They had a healthy ba­by boy. Every­thing seemed per­fect.

But then, qui­et­ly and al­most im­per­cep­ti­bly, some­thing be­gan to change.

The young moth­er be­came in­creas­ing­ly fear­ful. She be­lieved the neigh­bours want­ed to steal her ba­by. She no longer want­ed any­one near her child and even re­fused vis­its from fam­i­ly mem­bers.

Then she stopped sleep­ing. She be­gan hear­ing voic­es telling her to pro­tect him. She re­fused to leave the house and with­drew in­to her room, hold­ing her new­born tight­ly and re­fus­ing to let any­one else near them.

What be­gan as the hap­pi­est chap­ter of her life had sud­den­ly be­come a fright­en­ing bat­tle with a mind she could no longer trust.

Post­par­tum psy­chosis is a dev­as­tat­ing psy­chi­atric emer­gency that can oc­cur af­ter child­birth. This case, which I helped to man­age, left a heart­break­ing re­minder that even the most beau­ti­ful ex­pe­ri­ence of wel­com­ing a new life can be­come a pro­found tragedy. Thank­ful­ly, with fam­i­ly sup­port and ap­pro­pri­ate med­ical care, this pa­tient made a full re­cov­ery.

In the Unit­ed States, the tri­al of Mass­a­chu­setts moth­er Lind­say Clan­cy has be­come a painful pub­lic ex­am­i­na­tion of post­par­tum men­tal ill­ness and psy­chi­atric care.

Clan­cy, 36, is ac­cused of killing her three chil­dren—aged five, three and eight months—in Jan­u­ary 2023 be­fore at­tempt­ing sui­cide. Her de­fence ar­gues that she was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing post­par­tum psy­chosis and was there­fore not crim­i­nal­ly re­spon­si­ble. How­ev­er, pros­e­cu­tors main­tain that the killings were de­lib­er­ate and cal­cu­lat­ed.

At the tri­al, psy­chi­a­trists have sharply dis­agreed about Clan­cy’s con­di­tion. De­fence ex­pert Dr Phillip Resnick tes­ti­fied that she ex­pe­ri­enced com­mand hal­lu­ci­na­tions and a loss of con­trol as­so­ci­at­ed with post­par­tum psy­chosis and a “hor­rif­ic mis­ery” in­duced by an over­med­icat­ed cock­tail of psy­chi­atric drugs.

A pros­e­cu­tion ex­pert, Dr Avram Mack, dis­agreed, di­ag­nos­ing ma­jor de­pres­sive dis­or­der and ar­gu­ing that she re­tained the abil­i­ty to un­der­stand and con­trol her ac­tions.

The ju­ry will most like­ly be­gin de­lib­er­a­tions to­day. What­ev­er it de­cides, the case rais­es a ques­tion that ex­tends far be­yond one court­room.

The birth of a ba­by can bring emo­tion­al chal­lenges when ad­just­ing to new­born care.

Post­par­tum blues, or the “ba­by blues,” can present with tear­ful­ness, anx­i­ety, ir­ri­tabil­i­ty and ex­haus­tion. These of­ten be­gin with­in days of de­liv­ery and usu­al­ly re­solve with­in two weeks.

If symp­toms wors­en, with per­sis­tent sad­ness, anx­i­ety, hope­less­ness, ex­haus­tion, dif­fi­cul­ty bond­ing with the ba­by, or thoughts of self-harm, in­ter­fere with dai­ly life, or last be­yond two weeks, post­par­tum de­pres­sion (PPD) must be con­sid­ered.

Post­par­tum psy­chosis (PPP) is rare but can de­vel­op rapid­ly, pre­sent­ing with con­fu­sion, para­noia, hal­lu­ci­na­tions, ag­i­ta­tion or loss of con­tact with re­al­i­ty.

Ja­maica has had two cas­es of fil­i­cide in which both moth­ers had men­tal-health chal­lenges that were ex­ac­er­bat­ed dur­ing the post­par­tum pe­ri­od. In De­cem­ber 2023, a moth­er threw her five-month-old in­fant from the roof of her home. Then, on March 3, 2026, a ten-week-old in­fant was al­leged­ly drowned by his moth­er in a five-gal­lon buck­et of wa­ter.

I think the Clan­cy case should be­come a pub­lic health les­son for T&T.

A 2021 study of 360 post­na­tal women at­tend­ing fa­cil­i­ties in North Cen­tral Trinidad found that 40 per cent scored 10 or high­er on the Ed­in­burgh Post­na­tal De­pres­sion Scale, in­di­cat­ing sig­nif­i­cant de­pres­sive symp­toms and the need for fur­ther as­sess­ment. Yet, 73.7 per cent re­port­ed that they had not been asked ques­tions about post­par­tum de­pres­sion. The re­searchers rec­om­mend­ed stronger screen­ing and treat­ment.

I am hop­ing our Min­is­ter of Health, Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe, who is al­so a well-re­spect­ed ob­ste­tri­cian, may con­sid­er in­sti­tut­ing screen­ing at our an­te­na­tal clin­ics, which can con­tin­ue af­ter de­liv­ery, with trained mid­wives, nurs­es, doc­tors and pri­ma­ry-care work­ers us­ing val­i­dat­ed tools such as the Ed­in­burgh Post­na­tal De­pres­sion Scale. Screen­ing should be re­peat­ed dur­ing the ear­ly post­na­tal pe­ri­od and when­ev­er con­cern­ing symp­toms emerge. A pos­i­tive screen should trig­ger clin­i­cal as­sess­ment, clear re­fer­ral path­ways, rapid psy­chi­atric as­sess­ment and bet­ter co­or­di­na­tion be­tween ob­stet­ric and men­tal-health ser­vices.

But de­pres­sion screen­ing alone is not enough. Health work­ers and fam­i­lies must al­so know the warn­ing signs of psy­chosis: hear­ing voic­es, ex­treme sus­pi­cious­ness, se­vere in­som­nia, con­fu­sion, bizarre be­liefs, rapid­ly chang­ing be­hav­iour, or state­ments about harm­ing her­self or the ba­by.

In Clan­cy’s case, did the health sys­tem fail? Her fam­i­ly has filed mal­prac­tice law­suits al­leg­ing fail­ures in her care, while treat­ing clin­i­cians have dis­put­ed that they saw ev­i­dence of psy­chosis. When her ver­dict is read, pub­lic opin­ion will still be out on psy­chi­atric care, over­med­ica­tion and the fail­ure to as­sist this nurse who des­per­ate­ly cried out for help.

The les­son for T&T should there­fore be sim­ple: look, lis­ten, screen and act ear­ly.

Be­cause some­times the dif­fer­ence be­tween a psy­chi­atric cri­sis and a cat­a­stro­phe is whether some­body recog­nised the warn­ing signs in time.