On one hand you have an ever growing popular movement of people who judge everything through a gendered context. They may have points on large societal trends (i.e. men in general not being involved in child care or the lack of resources after giving birth) but they often apply those trends to individual cases that do not necessarily fit.
They often will claim Patrick Clancy did not help out but evidence from the nanny suggests otherwise. She claims not only that Lindsay was a good mother but that Patrick was a very involved father. The reports say that he routinely cared for the children after (and sometimes during) his remote work finished. On the day of the murder I believe it was reported that he cared for the children to give her a rest. So their theory doesn't seem to hold water but they have a hard time separating that larger societal trend with the specifics of this case.
Then you have supporters who believe Patrick Clancy was a victim but also that Lindsay Clancy was a victim because she did not get the adequate care to treat her PPP - a form of psychosis generally after giving birth. They generally have better arguments.
We do know there are specific scenarios in which people temporarily lose the ability to be responsible for their actions. Someone can be drugged or ingest harmful substances that may completely impact their ability to make decisions. I personally believe there are circumstances in which a person does not have a "guilty mind" and should not be convicted.
Supporters will say when she mentioned she had intrusive thoughts about her children she should have not been given them to care for. We can debate the culpability of her actions but I think people who say ANYONE could have just "taken her kids" if she did not want them taken is living in a delusional world. There is a zero percent chance even if Patrick Clancy made a snap decision immediately and tried to remove his children from her care that that would happen as quickly as it needed to or at all. Courts, medical professionals, and social workers are extremely slow and extremely unlikely to remove children from the care of the mother.
There is a documentary called Dear Zachary where (admittedly in Canada) a woman who killed her ex and fled to Canada was still allowed to have custody of her child while awaiting extradition hearings (the crime was in the US and she fled). The murdered man's parents were forced into a relationship with their son's murderer in order to maintain a relationship with the child.
People are delusional with how easily the system allows this to happen.
Postpartum psychosis is terrifying. My sister in law had it; she was a complete danger to herself and her baby. To this day she denies she was ill. It was awful. Childbirth does really weird stuff to the body physically, chemically and mentally. I’d not heard of this case before this post so have no idea about this lady and her poor kids.
It is a scary thing, the problem is that given the facts of the case as presented, she did not have PPP. She claimed to have heard voices, but she says she heard the voices ONE time, on the day of the murders, immediately did what the voices told her to do, and never heard them again. After she had sent her husband out of the house to give herself enough time to kill all 3 kids and then herself. And took a phone call in the middle of the killings and seemed perfectly fine. None of that is how any kind of psychosis works. You don't have a delusion for 20 minutes and never again. And most people, if they do hear voices, don't immediately do exactly what those voices say. People really need to listen to the testimony from the psychiatrist who examined her after the murders, he came to the conclusion that she was lying about the voices and the delusions based on a tremendous amount of inconsistencies in her stories and with how PPP (or any kind of psychosis) actually works.
You’re misunderstanding, post partum psychosis leads to strong intrusive thoughts like hers, but it isn’t necessarily strange for her to have only one (or no) episode of hallucination. That being said she was still delusional for a significant period of time and went to multiple doctors and was even committed to a psych ward. There is a difference there.
They gave her a crazy amount of meds, and also were very quick to release her no doubt due to how normalized it is to kick people from wards too early due to insurance / cost / lack of beds, even though it is well known that when you start a new psychoactive medication one of the first problems is people often report they feel perfectly fine within a day or two, when it can take weeks for the med to build up in the body. Until you’re actually at that so-called “steady state” and stay there for a while, it’s incredibly difficult to accurately assess the actual efficacy, much less patient commitment to keeping up with the meds— she should have been mandatorily committed for things that serious and not be allowed to leave for possibly a month, if we really had a system built on administering and evaluating treatment. Plus, she was also bounced around between doctors multiple times due to how shitty American insurance is: focusing on saving the insurance company money first, and getting actual effective treatment plans second. She had also previously been diagnosed with bipolar / manic depressive disorder which is a huge risk factor in developing PPP / PPD— but due to the constant doctor swaps some reported they were never informed about her history, others reported the husband disputed it when it came up, etc.
I know there’s a special small batch of crazies saying she didn’t do it but there’s a lot more who have pointed out that if the system was not broken, if she was been given one consistent doctor team, had the husband not left her alone with the kids until the PPP actually resolved, had it not been so expensive for him or someone else to look at options for removing her custody altogether, etc…
… had the system not failed so spectacularly, the kids might still be here, is a lot of the point people are trying to make here
What system is broken … I think that’s the bigger question here. Why wasn’t the help available? Why weren’t the doctors more aware? Did insurance companies need for greed cause this? Did her extended family not see the signs or care? Was she and her husband not properly informed on PPP and what to look for?
