Spain: Lindsay Clancy failed by the system

The mental health system often fails women suffering from postpartum psychosis, leaving them without necessary support and judging them harshly when the illness manifests tragically.

## The double standard in motherhood

The case of **Lindsay Clancy**, a mother accused of an atrocious crime, has exposed the cracks in the mental health support system for women after childbirth. The defense argues that Clancy repeatedly sought medical help but was neglected by a fragmented system. The prosecution, meanwhile, presents her as a woman with resources who acted with full knowledge. This dichotomy highlights a historical tendency: the tendency to see mothers suffering from mental health problems as "monsters" rather than victims of an illness. **Mary Shelley**, in her novel *Frankenstein* from **1816**, already explored this double standard. Her creature, abandoned by its creator, becomes a monster due to the lack of acceptance and understanding. Feminist criticism has interpreted this work as a "myth of birth," where the true pavor lies in the abandonment of the created life, not in its conception. Shelley makes us pity the creator, a man, for a tragedy that culturally would be attributed to a monstrous mother.

## The rift of silence and judgment

Postpartum psychosis, a recognized medical condition, is often ignored in favor of the "monster" narrative. **Lindsay Clancy** is portrayed by the prosecution as the "monster mother," an archetypal figure that allows society to distance itself from suffering. However, women who have closely trinc the trial, as documented by **Stephanie McCrummen** in *The Atlantic*, see themselves reflected in Clancy's situation. These women share experiences of intrusive thoughts, postpartum economic crises, and rejections from aid programs that, ironically, months later accepted other women in similar situations. They recognize in Clancy the "skill to mask the collapse," an ability to hide the deep exhaustion and ambivalence that often accompany real motherhood, so far from the idealized image that is demanded.

## The system and the refusal to accept

The root of the problem, as **Mary Shelley** pointed out two centuries ago, is not in the creature or in the suffering mother, but in the refusal to accept and understand. The mental health system, by condemning to silence the "rift" between idealized and lived motherhood, judges those who fall through it as if they had chosen their fate. The prosecutor's statement that the case "is not about the mental health system" is precisely what these women perceive as the fundamental error. The lack of a framework to understand each other and the denial of the complexity of maternal experience lead to tragedy. The monster, ultimately, resides in the inability of society and its institutions to offer support and compassion to women struggling with mental illness after childbirth.