Illustrating how out of touch I am with much of current events, this morning I finally educated myself about the Lindsay Clancy murder trial. Clancy is being prosecuted for the 2023 murders of her three young children. The defense is arguing that Clancy was suffering from psychiatric issues, including postpartum depression. If convicted she would get life in prison without parole and if she's found not guilty she's looking at being incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital for a long, long time.
I guess I should have been keeping up with with this all along, given my background in mental health as both patient and professional.
Sweet Jesus.
This woman was on WAY too many medications. With that wild variety of drugs in her system, it's no wonder that things were going to go bad. It really is completely possible that Clancy was screwed up, entirely disregarding postpartum depression and perhaps bipolar disorder altogether. She may have had only the vaguest notion of what she was doing when she murdered her kids, doing so robbed of conscience.
The doctors and nurses attending to her made a very serious mistake, having her being on all those meds. The interactions could not have been adequately predicted. Anything at all could have gone wrong in her mind.
I'm not making excuses for her. I believe that she needs to be put into a psychiatric facility for a long time. But having had some troubling experiences with being overly-medicated myself, I can understand how Clancy could have become unhinged from reality because of being on too many meds.
I'm going to be tuned in to the verdict when the jury hands it down, likely this coming week. This could establish a significant legal precedent, one that might impact mental health care in this country enormously.
I'm fascinated by your talking about having bipolar disorder. What do you think should happen to Lindsay if she murdered her children because she was mentally ill?
ReplyDeleteI admit that I haven't followed the trial as closely as many others have. I believe that she is going to be incarcerated for a very long time. The question is, where? I believe that she has issues and that they need to be addressed, but that does not exonerate from what she did. There has to be accountability. I was held accountable for some things I did while manic (things I don't care to talk about) and those couldn't compare to multiple infanticide. I hope she gets the psychiatric care she needs, wherever she ends up.
ReplyDeleteI've read you a long time and never heard you use the Lord's name in vain like that before. I hope you don't make a habit of it.
ReplyDeleteBen
Those were literally the two words that came out of my mouth when I saw the list of all the medications that Lindsay Clancy was prescribed.
ReplyDeleteThe doctors screwed up. The nurses screwed up. The pharmacists should have done something too. Psychotropic meds must be VERY cautiously prescribed. And once begun they need to be monitored. This is an American horror story and that there is a likelihood that over-medication was a factor in it should give pause to everyone in the mental health field.
I've used "impolite" language on this blog before. However it's something that I VERY rarely do. In the entire twenty-two year history of this site I've only made one post using the "F word". That particular article dealt with a man who was driven to take his own life by the government. If that didn't merit profanity, I don't know what possibly could.
I shared those two words in this write-up to emphasize my horror. To convey how startled I was.