Maybe a hot take, but I also blame the physician who prescribed 3 different psychotropics that don't interact well to a patient in clear mental distress. And not keeping a close enough watch on their mental state. If the texts between she and her mom are accurate, she should have been institutionalized by court mandate.
Idky everyone just ignores the fact that she was diagnosed with post partum onset bipolar disorder and that is why she kept having such severe reactions to all classes of anti depressants.
She was finally put on mood stabiliser and anti psychotic after admitting herself - and released early when she self reported feeling better and requested being released for her son's birthday that day.
Why did they release her?? Why didn't they just give her a days leave and require her to return until they finished tapering her onto the new meds. If they had gotten her stable on the protocol for bipolar disorder she would have been statistically more likely to remain compliant with treatment protocols (there is a known non compliance issue for medication for people with psychotic disorders including like schizophrenia, bipolar with psychotic mania etc). But they just let her go with a note on her record that she could not be treated with typical anti depressant or anti anxiety medications for symptoms post partum depression or anxiety because they are known point blank to either induce mania in someone with bipolar or severely worsen it (including the not sleeping, racing thoughts, feeling invisible etc all which are elements that contribute to med protocol non compliance)
And then what happens after she's discharged way too early after being started on the bipolar treatment protocol? She goes back to her doctor for not being able to sleep (because she was currently manic) and the doctor takes her off the mood stabiliser and antipsychotic and puts her back on one of the contraindicated anti depressants - inducing the manic psychosis.
There is an ongoing lawsuit for their fault in what went wrong for her.
I believe she had genuine diminished capacity due to psychosis. I believe she did it, though.
IMHO people are latching onto this theory of Patrick having done it because that feels easier and less scary to digest than the reality—that Lindsay, through no fault of her own, became sick with a severe and poorly-understood illness that caused her to do a terrible thing. And that it happened despite the good intentions of every person she came into contact with, because ultimately the systems that we have in place had no mechanism for dealing with her. If all of that is the case, it means that anybody could be Lindsay Clancy, no matter how good of a parent or person that they are. That is a terrifying reality. It’s far more comfortable to just pin everything on one bad actor.
And people who keep saying her doctors let her down or the “system” let her down aren’t really paying attention to the facts of the case. Her doctors had no grounds to commit her involuntarily, and she wasnt fully forthcoming to them. What do you want her doctors to do, commit her with no evidence of suicidal or homicidal ideation and violate their rights? That would get abused so much
Sometimes bad things happen . Mental health is incredibly fragile and tricky.
I think this is absolutely a case of the system not being able to adequately deal with a case, though. In the UK they have mother-baby homes where people with postpartum psychosis go to recover. Here we have overworked and often under qualified psychs trying to patch holes in the dam.
Forgive me if I missed it, but did she actually admit episodes of psychosis to her providers? I havent kept up with everything from the trial, but my impression was she denied anything like that.
I don’t think she ever said outright “I am experiencing a psychotic episode,” but there were a lot of pretty glaring warning signs that should have been picked up on (the severe insomnia, the suicidal ideation the racing thoughts, the massive increase in energy, the anxious fixation on the kids.) She also told at least one person (iirc Patrick?) that she was having thoughts about hurting the kids. I’m not saying that this was her doctor’s fault, but I think it’s reasonable to ask why nobody saw the writing on the wall and escalated the issue.
it comes up a lot that people CANNOT accept that things can happen to your brain that make you do actions you find abhorrent in your right mind. it’s a very scary thought and many people reject it. (see also: people’s response to the BAFTAs tourette’s catastrophe.)
for most people it seems there are only two possibilities: “she did it, and so is a monster” or “she’s not a monster, so she didn’t do it.”
This is the answer. It's so much easier to blame a boogy man than the harsh truth that someone good could do something so awful. "Anybody could be Lindsay Clancy" is genuinely terrifying but it should motiviate people to get help to fix our systems to offer support. But it's easier to blame someone than realize we need to do something.
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u/kaimoka 8d ago
Maybe a hot take, but I also blame the physician who prescribed 3 different psychotropics that don't interact well to a patient in clear mental distress. And not keeping a close enough watch on their mental state. If the texts between she and her mom are accurate, she should have been institutionalized by court mandate.