January 1, Dr. Phil Delivers JARRING Warning After Shocking Mistrial Nobody Saw Coming

Wyatt’s Take

• Three innocent children are dead and a Massachusetts jury couldn’t even agree on justice — that’s not a ‘teachable moment,’ that’s a broken system failing families
• Dr. Phil warns this case could trigger copycats while the defense turned a triple child murder into a psychiatric crusade and the prosecution fumbled the whole thing
• Real postpartum psychosis is rare and requires immediate hospitalization — not medication adjustments or extra therapy sessions — and this tragedy proves doctors dropped the ball

Dr. Phil McGraw didn’t mince words Saturday when he weighed in on the Lindsay Clancy mistrial, one day after jurors couldn’t reach a unanimous verdict in the case of a Massachusetts mother who strangled her three children to death.

The 36-year-old admitted to killing Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and Callan, 8 months, in 2023. Her defense team claims she was suffering from postpartum psychosis and wasn’t in control of her actions.

McGraw told Fox News anchor Aishah Hasnie on “Fox News Live” Saturday that the children “are the real folks we need to give our attention to here.”

“Three innocent children did lose their lives, and you can never explain these situations away simply,” he said.

He said it concerns him when mental illness gets depicted in the courtroom and becomes “kind of a political, ideological football that’s used to try to skew something or is kind of debunked by another side rather than looking at what actually took place.”

McGraw stressed that there will eventually be “accountability” in the case. Even if she’s not found criminally responsible, “she’s not going home.”

“She’s going to have to live with this the rest of her life and probably in a psychiatric facility if, in fact, she is not guilty by reason of mental defect or disease,” he said.

“I think people underestimate the power of psychosis in taking over someone’s life. It’s not an excuse, but, for example, if she had a brain tumor you could see on an X-ray, people would go ‘OK, I get that.’ And when you have what took place here, it could be just as powerful as someone whose brain is hijacked by a tumor,” he added.

“I’m not excusing what she did in any way,” he said.

“I think she should be held fully accountable, but I think we need to understand causation.”

The prosecution made a “pretty clunky presentation,” McGraw said, adding that he felt they got their act together “in the end.” But it wasn’t enough.

“I’ve spent a lot of my professional career working in trial sciences and dealing with juries and juries looking for a coherent explanation,” he explained.

He said the defense’s explanation was “much more understandable and much more coherent than what the prosecution did.”

That should alarm every parent in America. When the system can’t deliver justice for three murdered children because prosecutors fumble the case, something is deeply wrong.

McGraw also worried that the case could cause a “copycat” effect.

“We certainly don’t want that to take place here, so we need to look at what the cultural effects are,” he said.

There is also a “huge” difference between postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis, he stressed. Most people don’t understand that distinction — and that ignorance can be deadly.

“Postpartum psychosis is a psychiatric emergency that requires immediate hospitalization,” he said.

“It’s not a time to adjust medications, it’s not a time to schedule an extra appointment during the week. It is a psychiatric emergency that requires in-patient care and separation from the children. Not tomorrow morning, not tomorrow afternoon, but immediately.”

He called Clancy’s case a “psychiatric emergency that wasn’t treated as such.” In other words, medical professionals saw the warning signs and did nothing.

It’s one thing to use the case as a “teachable moment for the country,” McGraw cautioned. It’s another for people to raise her up as some kind of “heroine.”

And that’s exactly what some radical activists have done — turning a child killer into a martyr for their cause.

“There’s nothing to be celebrated here,” he said.

“If there’s any lesson to be taken for our culture, it’s that there was a failure here. This was a woman who asked for help. She admitted herself to the hospital. Was that enough?”

The jury “tends to get it right,” he said, explaining that they were “headed toward committing her for a long period of time.” But they couldn’t agree — and now prosecutors have to decide whether to retry the case.

“I think people need to understand that mental illness is a serious, serious issue,” he said, adding that he was worried that people would forget about Cora, Dawson and Callan.

“I hate we are focusing everywhere except there,” he said.

“And there are a lot of fingers to point, but now’s not the time to do that. We need to adjudicate this case, and then we need to step back and say, ‘What can we learn from this?'”

Situations like Clancy’s case “occur one or two times out of 1,000,” McGraw explained.

“But that’s not nothing. One or two times out of 1,000 are one or two times too many. This is avoidable.”

His wish is that people would pay attention to the “red flags” depicted in Clancy’s case that can be “internalized to help mothers when they get in over their heads and need the kind of intervention that was needed here.”

“Reach out for help,” he urged.

“It’s not weakness, it’s strength.”

Wyatt Matters

Three babies are gone forever because the system failed them — not just the courts, but the medical professionals who saw the warning signs and didn’t act. Every parent needs to understand the difference between postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis. One is manageable with outpatient care. The other is a life-threatening emergency. When someone’s life is on the line, you don’t schedule an appointment for next week — you act immediately. Those three children deserved better. Their father deserved better. And families across America deserve a system that protects the innocent instead of making excuses for the inexcusable.