There has been much discussion in the news lately about the Lindsay Clancy case and whether she is guilty of murdering her children. It’s not my place to judge because I haven’t followed the case closely enough and don’t have all the facts. But, as a therapist, I do know postpartum psychosis and depression are very real mental health issues, so I thought it would be a good time to have that discussion.

Neither postpartum depression nor postpartum psychosis is an actual diagnosis that appears in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). This is because postpartum is simply the cause, while depression and/or psychosis are the actual diagnoses. So what does this really mean? How does depression or psychosis come about and what actually is psychosis?

Depression we are familiar with. Signs of depression may include loss of interest in things we once got pleasure from, an increase or decrease in appetite and/or sleeping patterns, thoughts of selfharm and/or suicide along…