The Lindsay Clancy Trial

I can’t look away from this Lindsay Clancy trial. I know it’s dark. I know it’s not healthy to be binging court testimony late at night. Clancy did the worst conceivable thing a person could possibly do. In the midst of alleged post-partum psychosis, she strangled her three young children to death. It’s difficult to even comprehend the horrors. I couldn’t look away from the Reiner murders either, but if it’s possible, this seems even worse.

I’m very fearful to write about this, but part of the reason I can’t look away is because I unfortunately understand her experience, on some level. I too, went for months without sleeping. Was put on a seemingly endless bevy of psychiatric medication. Went to a residential treatment center. Was desperate for sleep. Would do anything for sleep. Heard voices even – like she did – as a result of this deprivation.

In January 2023, Lindsay Clancy, a labor & delivery nurse in the Boston area, killed her children, ages 8 months, 3 years, and 5. With rapt attention, I watched her ex-husband and father of those children, her friend, her co-worker, her attending psychiatrist, and the police testify against her in court. They spoke to her experience with bipolar disorder, with post-partum psychosis after the birth of her youngest child, Callan. The antipsychotics and benzos she was put on in an effort to relieve her of some of her symptoms as she dealt with the sleeplessness, the depression. Her stay at a residential treatment center – Mass General’s famed McLean Hospital. How she didn’t even see a psychiatrist there until her very last day in treatment.

In many ways, her experience with bipolar mirrored my own. The agony dragged on for months, with no end in sight. She was on maternity leave from her job at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Her co-worker and friend testified that she was nervous to go back, complained about insomnia and brain fog. When I was in the throes of my episode, I took a leave of absence from the prestigious oncology research company I was working for at the time. Was planning then to go on to nursing school. I too, extended my leave – eventually left the company, didn’t enroll in school. I felt that brain fog. That temporary cognitive decline that accompanies severe insomnia that makes it difficult to function at full capacity.

After strangling her children in the basement of her home, Lindsay went upstairs, swallowed some pills, slit her wrists and neck, and threw herself out her bedroom window in a very earnest attempt at suicide. I know people who have suffered this same affliction and done the same – similar things, anyway. It’s heartbreaking, and terrifying. She survived her attempt, and is now paralyzed from the waist down, appearing in court in a wheelchair. Regarding the murders, she said she heard a man’s voice tell her to do it. She was not in her right mind.

I know all too well how it feels to lose your mind. How quickly she might’ve gone from a caring mother, loving wife, and high functioning nurse to the state she was in when she committed the ultimate atrocity. Pregnancy and childbirth is a scary thing. A dramatic drop in reproductive hormones, severe lack of sleep, and underlying conditions like bipolar disorder can result in post-partum psychosis. Many medications carry black box warnings regarding taking them during pregnancy. For the medication I’m on, NIH reports that the drug can cause withdrawal and movement symptoms in newborns, which must be weighed carefully against the risk of an untreated mental health condition.

Personally, I want so badly to be a mother. It’s something I’ve known for a long time. Though not in my immediate near term plans, long term, it feels like an inevitability. I’m aware that this will entail working very closely with my psychiatrist to manage both the medication and the symptoms associated with the perinatal period. I believe I can do it successfully, and still, it’s something I have a lot of fear around.

Though she did something horrific beyond most people’s wildest imaginations, I have a deep well of empathy for Lindsay Clancy. It’s eerie for me to hear her story in the lead up to the horrific murders. It echoes my own experience in many ways, and leaves me feeling grateful that though I’ve experienced the manic highs and depressive lows of bipolar disorder, I’ve never gone through the nightmare of true psychosis.

There are things I have to pay close attention to – sleep, drug use (from which I abstain), alcohol use (from which I also abstain). I take my medication religiously, and it is quite literally, a life saver. Like Lindsay, I have the benefit of being able to afford therapy, psychiatry, of being insured and gainfully employed. We both have resources at our disposal for treating this condition. And yet, that’s not enough to say that the disorder won’t affect our lives in ways both insignificant and profound.

Her life is ruined. Her ex-husband’s life is ruined. The lives of her three small children are far too prematurely over. It is impossible to overstate the reach of her actions. I can’t understand them, of course. And yet, part of me can. In the coming weeks, I’ll continue to follow her trial. To see what the court decides.

Though I have relief from this illness through the miracle of modern biochemistry, I’m aware that it could be temporary. That it’s imperative to remain vigilant. Not let those things slip. The medication they gave her to sleep – the one that psychiatrists seem to favor though it has a distinctly zombifying effect – made her condition much worse. I have a bottle of it in my home should things take a turn for the worse. Should I not sleep for 48 hours, the way Lindsay didn’t when she checked herself into the hospital. One of many times she did so.

It’s a heavy spectre that looms over my life, though most of the time I can put it out of my mind. The potential return of this horrible thing. I hope and pray that it doesn’t, but am aware of the possibility that it could. It’s not my fault – this dysregulation of neurotransmitters in my brain, of dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine, and GABA – but I am deeply ashamed. Embarrassed to admit that I’m still not totally free of the affliction. I can avoid thinking about it, but I can’t ever be completely free of it, either. The Lindsay Clancy story is a stark reminder of that. A stark reminder to take good care of myself. To remind the people I love that I do. And to the extent possible, protect that most sacred thing – sleep.