(LifeSiteNews) — “God permits evil in order to draw forth some greater good,” St. Thomas Aquinas taught. I believe this is clearly the case with the horrific Lindsay Clancy murders. But to draw forth much of that good, we need to look at what contributed to her murders.
A big part of why her case is so polarizing is that many people understand Lindsay Clancy to have been a loving, caring mother before she killed her children. She was described this way by all accounts, including that of her ex-husband and mother-in-law. To such a mother — and even many obviously bad mothers — killing one’s own children is unthinkable. People reasonably infer, then, that she was somehow not in her right mind when she killed her children.
I believe Clancy’s court-documented account and an analysis by psychiatrist Dr. Josef Witt-Doerring indicate that this is the case — that she was in a state of psychosis when she killed her children. The following is not meant to determine exactly what the consequences for Clancy should be, whether prison, confinement to a psychiatric ward, or some kind of mental health program. This piece is, however, intended to shed light on the role psych meds played in her psychosis, to raise awareness about how diabolic influence exploits mental illness, and to stress the importance of remaining in a state of grace as a guard against diabolic influence.
An examination of this case is particularly important because the intrusive suicidal and homicidal thoughts that Clancy experienced after medication are more common than many people realize. Moreover, according to Dr. Witt-Doerring, despite the fact that each medication she was prescribed worsened her condition, the kind of psychiatric care she received was entirely normal.
As Dr. Witt-Doerring shows, the psychiatric “care” Clancy received after reporting postpartum anxiety, depression, and insomnia was shockingly, consistently bad and drastically worsened her mental state overall. The account of her medication regimen and the symptoms she subsequently experienced indicate that it was not simply postpartum blues but the medications themselves that induced outright insanity.
Clancy was first prescribed an SSRI, Zoloft, which markedly worsened her physical and mental state, including her insomnia. According to the court record, after increasing her Zoloft dose from 25 mg to 50 mg, she had a “severe adverse reaction. She did not sleep for 48 hours, had racing thoughts, and felt ‘awful.’”
Dr. Witt-Doerring pointed out that “minor toxic reactions” to SSRIs are fairly common, but more than that, their effects can disrupt the nervous system for months after, even if they are discontinued. “After you get one of them, you can have this fallout effect where for multiple months afterwards, they have nervous system instability. They respond poorly to medications, drugs make them worse, and essentially they can have mood instability and psychosis as well,” he explained.
When Clancy reported these side effects to Dr. Tufts, the doctor “discontinued the Zoloft and prescribed Ativan and Benadryl for sleep.” However, “even after tapering these medications, Lindsay’s profound insomnia persisted, accompanied by distressing cardiac palpitations,” according to court records.
Dr. Witt-Doerring believes that those continuing symptoms are “all signs of neurotoxicity” from the Zoloft.
A continued reaction from Zoloft is also important to note because the side effects of the drug, according to its own website, include the following:
- thoughts about suicide or dying
- attempts to commit suicide
- new or worse depression
- new or worse anxiety
- feeling very agitated or restless
- panic attacks
- trouble sleeping (insomnia)
- new or worse irritability
- acting aggressive, being angry, or violent
- acting on dangerous impulses
Clancy went back to the hospital, where her doctor prescribed Trazodone for sleep, which was reportedly unhelpful. “Again, once someone’s had a neurotoxic reaction, they typically do not respond well to additional medications,” Dr. Witt-Doerring noted.
Clancy’s mother, a nurse at a different hospital, then contacted a perinatal behavioral health program to ask for help. There, nurse practitioner Paul prescribed Clancy Prozac — another SSRI.
If Paul had examined Clancy’s medical history, he should have avoided such a decision to prescribe her a similar class of drug because she already had a neurotoxic reaction to an SSRI, said Dr. Witt-Doerring, and “because that can further irritate the nervous system and make her worse.”
“After merely four days on Prozac, Lindsay reports that the medications intensify her insomnia. She immediately informs her providers and the Prozac is discontinued,” the court records relate.
The drugs that nurse Paul next prescribed — a “cocktail” of sleeping medications Ambien, Remeron, and Klonopin — appeared to cause a new, significantly worse condition for Clancy.
“On November 26, 2022, after taking Remeron, Lindsay experienced dissociation, perceiving the world around her as unreal, distorted, and distant. She was unable to determine what was real. She became disoriented, forgetful, confused, and disconnected from her own body. She was unable to drive and unable to be left alone,” the court record recounts.
Dr. Witt-Doerring commented, “This is not a typical reaction to these drugs at all. This is a sign that someone is responding extremely poorly to medications. And that should be a clue to anyone looking after her that ‘Hey, more drugs is likely not the answer to this person. This nervous system is not responding well to these medications.’”
But her next healthcare practitioner, instead of taking her off the meds, prescribed new ones and then upped the dose even after Clancy reported severely negative side-effects from them.
“On November 29, 2022, Lindsay began treating with Nurse Jollotta. She prescribed Seroquel, an antipsychotic and mood stabilizer,” the court record states.
