Testimony turns to maternal mental-health treatment
Prosecutors walked jurors through records spanning Clancy’s digital life in the months leading up to the killings. The searches, drawn from the family computer, included queries for “suicide methods,” for psychiatric medications, for detox programs, for mania, for ketamine therapy, and for concerns that a psychiatrist was overprescribing medication.
Her cellphone revealed a search for “can you treat a sociopath?” entered four days before the killings, along with notes about depression, exhaustion and concerns over her relationship with her youngest child, Callan, whom she had struggled to breastfeed.
“I want to feel love and connection with all my kids … I just want to feel happy. I want to be able to relax and take care of my kids. And when they go to bed at night, I want to deeply relax and hang out with Pat and then fall into a deep sleep for 8 hours, get up and pour hard into myself for an hour and a half. Cal was so very planned and desired. I want to be able to give him all the love he deserves,” read an Oct. 25, 2022 entry from Clancy’s notes app.
A later note, created shortly before the killings and modified the day before they occurred, read: “Medication stole my motherhood and my life … prescription medication stole me from my own body.”
In January 2023, the prosecution claimed, Clancy searched for “hallucinations” and “intrusive” — and the following day for “premade goodie bags” and “best kids movies.” Clancy, who had been prescribed 13 different medications and reported trouble sleeping, also told a psychiatric nurse practitioner she was having “intrusive thoughts I never had before” and feeling “completely hopeless.” The nurse practitioner advised her to give the medications more time to work.
On the day of the murders, prosecutors say, Clancy took the elder children out to build a snowman, then texted her former-husband, Patrick, asking if he wanted to pick up takeout from Three-V, a local restaurant. After Patrick agreed, prosecutors say, she strangled the children with exercise bands. Clancy has admitted to the killings and is pleading not guilty by reason of insanity, citing postpartum psychosis.
Without a legal obligation to offer a motive, prosecutors argue that Clancy’s behavior — including sending her husband out for take-out and medicines on the evening of the killings — shows she planned the deaths.
The defense has countered that Clancy suffered from undiagnosed bipolar disorder and postpartum depression, had been treated by layers of poorly communicating healthcare professionals from whom she had repeatedly sought help, and may have snapped under postpartum psychosis.
Margaret McLean, a former Massachusetts prosecutor who goes by the “Courtroom Translator” on her YouTube channel on criminal justice, summarized the prosecution’s theory: “The prosecution is arguing that this was a rational woman who liked to be in control, a mom who had her kids schedules, feeding schedules, and was so in control that when she started to lose it she was so frustrated that she killed the kids but when it came to killing herself, she was a coward.”
McLean noted that Clancy never told her doctors she was hearing voices directing her to kill her children before she did so, though she had told the psychiatric nurse practitioner about her intrusive thoughts and hopelessness. It was only after the murders, while Clancy was hospitalized, that she told her husband she had “heard voices.”
Dr. Gina Wong, a registered psychologist, perinatal forensic expert and co-author of Maternal Filicide, said the trial has, in some corners of social media, “become a spectator sport — stripped of nuance and rife with armchair diagnoses, moral certainty, sensationalism, misinformation and dehumanizing commentary.” Wong, who is involved with Postpartum Support International, said the case has also become a catalyst for “an overdue conversation” on the shortcomings of maternal mental healthcare.
“Too often, mothers in psychiatric crisis are missed, care is fragmented and coordinated assessment, family involvement, safety planning, specialized professional training and public education have been insufficient,” Wong said. She added: “Perinatal mood and anxiety disorders (PMADs) are far more common that many people realize. The childbearing years represent the most vulnerable time psychologically, with psychiatric hospital admissions increasing markedly in the weeks after birth more than any other time in the female life cycle.”
A postpartum psychiatric crisis is not a predictor of violence, Wong said, though “certain symptoms require rapid escalation, comprehensive risk assessment, and a rigorous level of coordinated psychiatric care proportionate to the danger.” Severe psychiatric disturbance and evidence of planning, organization or apparently ordinary functioning are not automatically mutually exclusive, she added.
“Apparent organization does not prove sanity,” Wong said. “Psychosis is not always visibly chaotic. Psychosis can fluctuate, and a person may retain some practical abilities that demonstrate cognitive organization, while having profoundly distorted beliefs or impaired judgment.”
Prosecutor Shanan Buckingham has urged jurors not to view the trial as “a public debate about women’s mental health and how the medical system treats women,” though it has become one in the court of public opinion. The trial continues next week.
The testimony this week continues the prosecution’s pattern of presenting documentary evidence of Clancy’s state of mind in the months before the killings. As covered earlier this week, a psychiatric nurse practitioner testified Clancy told her in late 2022 she was having “intrusive thoughts I never had before” and feeling “completely hopeless” as she cycled through medications.