Patrick Clancy’s since-deleted Reddit account gives an unfiltered view of his then-wife’s spiraling madness and the couple’s struggles in the months leading up to her killing their three children.
The account — which was active from 2017 until last year — paints a picture of killer mom Lindsay Clancy as a woman whose troubles mounted after being prescribed the antidepressant Zoloft when she was anxious about returning to work after having the couple’s third child.
The drug quickly sent her into a manic state, as the former nurse slept only three to four hours a night but didn’t feel tired — and at one point even went 48 hours without sleep — and lost weight at a startling pace.
“I suspect this medication was never needed in the first place (Zoloft was my own idea), but my psychiatrist is saying I’m exhibiting signs of bipolar disorder,” Patrick wrote in a Dec. 7, 2022 post in the “Ask Docs” subreddit he prefaced with “posting for my wife.”
Patrick included his email address — the same email that was read in Plymouth court by Timothy Chiappini, a cell phone forensics expert, during testimony — in one of the Reddit posts.
“After a week of taking Zoloft, I developed severe insomnia,” reads the post, written seven weeks before the murders of Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, eight months. “At one point, I went 48 hours without sleeping.”
“For weeks I have been lucky to get 3 or 4 hours of sleep a night. Oddly, I don’t feel tired, but I know I need more sleep.”
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The post also said Lindsay had lost 15 pounds in the span of just two months, dropping her weight to 115 pounds — a common symptom of mania.
By Dec. 9, her behavior was becoming increasingly alarming.
“Has your [medication] experience ever involved thoughts of hurting others, including loved ones?” Patrick posted. “Did you ever feel like you came close to acting on them? Or were they just thoughts?”
One of the recurring themes throughout the posts is regret that Lindsay ever went on medication in the first place. After Zoloft, doctors prescribed her Ativan and various other benzodiazepines and sleeping pills to fight what they thought was simply insomnia — and switched her to Prozac — another antidepressant, Patrick posted on Reddit.
“I can’t stress enough that her anxiety was very mild going into this,” he wrote in a Dec. 6, 2022 post titled, “I need another perspective” in “Ask Psychiatry.”
“She was eating well, sleeping great at usual, dancing at the wedding we went to and socializing.”
“This happened with our previous two children and she was able to get through it fairly easy with some therapy and renewed coping skills,” he said of Lindsay’s anxiety about going back to work as a labor and delivery nurse.
“Was she overwhelmed with the kids? Definitely, but I believe we could have solved that by giving her more time to herself to decompress as we have in the past,” he continued, before asking the online sub of psychiatrists whether Lindsay’s anxiety could have been solved with therapy instead of medication.
On Dec. 15, Lindsay — who by then was feeling “severely depressed, numb, don’t really care about anything . . . even had suicidal thoughts,” according to the Reddit post — made her first hospital visit. Patrick took her to the Massachusetts General Hospital emergency room, according to testimony at her criminal trial.
After being turned away from a postpartum treatment program in Rhode Island on Dec. 20 because the doctors there thought she needed a more general psychiatric treatment, she was admitted to McLean Hospital on Dec. 30 and stayed until Jan. 5, according to court testimony by her treating psychiatrists.
In the last Reddit post before the murders, on Jan. 23, Patrick asked a tech subreddit advice on creating an app for a real estate open house.
He testified in court Lindsay appeared much better after her release from the hospital and he had no inkling anything was wrong on Jan. 24, the day she sent him on errands before strangling their three children with exercise bands. She then cut her wrists and neck before jumping out a bedroom window in a failed suicide attempt.
Her psychiatric diagnosis was the subject of debate at trial, though medical experts on both sides have suggested she could have bipolar disorder — where someone alternates between mania and depression.
The defense went a step further and argued the manic phase spiraled into a psychosis by the time she committed the murders.
Lindsay and Patrick are both suing the doctors who treated her for missing the bipolar diagnosis, ultimately resulting in the tragic deaths of their children.
Patrick’s lawyer did not return The Post’s request for comment.
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