The Lindsay Clancy murder trial is now in its third week. The Massachusetts mother admits she took the lives of her three young children. However, her attorney argues she should not be declared not guilty by reason of insanity, adding that she shouldn’t be held criminally responsible because she was suffering from postpartum psychosis.
Lindsay Clancy sobbed during testimony, describing how she strangled her three children, then jumped out of a second-story window of their home, leaving her paralyzed from the waist down in January of 2023.
This week, psychologist Dr. Paul Zeisel, who treated Clancy after the deaths, said she suffered a psychotic break.
“She had said that she heard a male voice ordering her, telling her that she didn’t have any choice. But she had to kill her children and then kill herself.”
Witnesses including her former husband, whom she divorced after the killings, former mother-in-law, and mother all testified she reached out to them and multiple mental health professionals about her deteriorating psychological state.
“She was begging for help,” Susan Clancy testified.
Lindsay Clancy was prescribed more than a dozen psychiatric drugs, and even checked herself into a mental hospital and was released. Yet she complained the treatments were making her worse.
“She told us she had thoughts of harming the children,” her mother Paula Musgrove testified.
Clancy’s attorney blames a health care system that over-medicated Clancy and failed to diagnose her bipolar disorder and postpartum psychosis.
Christian psychiatrist Dr. Daniel Amen told CBN News this case is a tragedy.
“Illnesses like postpartum psychosis, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, they’re real; and left untreated or ineffectively treated, it ruins people’s lives and it ruins the lives of those people who love them,” he said.
Dr. Amen said psychiatric drugs can bring relief as long as they’re used properly.
“Medicines save people’s lives. It’s just using them in the dark; you end up on 13 different medications because you really don’t know what you’re treating. You don’t know what’s going on,” he said. “One of the really sad things about this case is there’s actually a new medicine, Zurzuvae, that came out shortly after she committed this crime, and it’s specifically indicated for postpartum depression.”
Prosecutors say Lindsay Clancy is guilty because she planned the murders and then faked her suicide attempt. If convicted, she faces life without parole. If not, she’ll be sent to a state psychiatric hospital.
RESOURCES FOR WOMEN SEEKING HELP FOR POSTPARTUM HEALTHCARE:
