Alyssa Milano looked back on her own experience with postpartum anxiety amid Lindsay Clancy’s trial for the deaths of her three children.
“As the Lindsay Clancy trial forces a new national reckoning with postpartum mental illness and with what can happen when women ask for help but still fall through the cracks, it feels important to share [my experience] again,” Milano, 53, wrote via her Substack on Tuesday, August 18.
Clancy is facing three counts of first-degree murder and three counts of assault and battery over the deaths of her three children — Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months. Prosecutors maintain that Lindsay intentionally killed her children.
Her defense team has countered that Clancy was experiencing postpartum psychosis and suffers from bipolar disorder, which led her to commit acts of self-harm and jump out of a second story window in an apparent suicide attempt on the same day as her children’s deaths. Clancy was left paralyzed from the waist down as a result.
Throughout the trial, Clancy’s lawyers have continuously stressed that she should not be held responsible for the deaths of her children due to her mental health crisis. Per her lawyers, Clancy was prescribed antidepressants to treat her postpartum depression but they only made her condition worse.
Milano acknowledged in her Substack post that her own experience with postpartum anxiety and Clancy’s postpartum psychosis are not directly comparable.
“Postpartum anxiety and postpartum psychosis are different conditions, and my experience is not Lindsay Clancy’s,” she wrote. “But the trial has brought renewed attention to a truth that connects them: maternal mental-health symptoms must be recognized, believed and treated with urgency.”
The Charmed actress shared a column she originally wrote for Time in May 2018 for Mental Health Awareness Month, in which she opened up about her mental health journey.
Milano theorized that her “Generalized Anxiety Disorder was most likely triggered by my postpartum depression” when he gave birth to son Milo, now 14, in 2011. (Milano and husband David Bugliari also share 11-year-old daughter Elizabella Dylan.)
“That first night, after we returned from the hospital, I suffered my first anxiety attack. I felt like I had already disappointed my child,” she remembered. “I felt like I failed as a mother, since I was not able to give birth vaginally or nourish him with the breast milk that had not come in yet. My heart raced. My stomach seized up. I felt like I was dying.”
At the same time, Milano felt pressure to return to work on a TV show even while in the throes of anxiety and depression.
“Every day, I would drive to work and think about all the ways that Milo could die in the hands of his caretakers,” she wrote. “Every night, after working 16-hour days, after I was finally able to hold my child and put him to sleep, my day’s anxiety would culminate into a debilitating anxiety attack.”
Milano finally asked for help from a psychiatrist during a late-night hospital visit. The star ultimately stayed in “a public psychiatric ward for three days,” at her request.
“At last, I began to feel as if my pain was recognized, but it wasn’t easy. One of my doctors dismissed my symptoms, and many of my colleagues, even female colleagues, still had trouble understanding that I was hurting at all,” she noted. “But throughout this process, I also found angels — including my psychiatrist and my therapist. They convinced me that I had the bravery to face my illness, the value to seek help and the strength to recover. And I am continuing to do all three. And most likely I will for the rest of my life.”
Following her harrowing postpartum experience, Milano felt strongly that the healthcare system “should not confront these [mental health] challenges by placing more hurdles in front of Americans who desperately need the care.”
“Mental health is also not a threat that can only happen to someone else: one in six Americans face mental illness, and less than half of them receive any form of mental health services,” she concluded. “Let’s rededicate ourselves to talking about mental health. Let’s demand that our lawmakers pass policies that open — not restrict — our access to mental health services. Let’s remind each other that no one should have to face these challenges by themselves.”
If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available. Call or text 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org.
If you or someone you know is pregnant or just had a baby and is in crisis, help is available. Call or text the National Maternal Mental Health Hotline for free, confidential support 24/7 in English and Spanish at 1-833-TLC-MAMA (1-833-852-6262).
