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Lindsay Clancy, Postpartum Illness and Why We're Missing the Point · You're Not Too Much

• 0:00
  I can hear him screaming about the conversations we're having about Lindsey
• 0:04
  Clancy right now, and how much we are absolutely missing the point, and
• 0:08
  that there are healthcare providers who should lose their licenses.
• 0:13
  There is an absolutely important conversation we need to have about
• 0:16
  postpartum illnesses, about what support in the postpartum period actually looks
• 0:20
  like, and about women who are scared to disclose the extent of their postpartum
• 0:24
  mental illness because they might lose their children, somebody might judge
• 0:28
  them, somebody might be unkind to them, somebody might misunderstand, somebody
• 0:31
  might think they're an unfit mother
• 0:42
  Welcome to You're Not Too Much from the Different Not Broken Network, a podcast
• 0:47
  about how you're not too much, they're not enough, space expands, so let's fill it.
• 0:56
  It's no surprise to anybody who's listening that I miss my dad.
• 0:59
  I miss my dad a lot.
• 1:00
  The times that I miss my dad, I mean, I miss him all the time.
• 1:03
  It's not like there's a minute that I wake up and I'm like, "I don't miss
• 1:06
  him right now. This is fine." But the times that I miss him more acutely than
• 1:11
  others are probably not the times that normal people do, or normal people have,
• 1:16
  like, grief things about their parents.
• 1:18
  And trust me, I get lots of grief from the parent that I do have, and there
• 1:22
  are lots of other grief things involved.
• 1:24
  But the way that I have felt, heard my dad's voice screaming in my ear For the
• 1:33
  last couple of weeks, probably longer.
• 1:36
  I mean, it's always in there.
• 1:38
  Like, we were doing a recording this morning, this is silly, but we were
• 1:41
  doing a recording this morning for our, one of our other podcasts, You're Not
• 1:45
  In Charge of the Scale, which by the way, go listen to it, it's amazing.
• 1:48
  And one of the things that came up was how generations like mine and older were
• 1:53
  always told by our parents that there are starving children in Africa, so you
• 1:57
  have to eat all your food off your plate.
• 1:59
  The guest, as well as the host, Stephanie, they were just talking about
• 2:03
  how that was so heavily prevalent in their homes growing up, and I just
• 2:07
  started laughing because that is not the message that I got in my home.
• 2:11
  It was similar, but if we left food on our plate, my dad would say, "You have
• 2:15
  to eat all your food because there are starving women in Beverly Hills." Those
• 2:19
  are the things that I hear in my head when we talk about parental messaging.
• 2:24
  Also, any time something's going wrong or I'm having a bad day, I hear my
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  dad's voice saying, "No matter how bad it is, it can always get worse."
• 2:32
  Which is so uplifting.
• 2:34
  So very uplift- anyway, that was my childhood.
• 2:37
  My dad was also a psychiatrist.
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  If you're old here, how do you not know that?
• 2:40
  I say it like it means something to my credibility, but I did run
• 2:44
  his practice for, like, 10 years.
• 2:46
  And when my dad made decisions on patients, he always explained them, even
• 2:53
  to somebody who was non-clinical, meaning if he decided that somebody needed a
• 2:57
  specific medication, he would tell you the reason he was giving them the medication.
• 3:01
  For a couple of reasons.
• 3:02
  One, he just liked teaching people, but two, like, there is a reality
• 3:06
  where you're gonna have to answer questions from a patient, and you should
• 3:09
  know what the thought process was.
• 3:12
  He would document it, he would explain it, and he really liked
• 3:15
  talking about what he did.
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  And so the arsenal of unusable information that I have about psychiatry is huge.
• 3:24
  Unusable because I'm not a psychiatrist and I don't have a DEA number,
• 3:28
  and I can't prescribe medication.
• 3:29
  You know, it'd be kind of illegal if I tried, so I'm not going to.
• 3:33
  But, like, it's all up there, and it leads to kind of interesting situations
• 3:38
  when you see things like what's happening in our current, it's not pop
• 3:43
  culture, in our current news cycle.
• 3:46
  But my dad was not only a psychiatrist, but he was a forensic psychiatrist,
• 3:50
  and that meant that he worked at the intersection of medicine and the law.
• 3:55
  So he was not a lawyer, but he had extensive legal training about how
• 4:01
  healthcare and the decisions that people make as a result of their medical
• 4:05
  conditions or the healthcare they receive can impact their decision-making, or
• 4:10
  impact the legal system in some way.
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  And he used to testify in cases all the time.
• 4:15
  He Knew a bunch of serial killers.
• 4:18
  Not as friends, but he had lots of really good stories about serial killers, always
• 4:23
  de-identified, but still pretty cool.
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  And like, I got to meet a couple.
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  Like, we had some really interesting people come in and out of our office.
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  Like, I've talked to a lot of people in shackles, a lot, and not
• 4:37
  because it's my personal hobby.
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  I've been to a lot of prisons.
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  I've talked to a lot of prison guards.
