Lindsay Clancy Asked for Help. The Mental-Health System Gave Her Appointments.

The most disturbing question raised by the Lindsay Clancy case may not be whether she was too mentally ill to be held criminally responsible.

It may be how a woman could repeatedly seek psychiatric help, encounter numerous professionals, receive multiple medications—and still deteriorate so completely that three children lost their lives.

Cora, Dawson and Callan are the innocent victims at the center of this tragedy. Their father, Patrick, must live with a loss beyond comprehension. Nothing about examining the failures in their mother’s treatment diminishes their lives or excuses what happened to them.

But neither should we ignore what this case appears to reveal about America’s mental-health treatment industry.

According to the New York Post’s examination of the case⁠, Clancy was surrounded by providers but seemingly cared for by no one. There were psychiatrists, therapists, social workers, telehealth appointments and psychiatric medications—but no single professional taking responsibility for the whole patient.

Everyone treated a piece of her. Nobody took command of her care.

One provider reportedly testified that she did not review another clinician’s notes because she wanted to approach Clancy with “new eyes.” But psychiatric treatment cannot consist of a collection of isolated encounters in which each professional begins again. When a patient is deteriorating, continuity and communication are not optional administrative details. They can be matters of life and death.

Clancy reportedly participated in 14 telehealth sessions lasting between 17 and 30 minutes. One occurred the day before the killings, yet she was apparently not directed to an emergency room or required to undergo an immediate in-person evaluation.

We should ask what the mental-health industry has become when a desperately ill mother can be assessed through a screen, prescribed one medication after another and sent back into her home without anyone ensuring that she—or her children—are safe.

This is healthcare reduced to appointments, prescriptions and billing codes. The providers can document that the patient was seen. The insurer can record that a service was delivered. Every box can be checked while the human being at the center of it all continues to fall apart.

There is also a troubling shortage of professionals properly trained to recognize postpartum psychosis. It is a rare but potentially catastrophic psychiatric emergency involving delusions, hallucinations, confusion and a loss of contact with reality. Yet women suffering from it may enter a system staffed by clinicians without specialized perinatal training—and constrained by insurers that dictate which providers they may see, how frequently they may be seen and how much time can be spent with them.

We have built a mental-health industry that speaks constantly about “access to care.” But access means very little when the care is fragmented, rushed and incapable of recognizing a psychiatric emergency unfolding in plain sight.

None of this settles the question of Lindsay Clancy’s criminal responsibility. That decision belongs to the jury. Medical negligence does not automatically eliminate personal responsibility, and a failed healthcare system cannot simply be placed on trial in her place.

But the system must still answer for itself.

What is the purpose of having multiple mental-health professionals involved if none is responsible for coordinating treatment? What is the value of repeated appointments if no one recognizes that outpatient care is no longer enough? How many medications, sleepless nights and pleas for help must accumulate before someone intervenes?

Three children are dead. A father’s life has been shattered. A mother may have been consumed by an illness she could no longer understand.

The mental-health industry cannot promise compassion, collect payment for treatment and then disclaim responsibility when a patient disappears through the spaces between its providers.

Lindsay Clancy asked for help. The system gave her appointments.

Her children needed that system to give her care.