Three years ago, three beautiful children were removed from this planet because of the way vulnerable new mothers depend on a psychiatric drug system which treats them as human chattel.

On January 24, 2023, Lindsay Clancy strangled her three children—Cora, Dawson, and Callan—in the basement of their Duxbury, Massachusetts home before attempting suicide.

Nobody should absolve her for these heinous deeds. She admits them. But the big, anonymous system that indemnifies doctors while playing with the lives of real women is at fault, too.

“Clancy had three psychiatrists prescribing medicine at the same time. She had twenty prescriptions simultaneously. One of the prescribers had never had a postpartum psychosis client. Another did not know Clancy had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. All the prescribers could have looked at Clancy’s records and they didn’t.
Mere mortals are unable to challenge the mental health system. Clancy is an experienced nurse and she kept incredible records of her own treatment — qualitative and quantitative. Her records are more thorough than the doctors’.” – Penelope Trunk,
https://penelopetrunk.substack.com/p/the-mental-health-system-is-on-trial?r=219m92&utm_medium=ios

“The psychiatrist who cleared her to leave McLean Hospital weeks before the killings had never treated a single case of postpartum psychosis in over 20 years of practice, ran through the standard diagnostic checklist without ever attempting to figure out what was actually happening (shocking, I know), didn’t bother pulling her records, and sent her home with more psychiatric medication anyway.
Multiple providers, dozens of prescriptions, and not one person was holding the full picture, nor were any of them attempting to get to the root of the issue, and instead blindly outsourcing to the pharmaceutical overlords.” – D. Alex Zeck,
https://aleczeck.substack.com/p/psych-drugs-and-lindsay-clancy?r=219m92&utm_medium=ios

Here is the disturbing and not uncommon sequence of events. It is shocking, but perhaps even more surprising that more similar tragedies do not happen.

Clancy gave birth to her third child in May 2022. Postpartum symptoms ensued: severe anxiety, depression, racing thoughts, and, most importantly, catastrophic insomnia.

When you cannot sleep, you cannot function.

Beginning in September, she sought psychiatric treatment. She was prescribed a succession of medications as her symptoms persisted and, according to the record, sometimes became worse.

First there was the Zoloft (sertraline), which sent her flying, a classic indication of underlying bipolar disorder. She couldn’t sleep. Her mind started racing. The doctors disregarded the bipolar indications and kept treating her only for anxiety and depression.

The drugs kept flowing. Prozac, Remeron, sedatives, anxiolytics, sleep medications, antipsychotic medication, and eventually a mood stabilizer.

Her body was awash in drugs.

She faithfully took her pills.

The doctors started, stopped, substituted, and combined them.

Multiple providers. Lots of drugs. No oversight or coordination.

By early January 2023, she was committed in McLean Hospital, diagnosed with major depressive disorder, severe, without psychotic features.

Still, no one wrote the word “bipolar disorder” into that diagnosis.

Nobody thought to detox her body from the high volume and rapid succession of pills.

Because they did not see her as a person, but only a collection of symptoms, which did or did not meet the criteria for a perfect diagnosis.

Clancy was experiencing severe postpartum symptoms, yes.

She couldn’t sleep, true. But something else was going on.

They ignored it.

Then Clancy fell.

Down, down, down the mountain.

Medication-induced destabilization, severe sleep deprivation, an underlying bipolar vulnerability, and postpartum psychiatric illness combined to produce a psychotic break.

She was hospitalized shortly before the killings and was discharged without a diagnosis of psychosis.

But she had psychosis.

Days later, she killed her children.

Every single one of those doctors is liable.