ABOUT THIS EPISODE
Why Is This Still Happening in America in 2026
On September 4th, a Massachusetts jury spent seven days on the Lindsay Clancy case and couldn't reach a verdict. This episode is not about that trial. It's about the question underneath it: why a country with the most expensive healthcare on earth still can't recognize, name, or treat the most dangerous illness a new mother can have.
In this episode:
Postpartum psychosis is more common than SIDS, treatable in 98 percent of cases, and still not a diagnosis in the DSM. Nobody in America counts the mothers this happens to. The one study that tried found a coin flip between hospital and prison for the same illness. More than a dozen countries decided almost a century ago that a mother in the first year is a patient before she's a defendant. Mental health is now the leading cause of pregnancy-related death in the US, and more than 80 percent of those deaths are preventable. And why, in 2026, the bar for a man's chest pain is a workup and the bar for a woman's mind is patience.
The case is the occasion. The system is the subject.
Sources
Mistrial and jury: NPR, WBUR, GBH, closing arguments
Postpartum psychosis prevalence, treatment and the DSM gap: NPR, WBUR, 2025 expert consensus statement, Biological Psychiatry, via King's College London
Infanticide case outcomes, 34 US cases 1969 to 2010: Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law
Infanticide and suicide risk in postpartum psychosis: American Journal of Psychiatry
International infanticide laws, California data, Illinois 2018 statute: KQED
Pregnancy-related deaths, 80 percent preventable, mental health leading cause: CDC, Maternal Mortality Review Committees, 36 states, 2017 to 2019