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  I've never been in trouble, but I've got lots of experience in how to move
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  through a prison because when you work in forensics, that's what you do.
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  Sometimes you get called to a jail in the middle of the
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  day on a Saturday, and you go.
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  Some prisons will let you bring in support staff, some will not.
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  Most do not let you bring in your phones.
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  So I remember the last time I think he worked in a prison, it was
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  actually not a prison, it was a jail, it was a reception center locally.
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  So every single person who went to jail in Orange County would go through
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  what's called the reception center and get all of their assessments and be
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  held there before they got transferred to whatever place they were going to.
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  And you weren't allowed to bring in your phones, and I think this was before
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  iPhones, so this would've been, like, maybe flip phone territory, but he had
• 5:35
  an iPod, and he loved having an iPod.
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  But he wasn't allowed to bring in his iPod because it's technology, and you
• 5:41
  weren't allowed to sneak in technology.
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  And so this man, he was already past retirement age.
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  Like, he worked a long time.
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  He was already past retirement age.
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  He went on eBay and purchased himself a watch with a hidden MP3 player, so
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  that when he got checked by the guards when he was walking into work every
• 6:00
  day, they would just look at his watch and be like, "Oh, that's a watch But
• 6:04
  he had headphones in his pocket, and he could plug them into his watch and
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  listen to his music, because he didn't like to go anywhere without his iPod.
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  Anyway, that was what my dad was like.
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  But there is a world where, and this wouldn't have happened 'cause
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  he was never in Massachusetts, or not for longer than a, a visit.
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  But there's a world where if this were 10 or 15 years ago, my dad is the guy that
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  would've been called to testify or to give expert information on somebody like
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  Lindsay Clancy, and he did many times.
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  And I sat in countless depositions with him.
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  There would be paperwork he needed.
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  There would be files that he needed, and we always had to provide them.
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  I've been sworn in by many a, a court reporter for just being
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  support staff in one of those things.
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  He did work on a lot of really high-profile cases, and the reason that
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  matters is I know his work so well, and I know the work we did together so
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  well, that I can hear him screaming.
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  And yes, I understand the deep irony that the voice in my head is a psychiatrist.
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  I get that.
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  I see it.
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  But I can hear him screaming about the conversations we're having about
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  Lindsay Clancy right now, and how much we are absolutely missing the point,
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  and how this is not about postpartum anything, and that there are healthcare
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  providers who should lose their licenses.
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  The conversation itself is not wrong.
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  It is correct.
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  We should be having conversations about postpartum depression.
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  We should be having conversations about postpartum mental illness.
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  We absolutely should be.
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  That is not a question.
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  We know that postpartum women are prone to specific mental illnesses, that they
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  can be hard to predict, that they can make it very hard to bond with your children.
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  They can make reasonable people do what appear to be some
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  really unreasonable things.
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  They make women feel worthless.
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  They make them feel incapable.
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  They make them feel all sorts of awful things about themselves, awful
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  things about themselves that are not true, awful things about their
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  children that are not true, and Most of the time women get through it.
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  Whether it's with intervention or not, they get through it.
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  That does not mean they should be white-knuckling it
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  through the postpartum period.
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  We should make better help available for women 100% without question.
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  The Lindsay Clancy outcome is a rare but possible outcome of a postpartum illness.
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  And I wanna say, I am not a clinician.
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  I have been deeply exposed to a lot of mental health conditions by nature of
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  working in this field, listening to my dad say a lot of things, running his
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  practice for as long as I did, seeing the ins and outs of a field that as
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  much as it is finally getting some additional, it's not recognition, but
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  consideration for being real, and that the things that happen to people are real.
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  Mental illness is real, let's put it that way.
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  It's still deeply misunderstood.
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  It's still deeply oversimplified.
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  But I'm not a clinician.
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  I did not go to medical school.
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  I am not a psychiatrist.
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  I cannot prescribe medications.
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  So what I am saying is the byproduct of lots of exposure
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  that I cannot call expertise, and I wanna be clear about that.
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  But my dad is not here to talk for himself, and I am sharing
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  with you what I know he would say.
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  I know there is an absolutely important conversation we need to have about
• 9:40
  postpartum illnesses, about what support in the postpartum period actually looks
• 9:46
  like, and about women who are scared to disclose the extent of their postpartum
• 9:51
  mental illness because they might lose their children, somebody might judge
• 9:55
  them, somebody might be unkind to them, somebody might misunderstand, somebody
• 9:58
  might think they're an unfit mother.
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  There's also a ton of guilt that comes along with that that keeps
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  people from disclosing all of that.
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  Lindsay Clancy had a postpartum mental illness, no question Lindsay
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  Clancy was also diagnosed as bipolar.
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  That came out in trial.
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  Lindsay Clancy was not psychotic that we know of until a maybe well-meaning,
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  but deeply incorrect psychiatrist gave her medications that are
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  known, documented, and established to make bipolar people worse.
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  That is what happened.
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  Her mental illness did not make her psychotic, her medication did.
