I think people are tying themselves in knots here because they are conflating the legal question with the moral one, and then accusing anyone who separates them of being some sort of heartless monster. They are not the same question.
Legally, Lindsay Clancy's mental state is obviously central. If she was psychotic, that may have a profound effect on her criminal responsibility. Nobody sensible is saying otherwise. Her psychiatric history, her medication, the care she received and what was actually going on in her mind all need to be examined properly. But this idea that merely questioning any aspect of the case means you "don't understand psychosis" is ridiculous. You don't get to say "psychosis" and then expect everyone else to stop thinking.
"I had postpartum anxiety and I can tell you..." - no, actually, you can't tell us what was going on inside Lindsay Clancy's mind because you had a particular mental health experience. I'm sorry, but you can't. You can have sympathy for her. You can believe the medical system failed her. You can believe she was catastrophically unwell. You can believe she should never have been left in the position she was in. Fine. Those are all perfectly legitimate views. But they are not the same thing as knowing, as a matter of fact, that she had no criminal responsibility for killing her children. That's the legal question. It requires evidence. It isn't settled by whoever on Mumsnet can identify with her most strongly.
And that brings me to the part of this discussion I find genuinely disturbing. Three children are dead, and yet, reading some of these posts, you could almost forget that. The overwhelming emotional energy is directed towards Lindsay Clancy: her suffering, her terror, her medical treatment, her poor husband failing to spot what was apparently obvious in hindsight, the doctors, the nurses, the medication, the system, society. Everyone is under the microscope except, apparently, the person who actually killed the children.
Or rather, her actions can be discussed, but only through a very specific lens. The moment you suggest that there might be something that doesn't fit the preferred explanation, you're accused of lacking compassion. I'm sorry, but compassion is not the same thing as unquestioning acceptance. And frankly, some of you don't appear to have much compassion for the children beyond the occasional obligatory "obviously it's tragic that they died", before going straight back to Lindsay. What she must have been going through. How she must be suffering now. How she was failed. How she loved her children.
And yes, perhaps she did love them. Nobody is required to believe that she was secretly some pantomime villain who hated her children. But what exactly is the argument here? That because she loved them, we are not supposed to look too hard at how they died? That because she was mentally ill, the fact that they were killed by their mother should somehow become emotionally secondary to her suffering? That is what I object to. You can feel desperately sorry for Lindsay Clancy and still feel that the children are the people who should be at the centre of this story. I honestly don't understand why that is controversial.
And then there is the husband. Jesus Christ. A man loses his three children in the most appalling circumstances imaginable and some people immediately get to work trying to find a way in which this is somehow his fault. He didn't notice enough. He didn't do enough. He shouldn't have gone out. He said something afterwards that you don't like. He remembered something differently. He moved on too quickly. He didn't grieve correctly according to some imaginary rulebook written by strangers on the internet. Honestly, the desperation to make somebody else responsible for what happened is staggering.
And I think the reason is fairly obvious. Some people have emotionally decided that Lindsay Clancy is primarily a victim. Once you've done that, somebody else has to be responsible for the terrible thing that happened. So let's have the doctors, the medication, the mental health system or the husband. Preferably all of them. Anyone, really, as long as you don't have to sit with the possibility that a woman you identify with could have done something absolutely appalling and that the legal and moral questions surrounding it might be complicated.
Because that's the uncomfortable bit, isn't it? Some people seem to think that if they acknowledge the enormity of what happened to the children, they are somehow betraying Lindsay Clancy or showing insufficient understanding of mental illness. No. You are allowed to hold two thoughts in your head at the same time. You can believe that she was profoundly mentally ill and that three children are dead. You can believe the psychiatric system failed her and think the evidence about her mental state should be tested. You can believe that someone suffering from psychosis may not be criminally responsible in the usual sense without pretending that anyone who has questions about this particular case is an ignorant sadist.
And morally, I think some people really need to take a step back. Because what I am seeing is not greater compassion or greater understanding. It's identification. They see a woman, a mother, educated, professional, struggling, exhausted and apparently falling apart. They can imagine themselves in aspects of her situation, so she becomes emotionally real to them. The children don't in quite the same way. They're three little faces at the edge of the story. An unimaginable tragedy, yes. Very sad. Anyway, back to what Lindsay was prescribed.
And I think that is where some of the discussion becomes horribly skewed. The fact that you can imagine being Lindsay Clancy does not mean you understand what happened. The fact that you have suffered from mental illness does not give you special insight into her mind. The fact that you are a mother does not require you to suspend every critical faculty when another mother does something terrible. And the fact that you feel sympathy for her does not make you morally superior to people who are primarily thinking about her children. Quite the opposite, sometimes.
Because empathy that only extends to the person you identify with isn't actually some great moral achievement. It is the easiest form of empathy there is. The harder thing is to hold the whole situation in your head: to have compassion for someone who may have been desperately ill without turning her into a saint; to accept that the medical system may have failed her without inventing certainty where there isn't any; and to acknowledge that the law may reach a conclusion about her responsibility that differs from your own instinctive moral reaction.
And, above all, to remember that the three children who died are not an awkward detail that needs to be hurried past because their deaths make the preferred Lindsay-as-victim narrative less comfortable. They are the reason there is a case at all.
So yes, examine the mental illness. Absolutely. Examine the medication. Of course. Examine the doctors and the psychiatric system. But stop pretending that sympathy for Lindsay Clancy requires everyone else to stop asking questions. And stop acting as though the people who are most morally deficient in this discussion are those who remember that three children were killed.
Because, frankly, the level of emotional contortion some people are prepared to go through to avoid placing that fact at the centre of the story is considerably more disturbing to me than a few people refusing to join in with the collective absolution.