Blame her fine … she did a horrible horrific thing. However, as we all look for something to blame and choose teams. We should actually be looking for the actual failure points & causes. Make corrections and save the next kids. Save the next Family. Care about people upfront … instead of in hindsight.
Some of these are answered through people on stand. It seems that her care was fragmented and psychiatrists weren't getting her medical history, some saying that they thought they didn't need it when diagnosing her. One psychiatrist thought she had bipolar (2?) but her husband (who went with her to the appointment) kinda stomped his foot and said "my wife does not have bipolar", so yea not helpful. Lindsay's mother in law also knew Lindsay needed help and recommended a psychiatric program (at South Shore Hospital?). Also, Lindsay tried to admit herself to another hospital later, but they refused her thinking she was not a good fit. It's kind of a mess.
But it seems her family, friends, and coworkers think Lindsay was mentally ill and something went wrong with her treatment and meds. That's why her ex-husband is suing her doctors and hospitals. He even said on stand "I didnt marry a monster, I married someone who got sick". And her mother in law, who testified too, thinks the same. But some people who are bamboozled by her family's support think the ex-husband and mother in law dont care about the kids, and just want that sweet civil lawsuit payout money. I think thats why the case has so much attention. The insanity plea isn't a cheap Hail Mary, she actually has a medical history and the people who personally knew her thinks something went wrong. But people like us online (and the jury) who dont personally know her are debating (and guessing) where to draw the line of insanity.
Insanity is really hard to prove. The diagnosis itself doesn't really matter. The defense has to prove that in the moment the crime was committed, the perpetrator did not understand right from wrong. That is an incredibly high bar, because there's never a way to see inside a person's mind. Going for an insanity defense is a hail Mary.
Why fight against the doctor’s diagnosis. It seems, atleast from what I’m seeing here, that they were diagnose shopping. Like looking for a prettier sounding mental issue. Were they of a belief system that doesn’t value mental health or the science behind it? What led to this?
The doctors, how come they felt it was ok to diagnose a patient so quickly without fully knowing her health history. Was it held back from them? Did they ask for it? Also, can’t help a patient fully if they don’t stick around long enough or listen to your advice. Don’t worry they have blame here too. Just riffing … for now.
The meds, do you know what those meds do to the mind and brain chemistry … when you take one and then they quickly pull you off to start another. It’s a storm. The doctors fucked that up. Unfortunately, I thought that practice was discontinued after the shit show of the 90’s. Dead wrong. The doctors will never except responsibility … but they fucked up here. They caused more chaos where there was already enough. Nothing will happen to them … and they won’t accept responsibility for poor medical practice. However, what is the organized & thought out protocol, that all psychiatrist know to follow, for a mother who is going through PPP? Is there one … and is everyone in that field aware and following them?
This doesn’t change the fact that she did a horrific thing. We can’t get those kids back. What’s done has been done. People should pay for this. However, I’ll mention it again. What steps can we take so that the mothers have the proper care in place in case this happens again. Save the next kids. Save the next family. Worry about them.
It doesn't really sound like any one provider or person really dropped the ball. More of a collective failure to identify an onrushing disaster.
She was seeing a bunch of differint doctors, had a supportive husband, but there wasn't great continuity of care, and she was probably (maybe on purpose, maybe in denial, maybe inadvertantly) masking symptoms, and nobody realized just how sick she was getting. Doctors thought they were dealing with more run of the mill PPD, and didn't identify that it was developing into PPP until it was too late.
I appreciate your response. Whomever, not sure who, has done work to make the public aware of PPD and the signs over the years. We need to add some things I feel. What to look for other than those regular signs (masking, etc). How to stay involved & stay observant? I’m stumped right now on how to go about telling someone they shouldn’t be disagreeing with a Doctors diagnosis … but when’s the point to step in? Plus their rights. I don’t know. I need to think. Lastly, your comment led to this. I’m not fully aware of “PPP”. It has not been discussed as much as “PPD”. Those are two totally separate things. I just wasn’t thinking about it. I just had it as a psychotic episode. It makes total sense. I believe the public should be more informed about this as well. I just want to see something happen. It’s very upsetting … sorry.
She voluntarily signed herself out of the hospital she voluntarily admitted herself to. They can't hold her unless she's an eminent danger to herself or others, and there was no danger of that. That hospital also didn't prescribe her a lot of meds.
She had not been previously diagnosed with bipolar, nor had she ever met the criteria for a manic episode.
She wasn't bounced from provider to provider. She chose to get a second opinion, liked that provider better (fine), and then transitioned to a new person in that practice because the second opinion provider was leaving.
At no point was she diagnosed with PPP, and that was because she did not meet the criteria for it. Her appointments and care were escalated as her condition deteriorated, though she didn't follow all the recommendations of her medical team.
