Dr Kristyn Sommer

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06/09/2026

They were children, not exhibits. A mother's crisis hidden behind competence. A system's tools failing to grasp the whole story. We want simple, but the truth is complex. Read the full essay on substack.

06/09/2026

They were children, not exhibits. A mother's crisis hidden behind competence. A system's tools failing to grasp the whole story. We want simple, but the truth is complex. Read the full essay on substack.

06/09/2026

I often describe my experience of postpartum anxiety going unnoticed for 9 months despite multiple healthcare and mental health practitioners assuring me I was fine and normal as not realizing that I was treading water all my life, so when I started drowning, I described my struggle as just a little worse than normal. What I didn’t realize was that most people don’t live their lives with a level of anxiety so high they can barely fill their lungs with enough air, yet that was my normal for so much of my life. When I was postpartum and started to feel like I was suffocating, it just seemed reasonable. Until my body and brain broke. Read the full article on substack.

06/09/2026

A verdict can tell us what a jury believes, but justice demands a harder question: What could have saved Cora and Callan? What signs were missed? What breaks were papered over? Read the full essay on my substack

06/09/2026

A verdict can tell us what a jury believes, but justice demands a harder question: What could have saved Cora and Callan? What signs were missed? What breaks were papered over? Read the full essay on my substack

05/09/2026

I wrote this piece in substack a little while ago, after recording and never posting draft after draft on TikTok. Because everytime I tried to speak my mind was tangled and these children deserved my best.

I built a 25-chapter reference guide to AI for academics. It's called Understanding & using AI as a scientist.Why? Becau...
04/09/2026

I built a 25-chapter reference guide to AI for academics. It's called Understanding & using AI as a scientist.
Why? Because the rules of our jobs changed twice in five years (once when we went online with covid, then again when ChatGPT arrived). Most of us got a policy PDF and a sense of dread. So I wrote the briefing I wish I'd been given. What these tools are (predictive text at scale, not a brain), what goes wrong (a lot), how to check the work, what to disclose, how to set up properly. Then chapter by chapter through the actual jobs: consent, bias, writing papers, peer review, grants, teaching, assessment, PhD supervision, ethics approval, the energy cost, and a full prompting vocabulary.
You don't read it cover to cover. Every chapter is titled with the question you actually have. Find yours.
Over the next few weeks I'll share one usable piece from each chapter here, free. Comment GUIDE and I'll send you the link to the whole thing. PhD students, DM me for 80% off.

Three weeks of trial audio on my commute, and what I recognise isn't the crime. It's the before.The Lindsay Clancy trial...
31/08/2026

Three weeks of trial audio on my commute, and what I recognise isn't the crime. It's the before.

The Lindsay Clancy trial drew me back into a past I lived between 2019 and 2023: prenatal depression, postpartum anxiety, and a brain so sick it is still recovering. Every question the prosecution asks cuts me a little deeper, because they are painting the picture I've worked so hard to erase in my own mind.

Meanwhile there's a machine spinning. Thousands of videos vying for the best theory, rewarded with likes and views. There's a name for it. The controversy carousel. And it isn't staying on TikTok. It's bleeding out into podcasts, workplaces, dinner tables, group chats.

Twelve people who heard everything that can legally and ethically be put in front of them will make a finding. The carousel heard clips. But the carousel's verdict is the one that will travel.

I don't have a theory. I have a memory.

If you're pregnant or in your baby's first year and something feels wrong, PANDA is 1300 726 306 and ForWhen is 1300 24 23 22. Past that first year, Beyond Blue is 1300 22 4636.

Full essay on my Substack. Link in bio.

I've been a mother for seven years. That's 61,320 hours. For a psychiatrist to log that many in postpartum illness would...
28/08/2026

I've been a mother for seven years. That's 61,320 hours. For a psychiatrist to log that many in postpartum illness would take twenty years.

Twenty years of no general psychiatry. No forensic work. No teaching. Just this. Exclusively. Nobody on that witness stand has that.

The court counts, out loud, at the start of every expert's testimony. How long have you been practising. How many papers. How many patients. If hours are the currency, somebody has to explain why my ledger doesn't count.

I'm not asking lived experience to deliver a verdict. It can't. But every person in that courtroom was reconstructing an interior from the outside.

The field already has a name for the women who could have spoken. Experts by experience.

So why does a year observing this illness count as expertise, and a year surviving it count as biography? Why do we count patients assessed, and not nights survived?

If you're pregnant or postpartum and something feels wrong, PANDA is 1300 726 306.

Full essay on my Substack, link in bio.

Everyone keeps asking how the system missed her. I keep thinking about a different question: compared with what?"She sai...
28/08/2026

Everyone keeps asking how the system missed her. I keep thinking about a different question: compared with what?

"She said she was feeling better." "She was underreporting her symptoms." Two phrases from the Lindsay Clancy trial that I can't put down. Because underreporting assumes there was a true number inside her and she knowingly gave the wrong one.

Years ago I answered every question on a mental health screener honestly and came back almost fine, while having five hour panic attacks at home, breastfeeding my baby. I wasn't lying. My scale was wrong. When you've spent your whole life in the water, treading water is normal. Better just means better than the worst you have ever been. It doesn't mean well.

One doctor refused to take "better" at face value. That's the only reason I got help.

So keep asking women how they are. But also ask what "okay" looks like. Ask what happens on the bad days. Listen to the life she's describing, not only the adjective she picks for it.

If you're pregnant or postpartum and something feels wrong, PANDA is 1300 726 306. If you or someone else is in immediate danger, call 000. Lifeline is 24/7 on 13 11 14.

Full essay on my Substack, link in bio.

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New South Wales
Sydney, NSW
2026

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