Reflections
Thoughts on Duxbury
In the past weeks, clients have talking about the tragedy in Duxbury, Massachusetts in which a mother suffering from a perinatal mood disorder killed her three children and then attempted to end her own life. For several clients who are pregnant or have very young children, the incident was especially haunting. I found myself at a loss for what to say what to say to clients about this unspeakable violence. How do we make sense out of a mother killing her children?
I reached out to a friend, Melissa Maslin, Project Director at UMASS Chan Medical Center at Lifeline for Moms, a program that provides research and consultation around perinatal mental health care. Melissa said the center’s director, Dr. Nancy Byatt, has been busy with interviews since the tragedy. Here is a link to one interview on WBUR in Boston.
Dr. Byatt does not make any guesses about what was going on for the mother, Lindsay Clancy, but she does offer a clear description of the extremely rare phenomenon of perinatal psychosis. She also informs the listener about the prevalence of mood disorders for women both before and after birth.
When grappling with our very strong and difficult feelings about a tragedy such as this, it is important to first identify the beliefs fueling those feelings and investigate the accuracy of the beliefs. Being informed doesn’t make it any less hard to bear the fact that three children are dead and a family is destroyed but it does ground our feelings. And as the public becomes more aware of the facts of such cases, perhaps it increases the chances of improved services for mothers suffering from perinatal mood disorders.
Below is the link to Lifeline for Families, a project of the UMASS Chan Medical School.