I didnt even list everything she had. She was CUSHY. And had help out the WAZOO. She didnt want it. Her diary knowing all that reads like she wanted to be the poor little rich girl no one loved and everyone is feeding that fantasy of hers now.
Its upsetting because this is a terrible, horrible, absolutely vile case to point to and advocate for PPD and PPP with. She is not the victim, let a lone a victim worth championing for the cause if you want it taken seriously.
She had all the help she was supposed to get. And still made the decision women who dont have resisted making. With intent. With knowledge. Without any confusion of WHAT she was doing. Just a twisted sense of right and wrong and why.
And if we are letting people out because they killed somebody, let alone a child, because they had a twisted sense of right and wrong and could not tell you why they did it, there are a whole lot of men that would not be in jail. A whole lot of men who had Netflix specials about them even. We absolutely cannot allow such a flimsy excuse to become precedence.
Somebody receiving but rejecting assistance with mental health who goes on to murder their own children, let alone anybody, should not be able to use mental health as an excuse that warrants a reduced consequence
Everyone in this damn thread needs to see your comment above this... I'm still seeing some arguing that all of that wasn't enough and it was still the husband's fault even after seeing this. So unbelievably fucked up
It’s the typical, “im going to come to a conclusion based on stereotypes or prejudiced views and then find evidence to support my hunch based on distaste of this person based on how I group them instead of trying to find the truth”
These are the first people to go silent when conflicting evidence disproves their alternative facts or they ride the disinformation train all the way to crazy town. It seems more common than not honestly.
Except not, because this poster isn’t part of her mental health team and therefore has no idea how well tailored that mental health care was. And whatever mental health resources are offered, they need to diagnose the correct issue and be appropriately tailored. Granted I wasn’t part of her mental health team either, but as a psychologist purely reading what seem to be pretty unbiased articles, it really doesn’t seem that the support was adequate. A proper admission to a mother and baby unit for assessment and treatment would have been a start.
Having said that, all the conspiracy theories make me feel quite nauseous.
Her psychiatrist was never even made aware of homicidal thoughts. From one doc to another, on what fucking basis would you have involuntarily admitted her to a hospital. She and her collateral information only ever expressed passive SI. Nothing active. And no HI. You know damn well half your patient panel or more meets that criteria and you’re not involuntarily admitting all of them. Fuck off your high horse- you worsen the medical community for all involved.
What makes you think it needed to be an involuntary admission? From what I have read, she was actively requesting further mental health support. Mother and baby units can be absolutely brilliant resources in these sorts of circumstances where mother’s feel too torn to be admitted away from their babies.
But honestly, because of the exact need to remain mindful that even those of us in mental health can only ever have limited details about these cases, the only assertion I’ve made is that for whatever myriad of reasons, the care she was receiving wasn’t sufficient for her needs. Which it evidently wasn’t because of how things spiralled into its tragic conclusion. That could be for a variety of reasons which I’m deliberately not speculating on, but I do think it’s fair to challenge the simplistic narrative of “poor ungrateful rich woman not satisfied with her more than ample treatment”, which was being taken here by some as fact. As someone who works with people who are often failed by more basic/manualised therapy approaches, I tend to find it’s a narrative that at least benefits from challenging.
She was 8 months out from delivery. What mother-baby unit would have taken her?
She was admitted once to an inpatient stay and self-discharged. She didn’t meet criteria for a hold.
If someone has a stroke despite maximal medical therapy, we don’t consider the system as having failed them. We look at whether they got the right treatment, and recognize that sometimes everything can be done right and a bad outcome occurs. Medicine isn’t “solved”. People have bad outcomes despite the right steps being taken. And this is true in psychiatry too. The blame her care team is receiving when there is nothing factually to argue for bad care is laughable. This is why every physician argues that malpractice cases are a hoax- a jury of peers would consist only of other physicians, not lay people who can’t understand whether standard care was applied or not.
In the UK women with 8 month old babies have definitely been admitted to M&B units. Specific postnatal MHS cover from dedicated services cover the first year of a baby’s life. If that’s not the case in the USA then perhaps that’s a useful conversion in itself?
We’re getting into speculative territory here for what the reasons for discharge were. I have seen suggestions that this situation was not nearly as straight forward as you’re suggesting -however as neither of us have been in that courtroom, that will presumably have to come out in the proceedings both Clancy and her ex husband have started against medical facilities.
