consciousness.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: Daksha would die three weeks later.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: She was thirty-four years old.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: The police initially arrested David in connection with his wife's death.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: He was released a few weeks later.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: But the question that remained was not simply what had happened in that bedroom.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: It was how Daksha had reached that point, while doctors, her husband, and the people who knew her well were all aware that she was becoming unwell.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: The inquiry would spend years examining that question.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: There was one place where Daksha had been putting some of her feelings into words.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: Her diary.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: Her diary actually gives us a much clearer picture of how badly Daksha was struggling.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: She was increasingly preoccupied with failure.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: At work, she was still pushing herself to prove that she belonged in a senior, overwhelmingly white male position.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: There was little room in her mind to let anyone see her falter.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: And beneath all of it, of course, was the fear that if people discovered how unwell Daksha had once been, how unwell she felt now, she could completely lose the career she'd fought so hard to establish, and perhaps even lose Freya.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: Those fears began to converge until failure itself became a recurring theme in the way Daksha saw herself.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_00: She wrote, I feel useless as a mother, as a wife, as a woman.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: I see no hope for the future.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: In another entry, she described sleep that left her feeling no better than before.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: She wrote about forcing herself to eat because Freya needed the nourishment.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: She worried that everyone could see she was failing.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: And then the language in the diary begins to change.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: Daksha began to question her own worth, her own character.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: Am I bad and wicked?
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: Do I deserve good things?
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: Is there really any hope for the future?
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: And there was another line in the diary that is particularly painful to read.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: Daksha wrote that she was finding it difficult to hang on to reality.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, Daksha knew her illness.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: But by this time, her illness was progressing too rapidly.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: It was changing how she saw herself and everyone around her.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: And that made it harder for her to recognize how urgently she needed help.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: By the time help came, it was too late.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: I began this episode thinking about Lindsay Clancy.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: I was angry, I still am.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: But I also know enough about postpartum mental illness to know that anger and empathy can actually exist together.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what Lindsay understood about her own condition, what she believed was happening to her, or what her state of mind was like at the time.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: Her case is still being decided.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: There's still deliberations happening.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: What I do know is what happened to Daksha.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: Despite the illness taking hold, Daksha seemed to know she was worsening.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: She sought help.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: But she was also trying to protect her career, her privacy, and her family from the consequences of anyone knowing just how unwell she'd become.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: And much of that responsibility for deciding when she needed more help still rested with her.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_00: Daksha was asking for help while trying to hide how much she needed it.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_00: And the system struggled to recognize vulnerability in a woman who had become exceptionally good at appearing capable.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: The inquiry after Daksha and Freya's deaths condemned the UK's NHS for severe neglect, for being complicit in the tragedy.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: Doctors did not warn David or Daksha's family of the rapid onset of postpartum psychosis, how it can trigger a complete detachment from reality in a matter of hours, how Daksha was extremely vulnerable.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: The inquiry also made several recommendations about communication between professionals, perinatal mental health care, recognizing risk, and supporting doctors with mental illness.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_00: But Daksha's story also leaves us with a human question.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: How many women are trying desperately to remain the person everyone knows them to be while secretly becoming more and more sick?
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: For women from immigrant and minority communities, that struggle can come with the added fear of shame, stigma, judgment, and losing the life they'd worked so hard to protect.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: Baksha was not just the woman in that bedroom on October 9th.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: She was also the little girl who arrived in the UK speaking very little English, the brilliant medical student who fought a serious illness, the gifted and empathetic psychiatrist, and the mother who held her baby close.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_00: All of those women were Daksha.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_00: You are listening to Missing Context Stories from Asia and the Asian diaspora.