Alyssa Milano Shares Postpartum Anxiety Struggle amid Lindsay Clancy Case: ‘When Women Fall Through the Cracks’

Alyssa Milano is sharing her struggle with postpartum anxiety amid the headline-making Lindsay Clancy case, which the actress says shows “what can happen when women ask for help but still fall through the cracks.”

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Alyssa Milano revealed she experienced postpartum anxiety after her son Milo’s birth in 2011 following a miscarriage

Milano shared her story to highlight the need for urgent maternal mental health care amid Lindsay Clancy’s ongoing trial

She credited her therapist and psychiatrist for helping her recover and questioned access for mothers without similar support

Alyssa Milano is sharing her struggle with postpartum anxiety amid the headline-making Lindsay Clancy case, which the actress says shows “what can happen when women ask for help but still fall through the cracks.”

The Charmed alum, 53, says she struggled with postpartum anxiety after welcoming her first child, son Milo, in 2011. His birth came two years after a miscarriage, and for Milano, “my journey with mental illnesses began with my journey into motherhood,” she wrote in a 2018 article for Time that she reshared to her Substack in light of the Clancy case.

Milano shares Milo, now 14, and daughter Elizabella Dylan, 11, with husband David Bugliari.

Alyssa Milano/ Instagram

“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 it again,” she wrote on Instagram on Wednesday, Aug. 19, during day 16 of Clancy’s murder trial.

Clancy, a former labor and delivery nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, is currently on trial for the January 2023 murder of her three children — Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and 8-month-old Callan. That day, she also allegedly cut her wrists and jumped from a second-story window in an apparent suicide attempt that has left her paralyzed. Her defense has argued that she was overmedicated and suffering from postpartum psychosis and is not criminally responsible for their deaths.

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Although Milano clarified that “postpartum anxiety and postpartum psychosis are different conditions, and my experience is not Lindsay Clancy’s,” she surfaced her own postpartum mental health struggles because “the trial has brought renewed attention to a truth that connects them: maternal mental-health symptoms must be recognized, believed and treated with urgency.”

In Milano’s case, she struggled with daily anxiety attacks after “I would drive to work and think about all the ways that Milo could die in the hands of his caretakers,” she shared, adding, “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.”

Gregg DeGuire/FilmMagic

Finally, ”I went to the emergency room at 2:00 AM, asked for a psychiatrist and got help. I felt as though I had no choice: I asked to be committed; I stayed in a public psychiatric ward for three days.”

She credits her “angels” — her therapist and psychiatrist — whom she said “convinced me that I had the bravery to face my illness, the value to seek help and the strength to recover.”

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But as Milano shared, “Here’s the thing about mental illnesses: you don’t always look sick, and the answers are not always clear or black-and-white. But we should not confront these challenges by placing more hurdles in front of Americans who desperately need the care. I was lucky enough to have the means and the insurance to get the help and support I needed. What happens to those mothers who don’t have the kind of support I received?”

If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health challenges, emotional distress, substance use problems, or just needs to talk, call or text 988, or chat at 988lifeline.org 24/7.

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