{"id":4895,"date":"2026-07-30T22:11:16","date_gmt":"2026-07-30T22:11:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/?p=4895"},"modified":"2026-07-30T22:11:18","modified_gmt":"2026-07-30T22:11:18","slug":"lindsay-clancys-mental-health-spiraled-before-childrens-killings-ex-husband-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/?p=4895","title":{"rendered":"Lindsay Clancy’s mental health spiraled before children’s killings, ex-husband says"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\"\"
\n\"Reuters
\nReuters
Lindsay Clancy in the court<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Lindsay Clancy, the Massachusetts woman accused of killing her three children, was “very depressed”, and her <a href="https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/?p=4870" title="The Promise and Limits of AI in Mental Health<\/a>care”>mental<\/a> health grew “worse and worse” before their deaths, a jury has heard<\/p>\n

Patrick Clancy, her ex-husband and first witness in the trial, which is expected to last several weeks, told jurors that the month before the children’s deaths “was really where her big spiral started”<\/p>\n

Prosecutors allege Lindsay Clancy “knew exactly what she was doing” and made a “calculated” decision to kill Cora, five, Dawson, three, and eight-month-old Callan<\/p>\n

Her legal team argued she was “suffering from psychosis at the time”. Clancy has pleaded not guilty but does not dispute she carried out the killings<\/p>\n

\n\"Getty
\nGetty Images
\n<\/figure>\n

She is charged with three counts of first-degree murder over the January 2023 deaths. If convicted, she faces life in prison without parole<\/p>\n

In the coming days and weeks, prosecutors will attempt to convince the 12-member jury that Clancy deliberately committed murder, while the defence will plead that she was not responsible and raise an insanity defence<\/p>\n

On Monday, her ex-husband, Patrick, answered prosecutors’ questions about Clancy’s relationship with her children, her mental health<\/a> and his knowledge of her prescription drug use<\/p>\n

He described her intermittently seeking help from doctors and taking a variety of medications, and he recalled her saying she was starting to have suicidal ideations<\/p>\n

“She kept getting worse and worse,” Clancy testified<\/p>\n

He said she switched psychiatrists because “it wasn’t working” with a previous doctor. “It was just really stressful,” he said of witnessing his wife struggle through anxiety and depression<\/p>\n

In December 2022, a month before the children’s deaths, “that was really where her big spiral started”, he said<\/p>\n

“She started to lose a lot of weight, and she became very depressed, and she was having a really hard time.”<\/p>\n

In their opening remarks, prosecutors sought to paint a damning picture of Clancy, occasionally bringing her to tears in the courtroom<\/p>\n

She was visibly shaking as Assistant District Attorney Shanan Buckingham described the Clancy children<\/p>\n

“This was a woman who acted intentionally, rationally, and swiftly to accomplish a very specific goal \u2013 to kill,” Buckingham said<\/p>\n

“She is criminally responsible for the murders, because the evidence will prove to you that she knew exactly what she was doing.”<\/p>\n

\n\"REUTERS\/Brian
\nREUTERS\/Brian Snyder
Former husband of Lindsay Clancy, Patrick Clancy<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Buckingham said the trial would last for weeks, as prosecutors call a variety of witnesses, including law enforcement, firefighters, family, friends and psychiatrists<\/p>\n

While the prosecution asked the jury not to see the trial as a referendum on women’s health, Clancy’s lawyer argued: “It sure as hell is.”<\/p>\n

“The issue of consideration is, what was going on in that woman’s mind,” defence lawyer Kevin Reddington said<\/p>\n

Reddington described Clancy as a loving mother who was very involved in her children’s lives and who “had no motive” to kill her children<\/p>\n

“This is a woman that did not get the medication, did not get the medical treatment, that she so deserved,” he said<\/p>\n

Reddington said her children’s deaths – and her suicide attempt afterwards – were a result of Clancy suffering psychosis, a rare postpartum side effect<\/p>\n

He showed the jury photos of a bloodied butcher’s knife, wounds on Clancy’s neck and wrist, and her lying intubated in a hospital bed following her attempted suicide<\/p>\n

Postpartum psychosis is a severe psychiatric emergency affecting about 1 in 1,000 mothers after childbirth, according to the UK National Health Service<\/p>\n

Symptoms can include hallucinations, delusions, a mixture of manic and low moods, and confusion<\/p>\n

If you are suffering distress or despair and need support, you could speak to a health professional, or an organisation that offers support. Details of help available in many countries can be found at Befrienders Worldwide. www.befrienders.org<\/p>\n

In the UK a list of organisations that can help is available at bbc.co.uk\/actionline<\/p>\n

Massachusetts
\nUnited States<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lindsay Clancy, the Massachusetts woman accused of killing her three children, was “very depressed”, and her mental health grew “worse and worse” before their deaths, a jury has heard<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4901,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[538,40,537,58,539],"class_list":["post-4895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mental-health","tag-clancys","tag-health","tag-lindsay","tag-mental","tag-spiraled"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4895"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4895\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4900,"href":"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4895\/revisions\/4900"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}