“After starting Seroquel, Lindsay’s condition took a dramatic turn for the worse. She developed suicidal ideation and began experiencing what she describes as intrusive thoughts, which were auditory hallucinations. The voices said, ‘I will not be the same. I want to die,’” the record continues. “She communicated her escalating internal turmoil to her husband, parents, and providers. She described her emotional state as emotionless and like a zombie, attributing this profound blunting to Seroquel.”
On December 6, Clancy’s husband Patrick told Nurse Jolletta that Lindsay was “10,000 times worse since the medication.” He even asked if they could get Lindsay off medications and “start from scratch.” Despite acknowledging the possibility that the Seroquel could have contributed to her dramatically worsened state, Nurse Jollotta “continued to increase the Seroquel dosage toward 400 mg per day.”
“On December 15, Patrick called Nurse Jollotta’s office to report that Lindsay had a devastating week, and that ‘it was the worst day for Lindsay.’ She had HORRIBLE thoughts all day. Lindsay had auditory hallucinations all day, every day. Felt debilitated, not interested in anything. Can’t get out of bed. The hallucinations are now loud and continued all day saying, ‘I will never be the same. I’ll never be me again. You are damaged. You’ll never be the same. The only option is to die.’”
At this point, she told her husband and mother that she was having thoughts of harming her children.
“So, this is someone who is having a severe toxic reaction to medications at this point and she’s essentially being tortured,” Dr. Witt-Doerring remarked.
The fact that these drugs have appeared to trigger suicidal and homicidal thoughts (the “horrible” thoughts referred to in court records) should give us pause about whether such drugs should be prescribed at all. Even if suicidal and homicidal thoughts are the direct result of diabolic influence, they follow the ingestion of psychiatric drugs commonly enough to establish a link between them, to the point that they are listed as side effects (aggression and violence being a potential proxy for “homicidal”) on drug labels.
Dr. Witt-Doerring himself has acknowledged that the kind of psychotic state Clancy suffered at this point can sometimes feel for patients like they are “possessed, almost like possessed by a demon.”
Despite the fact that as of mid-December 2022 Clancy was already clinically insane due to an avalanche of medication-induced side effects, she was then prescribed another antidepressant, Amitriptylene, by Dr. Goodhart from McLean Hospital, considered the best psychiatric hospital in the country.
“This is crazy,” Dr. Witt-Doerring remarked. “This really sets the stage for what happens next, because after she starts the Amitryptalene at 10 milligrams a day she still doesn’t get any better and then Dr. Tufts, her psychiatrist, increases the Amitryptalene to 20 milligrams per day, and that makes her worse. And this is the day before she ends up killing her children.”
At this juncture, many will rightly point out that even if Clancy was suffering from psychosis at this point and experiencing persistent intrusive thoughts about killing herself and her children, this doesn’t take away her agency — her ability to reject those thoughts. That may be technically true. However, it seems apparent that her perception of reality and her judgment were nevertheless compromised by this drug-induced psychosis and mental torture, severely weakening her intellect and will.
We should not ignore this fact. The doctors who “treated” Clancy, the medical establishment that trained them, and the pharmaceutical companies behind these drugs, all deserve serious scrutiny. Clancy’s case exposes the psychiatric establishment as not merely ineffective but gravely harmful.
It is also noteworthy that, according to her defense attorney, Clancy was a Catholic but “not a devout Catholic.” She “went to Mass sporadically,” he testified, although she was reportedly close friends with a priest.
We can conjecture that Clancy was not in a state of grace because missing Mass on Sunday without good reason is a serious sin. Exorcist Father Chad Ripperger has pointed out that a state of mortal sin opens the door for diabolic influence to have free reign, and such diabolic influence includes “obsession,” entailing the kind of dark intrusive thoughts Clancy experienced. One can experience diabolic influence even in a state of grace, but mortal sin gives the demons “rights” to your psyche they do not otherwise have.
Fr. Ripperger has pointed out that such diabolic obsession is quite common today — exorcists estimate that 25% of the population now suffers from it. I think it’s likely that this accounts for why so many women identify with Clancy. Not because they want to kill their kids but because they themselves have experienced the dark, intrusive thoughts that come from diabolic obsession.
If Clancy’s meds alone weren’t enough to severely weaken her intellect and will, diabolic influence would have been enough, and demons love to exploit mental illness. I think the most reasonable assessment is that the meds did make her crazy, and that demons then exploited that mental illness to drive her to commit grave evil.
Few people are discussing the spiritual aspect of Clancy’s case, but it is the most important part. The great majority of Catholics, and people everywhere for that matter, are not living in a state of grace. This is always of the utmost seriousness, but for many people, it takes an act like murdering one’s own children to highlight just how serious mortal sin is.
My hope is that Clancy’s case will warn people to approach psychiatric drugs with extreme caution at the very least, if not to reject them entirely. It would be even better if the case encouraged psychiatrists to reexamine their presuppositions about psych drugs. As for Big Pharma, it has such massive moneyed influence, it would be an uphill battle to combat it as a whole.
I think the Clancy case also has the potential to encourage people to dissociate themselves from and reject dark intrusive thoughts. Most of all, I hope it would urge people to remain in a state of grace — but we need more voices to explain why this matters.