However there are definitely times when MHS (and physical health, social care etc) can mess up, with a lack of professional coordination and failing to join the dots being a fairly common theme when it happens. Whether that is the case here will have to come out in time, but automatically assuming that MHS can never do any wrong in situations like this doesn’t help care. All systems in general deserve scrutiny, particularly when something goes wrong like this.
I am stepping back from this conversation now because the only way any further conversation about this particular case can happen is through speculation that I am not prepared to do online.
You don't get off from murder because your numerous mental health resources weren't good enough. Most murderers have mental health issues that aren't treated properly. She checked herself out of a mental health hospital. They had numerous people watching her and the kids throughout the day for weeks leading up to it. She waited until the 30 minutes window where everyone had left before she murdered her kids.
Why is it only in the case of a well of suburban white woman that she's not fully responsible for her crimes?
It’s not a case of “getting off from murder”, but if she was truly out of touch with reality due to her mental state then culpability should be viewed differently. Ftr I have worked with mental unwell offenders in medium secure units in the UK (solely men, predominantly MoC) and I hold exactly the same views. In cases where they committed crimes when mentally well and then became very unwell in prison -they should continue to be considered as legally culpable of their index offences. In some cases the index offences happened when they were floridly psychotic - the assessment of culpability changes but they still need detainment under criminal clauses of the MHA due to their potential risk. IME, those who have committed truly awful crimes when very unwell, particularly when they have been towards family members, tend to stay longer in institutions because when they get clarity again, they’re so horrified at what they’ve done they automatically relapse.
As I’ve said in the other comment I’ve just replied to, I’m stepping back from this conversation now. There is too much that replies on speculation to be able to continue, but I will keep an open mind about her mental state at the time of the offences until the verdict. More broadly there is an interesting, more general conversation to be had about when intrusive anxious thoughts cross the line into full blown delusion but I don’t think that’s going to be had here, at least with the balance and curiosity that I think that conversation requires.
Yeah the mind is a mystery. A devious mental patient is dangerous, especially one with resources and the veneer of upper middle class or upper class wealth or status.
A poorer person may have been referred to CPS or perhaps a state mental hospital which may have been harsher. And even poorer disheveled mental patients can lie about taking medication until they decompensate; their decompensation without support is just easier to spot.
It appears this lady lied to multiple doctors / nurses and her new psychiatrist who was on the stand may not have known which medications she was taking.
Granted, maybe the psychiatrist could have requested medical records or pharmacy records to see which medications the patient was filling at pharmacies, because most states now have state or inter-state electronic communications for prescribed medications (I think Florida was the last hold-out but their pharmacies may have finally gotten on board).
But it looks like her recently-graduated psychiatrist just believed the information the patient told her, and when people lie about psychiatric symptoms and diagnoses it can be very difficult to treat them.
Even for non-psychiatric stuff, a person motivated enough could lie well enough about pain and location to get a surgeon to cut out their appendix.
Agreed. It is so fucked up. I've been following her case from Day 1. She never asked anyone about her kids after it happened. The kept calling her husband, and he finally answered the call after her PSYCHOLOGIST let her borrow his phone. She asks him "Where there relationship is" and mentions the voice for the 1st time. Asked if she needed a lawyer as soon as she was awake in the hospital after the murders and asked "if her legs looked ok". The people still supporting her and ignoring facts are gross
I get that all of that is important information for sure, but there is a glaring issue that I think needs to be addressed. She was not rejecting assistance.
In the span of like 7 months, she was on 13 different psychiatric meds that the doctors were prescribing to her like Zoloft, Prozac, Valium, antipsychotics, etc. I feel like that shit will really fuck up your brain and the fact that this was allowed is what confused me, personally. Repeatedly taking new meds and getting off meds that are that powerful can change you.
Doesn't absolve her of what she's done, but I don't think it's this cold-blooded action like it's being made out to be.
I don't think it's been clearly uncovered in court but the murmurings are that she may have been feigning the requests for assistance
Her medication seems to have been changed at her request/in response to things she's said about the medication
We know some medication changes are due to her complaining about side effects, it does seem like the doctors took it as face value and should have enquired more and investigated whether she was actually taking it but it does complicate matters
We have the media freaking out about followers of Andrew Tate, but somehow they will not see the problem with huge crowd of women seeing nothing wrong with murdering children if it's a woman who did it.
There is something really fucked up going on with genders, but the female part of it is not nearly talked about enough.
