‘The scariest night of my life:’ After the Lindsay Clancy tragedy, a personal story of postnatal psychosis

Alisdair Harden

When my wife was diagnosed with psychosis, like most people posting about it on the internet, I did not know what it was. As a result, I made mistakes that put my family at risk. I acted slowly. I hoped she would get better. I feared stigma. There is no good outcome for Lindsay Clancy, who is on trial after she killed her three children and tried to commit suicide. She lives in the hell of knowing that happened. The trial is low stakes for her, but for our society we have the opportunity to prevent people in psychosis from harm. You could do better than I did when your loved one goes into psychosis.

My family’s love for Jesus, our deep love and joy in our son, did not keep us safe from experiencing postnatal psychosis. It was like a landmine waiting ahead of us after our son was born. We knew everything you could know about anxiety and depression. I had spoken at my church about what mental illness was. My wife was in a support group for women at risk of postnatal depression. But it was luck, it was the mercy of God, that meant we had as close to a “happy” ending as you can have.

The scariest night of my life I lay in bed beside a stranger. My wife came home from a cafe and I did not know her. In the horror of that moment I thought I may never have her back. That day she got worse and worse. Her thinking was so disordered and delusional that there was no way of predicting her behaviour. She had forgotten how to be a mum. I had to hold our baby as she breastfed because she couldn’t focus on it. I hoped that if she got some sleep it would all be okay. But as we lay in bed I was afraid to sleep. Would I find her walking on the road? Would she drive away with our child in the car, led along by some thought I couldn’t understand? She would get up and I had to beg her to lie down. I dozed off in a moment and woke up as she was picking up our son. My wife should have been in the hospital that night. Now you know better than I did.

It was days later in a mental health ward that anyone would say the words postnatal psychosis. The hospital recognised what had been slowly dawning on me. My wife was a danger to herself and others. She would be involuntarily contained in a locked ward, injected with medication because she would otherwise spit it out. It took weeks of reading articles, weeks of talking to my cousin who is a psychiatrist, for me to understand what had happened to her. She didn’t know she had a mental illness. That’s a symptom of the illness. She believed that she was experiencing real happiness for the first time. We didn’t live in the same reality. I was at the hospital with her every hour they would let me stay, but I was alone. We had fallen in love, we had decided to have a baby together. We were going to face every challenge, every heartbreak, together. But when I needed her the most I was alone.

One day in the hospital, weeks into her treatment, a doctor asked her if she received messages from the TV or the radio. I almost laughed out loud. But my wife responded, “Well yeah,” as though the doctor had asked a stupid question. I had noticed her lack of sleep, and the strange things she had wanted to share with me. But the whole time, though, she was living in a world of delusions. Everything around her had to do with her. Happily, my wife believed that everyone around her was preparing a surprise for her. She knew winkingly that every doctor and all the other patients were in on it. People in psychosis believe they are very important. They personalise everything. Mostly this makes them paranoid, suspicious of the people around them. It gives them reason to hide their symptoms and avoid diagnosis.

I thought my wife became ill the day before we took her to hospital. But as I learned the patterns, I reflected on the weeks before. Two weeks out, it seemed my wife had turned a corner in her mental health. She was happier. She had realised she had had low self-esteem. We both celebrated as she bought a pair of shoes she wouldn’t normally have felt she deserved. We had fun, high-energy conversations about all kinds of things. She was thinking of going to bible college. Pursuing a career in cricket, or maybe acting. She wasn’t sleeping much. But neither of us were, we had a newborn. She became invincible in a way that seemed like personal growth. Now I would recognise all of this as the beginnings of a manic episode: a dramatic shift in mood, grandiose thinking, a change in personality, no longer needing sleep — all things I now look out for. But the high energy of mania is not always positively valenced. Sometimes it’s agitation and anxiety. It’s hard to get help at this point of the disorder. But at least when your loved one has these symptoms, you know where it could go.

Psychosis and mania are very treatable. First by ensuring safety. A hospital ward is a very sad place, but it is very safe. I wept as she begged me not to leave her there every night. She set off the fire alarm several times after I had gone home. In meetings she would explain to the doctors that syntax errors in the way the alarm was labeled made it inevitable that patients would set it off. There were many moments we can laugh about with distance. Over six weeks my wife got better. It felt very slow. But it came. Valium in her first night in hospital is what gave her the precious sleep she needed. Antipsychotic medication, which is not so scary as it sounds, slowed her body down and helped her think more clearly. A mood stabiliser would improve her further. I always tried to wish her better sooner than she was. But she did eventually come home. It was still a few months later she would realise fully that she had been sick. It was a year later that she would emerge from depression. But eventually she would be well and could hold my hand again and say to me “That must have been so hard”

If you suspect that somebody you know has psychosis, don’t turn your face away. By the time I had the courage to reach out for help, my wife had already been texting her family telling saying she thought I was unwell. What sweet relief that would have been. What we needed was more eyes. I was carried along from the moment I reached out by precious family and friends. You might not be sure of what you see, but a doctor will be. If you can help a person recognise in vague terms that they need help they might come with you to hospital. But it’s more likely they won’t. It will take persistence. If you can, stay with them. I highly value words. But trying to explain to my wife that she was ill only eroded her trust of me and further broke my heart. All I know about anything is that we were made for love and however I could I tried to give her that. If a person is in clear danger of harm or violence paramedics and police can take them unwillingly to hospital. But there is understandably a very high bar for them to do that, and they cannot take your word for it. A person in psychosis will often try to conceal their symptoms, because of their paranoid delusions. But ultimately they don’t know what their symptoms are and will inevitably reveal them. It could take several calls to 000. That is the tragic reality.

You may still want to call Lindsay Clancy a monster. You may say you would never do that. My wife is a devoted and caring mum. There is no safer place my son can be than in her arms. She deeply regrets the months she can’t remember. The days she did not recognise her son. The way he felt heavy in her arms. The year that followed, after her coming out of psychosis, into deep depression. Robbed of the joy of the moments she could have shared with our son. It is not up to people in psychosis to make sure no one is hurt. God gave that responsibility to dads. That’s our responsibility as brothers and sisters and grandparents. It’s our responsibility as a society. Even more its our responsibility as the body of Christ. After our crisis had begun, I had no choice but to enlist the help and prayers of our family and friends. You will do better than I did.