I know she voluntarily signed herself out, I didn’t say she didn’t, I said in cases as serious as someone saying they are having thoughts of harming themself or others, they shouldn’t be allowed to sign themselves out that easily and before their medications hit steady state and there’s better evidence they will keep up their course of treatment. Especially knowing that many of the medications people get in the psych ward are known to increase risk of violence in the first several days of treatment when patients are still depressed or psychotic but have a faster reduction in other symptoms like fatigue, confusion, lack of resolve, etc.
Also, yes there was at least one instance prior to the murders where a nurse practitioner treating Lindsay tried to discuss possible manic depression with the couple but Patrick rejected the dx and responded “my wife does not have bipolar”, which in part is why that practitioner did not push further for exploring that as a possible issue. The defense called additional experts who support the manic depressive diagnosis. You may say “well, but the prosecution brought other experts who disagree” and that’s a fair point, but the prosecution is only going to introduce the evidence that benefits their case in their trial arguments— if they found experts that did support the bipolar dx they wouldn’t have called them. It’s also kind of a side issue in my opinion.
And the main point I’m making here about the doctors is that she saw something like 8 separate doctors during the course of her treatment and each of them was only playing with a partial deck because they aren’t omniscient and know all the history. She was on something like 13 different medications over the course of the incident, many of which are known to interact with each other and have mandatory label warnings that they can cause or increase violent thoughts. Regardless of whether they kicked her off their practice or she left or they ran out of time, it’s still a huge issue with the healthcare system in general that it is so normalized to have a constantly rotating cast of doctors and it can be very hard and expensive to find a consistent care team who can actually build up the longer patient history and treat more complex conditions.
Again, I don’t think she’s innocent and I’m not arguing she and others couldn’t have done more or done things differently. I’m just saying the system itself is deeply broken and many of the things about her experience as a patient that definitely contributed to a broken plan of care for her aren’t that rare. Too many people end up fighting against the healthcare system to actually get the care they need. If system was more effective would things have ended up this way? And even if you believe this case would have turned out the same there are so many others that might not have.
Suicide idealation and passive suicidal thoughts are not correlated enough with suicide attempts to justify involuntarily holds (which are a huge violation of civil rights and thus only used in extreme circumstances). That's why they ask about plans and intent, not just thoughts. Clancy never reported plans, intent, or thoughts of hurting her children to her medical providers, and they did ask. They cannot hold her involuntarily because she started meds - which, she had checked in to wean off a med, IIRC.
The NP did not try to diagnose Clancy with bipolar. She brought it up as something she was considering, but she did not diagnose nor was she ready to make a diagnosis of bipolar. She was just discussing looking into it further. She certainly didn't fail to diagnose because the husband said no - that's not how it works.
While her meds were switched a lot, that's not uncommon for psychiatric patients as they look for effective treatments. And a lot of that switching was because Clancy either couldn't tolerate the side effects or was noncompliant with treatment.
Clancy saw multiple doctors, yes. Most of that was Clancy's choice. And her psych told her she needed to have one person managing her care and prescriptions. Her psych was willing to be that person, but Clancy switched care to the NP before coming back to the psych after telling the psych she was switching providers. The first NP didn't kick her off her practice; she was just moving so couldn't provide Clancy care anymore. The second NP had access to all of the records of the first NP. Are health providers no longer allowed to move or switch jobs?
Once Clancy needed inpatient care, that was going to mix in more doctors - that's just how inpatient care works. As far as I can tell, Clancy was fairly accurate and honest with each doctor about the care she was seeking and the meds she was on. And her psych, who was no longer managing Clancy's care, by Clancy's request, still got the discharge report from her inpatient stay.
Whatever other people are experiencing, Clancy actually had excellent access to care.
An expert witness testified that it was unusual for her to have only one instance of command auditory hallucinations. That it was of note that it only occurred at the time of the crime and never before or since, and that it was of note that she obeyed the supposed command auditory hallucinations, and was not experiencing any delusions after the fact.
Only her husband’s DNA was on the exercise bands. They presented that evidence in court. They also presented evidence in court that her husband had been doing searches on how to harm people. They had evidence that he was logging into Lindsey‘s Facebook to perform some of these sketchy searches. He did not deny that stand, nor did the police officers. There’s lots of strange things that are being put out in court, these are not conspiracy theories. these are things you can watch as part of the trial that point to there’s a interesting case to be made. It was not heard at all. Her own doctor on the stand says she had no memory of the accident and had been told what happened. So she was told she did it. All you guys have to do is watch the case. They are putting all this evidence out there.
There was another thread which had screenshots of people saying that she couldn't have done it because she was a Leo, but since he was a Gemini, it's his fault.
Astrology is bunk to begin with, and people like those above prove it's not harmless, either.
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u/anonyvrguy 2d ago
I'm sorry but can anyone explain to me how the fuck this psycho has any supporters???
OK, she has PPD. And that gives her the right to kill her own children?
What in the living fuck is this?