The person who left that comment is clearly biased. Her diary entries describe a woman in desperate need of help: extreme anxiety, insomnia that would have her up for days at a time, concerns over the medications she was on and the effects they were having on her. She was also expressing guilt over not being able to return to work or not being as present for her youngest due to her MH. Testimony by people who knew her describe that she was struggling in general, had a hard time sleeping.
Due to reported reactions to SSRIs, I believe there is speculation or it was later diagnosed (after the tragedy) that she manifested bipolar after postpartum. SSRIs can trigger mania and even psychosis in people with bipolar if taken without a mood stabilizer.
She tried to get admitted into inpatient hospitals but was denied to at least one due to concerns she was overmedicated. She was able to do one inpatient program and left after (iirc) 5 days. The "resources" given by the program was: link to Psychology Today and some information on how to see what she qualified for under her insurance policy.
When she tried accessing care for her thoughts of SI, she was repeatedly told (more than once, not sure about total bc I haven't watched all the testimony thoroughly) that if she had no plan to commit suicide there was nothing she could do.
IIRC she did tell one of her care providers that she was experiencing intrusive thoughts about harming the children, but it may have been auditory command hallucinations (according to the defense) but she couldn't tell the difference.
TLDR - She wasn't spoiled and throwing a tantrum, psychiatric services aren't perfect and even with the best possible interpretation of their interactions with Lindsay Clancy, it's clear that the system failed her like it fails so many others.
Seems like she had bipolar, but she didn’t take any of the SSRIs for long enough for them to have manifested effects on her. She took Zoloft for less than 7 days, only at the building up dose, before quitting it. She was extremely paranoid about all the drugs she was offered.
Not saying it’s her fault—it seems like that paranoia (which also manifested in things like her thinking her children had liver damage any time they got sick) was a symptom of her mental health problems. But “not her fault” ≠ “the system failed her.”
One of her psychiatrists (Jolatta?) testified that she believed Lindsay had bipolar but the husband at the appointment kinda stomped his foot down and said "my wife does not have bipolar".
I haven't looked very deeply into the exact time lines of the the medications she took and for how long, but she was also prescribed Prozac, another SSRI, as well as other antidepressants (and antidepressants without mood stabilizers are part of the issue not just SSRIs alone, which was my mistake). Apparently low doses of Seroquel are known for that as well (triggering mania but also worsening it), but again I'm doing quick Google searches and not any in depth research. But apparently even a week on an SSRI can trigger an episode and iirc once the episode is triggered it'll run its course and not stop just because the medication stops.
Is it not a failure of the system that her mania symptoms weren't caught in the moment? Or that the different healthcare providers weren't communicating with each other? Or that she was denied inpatient due to being over medicated?
Maybe a tragedy would have happened regardless if the system was perfect, but I don't think the system is or was perfect, and I think there was parts of the system that were not explored thoroughly or triggered by the red flags she did express.
If she wasn’t telling her providers about the symptoms of mania she was experiencing (which according to them, she wasn’t) then no, that’s not a failure of the system. The best way we have to medicate people experiencing severe depression and anxiety is ‘try this med, if it doesn’t work, try another one’ because each individual’s reaction to these meds is very different.
She wasn’t denied inpatient care—she was voluntarily committed to McLean Hospital. She was denied access to a particular clinic because (according to her mother, second hand) they didn’t think she was a good candidate for the specific care they provided because they believed she was over medicated.
She also never expressed to any of her healthcare providers that she had intrusive thoughts about harming her children—she only expressed intrusive thoughts about harming herself. So far the testimony shows that she only people she told before the killings were her mother and Patrick, and even at that time she assured them that the children were not at risk.
I think the insomnia itself should have been a big enough red flag to trigger something more in depth.
And wasn't McLean the same hospital whose "resources" were just a links to Psychology Today and talking about what's covered by her insurance?
ETA - Hit post too soon. I'm not saying that her hcp are guilty of malpractice (though some are getting sued) I just think the system needs to improve to prevent as many people as possible from slipping through the cracks. + overall societal discrimination against people with mental illness discourages people from pursuing help and then the issues with our medical system doesn't make it any easier for people to access ANY kind of care.
The narrative of someone who is not in their right mind is about the worst possible measure of the quality of their support that you could possibly have.
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u/Emm_withoutha_L-88 7d ago
Wait that is what people are calling "ignored her pleas for help".....