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  And if you change the conversation from, "This woman just got acutely psychotic
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  because she's mentally ill," to, "A psychotic episode was precipitated
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  by a psychiatrist who treated her poorly, who gave her bad healthcare,"
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  this is a very different conversation.
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  This is not about some inept mother who just couldn't handle her mental health.
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  This is about a clinician who should lose their license.
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  I, as a layperson, acutely know that antidepressants make bipolar people worse.
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  I've seen it happen.
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  We ran our practice for about 10 years, and by that, I was there for 10 years.
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  My dad was on year 55 by the time he died.
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  He had some experience that I did not.
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  30%, please hear me when I say that, it's so fricking important, 30% of our
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  patient population were people who came to us after having been seen by their GP,
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  their other psychiatrist, an emergency room, or a hospital, who were put on
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  a medication because they said they were depressed and got acutely worse.
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  Sometimes that meant they were suicidal.
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  Sometimes that meant that they were having a manic episode.
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  Sometimes that meant they had racing thoughts and couldn't sit still.
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  Sometimes it made them completely sleepless.
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  Sometimes it did all of those things.
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  And what people don't understand about bipolar illness, especially when you have
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  this whole other side of precipitation by medication, meaning we took a disease
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  that was already uncomfortable and hard to manage, and we made it exponentially
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  worse by introducing a medication that was incorrect for the patient.
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  We're not talking about necessarily somebody who gets really depressed and
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  suicidal and stays that way for days and days at a time, though that can happen.
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  A bipolar depression can last five minutes, and in that five minutes, this is
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  something my dad used to say all the time, I'm literally regurgitating his words.
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  In that five minutes, if you're next to an open window on a 44th floor, you
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  could go out the window, not because you were suicidal five minutes before, but
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  because that's how bipolar illness works.
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  Is it likely that somebody who just has a bipolar or just has a regular
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  depression, a postpartum depression, would hurt their children in 30 minutes
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  or an hour while their partner is gone?
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  Is it likely?
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  No.
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  Is it possible?
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  Yes.
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  But somebody who is not only bipolar but made worse by their
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  medication, pushed into an acute mania, yes, that is very possible.
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  It is not only very possible, the things that happen to
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  cause that are well-documented.
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  The conversation Between postpartum disease and shit ass medical
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  care needs to be separated.
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  Because there are people suffering from postpartum illness who should
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  not be lumped in with somebody who killed her three children.
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  I don't say that with a hint of judgment toward Lindsay Clancy, I really don't.
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  The conversation about postpartum illness is different than the
• 14:02
  conversation about Lindsay Clancy.
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  Lindsay Clancy was made worse by medication, and that is not to say
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  that all medication makes you worse, and it is not to say that you should
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  not seek medication when you are sick.
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  I am not dissuading that at all.
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  I am saying that she got shit ass medical care, that she deserved a doctor who
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  knew what the fuck they were doing.
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  That's the conversation.
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  And again, I am speaking out of turn here to give you the things that
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  my dad would've said from beyond the grave that I heard him say so
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  many times, that I've literally watched him testify to in the past.
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  Did she do it?
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  Absolutely.
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  That sucks.
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  I'm devastated for everybody in her life, including her, that the outcome of that
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  shit ass medical care is what it was.
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  But what she did could happen to anybody who receives the same type of
• 15:02
  bad medical care that she received.
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  Because the point of a bipolar illness is that it's unpredictable, and if you
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  make somebody manic and acutely psychotic by prescribing the wrong medications…
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  This woman was complaining of poor sleep.
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  She was complaining of increased anxiety.
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  She was complaining of worsening intrusive thoughts.
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  She was complaining about racing thoughts.
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  All of those were so pervasive.
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  And somebody did try her on a mood stabilizer, but sometimes
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  you have to try several.
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  Like, the answer was not increase in antidepressant.
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  That was never the answer.
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  I just wanna make sure we're having the right conversation.
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  The conversation about postpartum illness was absolutely the correct
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  conversation to be had until she got sidled with a physician who didn't
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  know what the hell they were doing.
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  She deserved better medical care.
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  Her children deserved for her to have better medical care.
• 15:52
  My dad's talking from beyond the grave.
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  If anybody wants to know anything about, like, what it was like to be alive
• 15:57
  when, like, The Beatles were hitting the shore, I can probably try to access
• 16:02
  that, too, but I don't Those are other things that are in his expertise.
• 16:06
  But I am fully talking out of turn here, right?
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  I have exposure, I have kind of peripheral alignment, but I
• 16:13
  am not the expert in the room.
• 16:15
  But I've been in the room with the expert a whole lot, and I can hear
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  his voice very loudly saying that our medical system screwed up badly,
• 16:25
  and three children died as a result.
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  And it is going to affect women with postpartum illness, affect the judgment
• 16:33
  that women feel, affect the stigma that they face, affect their willingness
• 16:38
  to disclose what they're feeling.
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  It's going to affect that for a very long time.
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  And that is one of the many things in this situation that sucks, but it does suck.
• 16:48
  That's my rant from Beyond the Grave.