Patrick Clancy’s deleted Reddit account offers a disturbing glimpse into his then-wife Lindsay Clancy’s deteriorating mental health and the strain the couple faced in the months before she killed their three children.
The account, which was active from 2017 through last year, describes Lindsay’s worsening condition after she was prescribed the antidepressant Zoloft. At the time, she was anxious about returning to work following the birth of the couple’s third child.
Patrick wrote that the medication appeared to trigger a manic episode. Lindsay was sleeping just three or four hours a night without feeling tired, went as long as 48 hours without sleep and rapidly lost weight.
“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 on the “Ask Docs” subreddit, which he introduced as a question “posting for my wife.”
Patrick listed his email address in one of the posts. The same address was later read aloud in Plymouth court by Timothy Chiappini, a cell phone forensics expert, during testimony at Lindsay’s trial.
“After a week of taking Zoloft, I developed severe insomnia,” Patrick wrote in a post published seven weeks before the deaths of Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months old. “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,” the post continued.
Here’s the latest on Lindsay Clancy’s murder trial
Patrick also said Lindsay had lost 15 pounds over two months, bringing her weight down to 115 pounds—another symptom commonly associated with mania.
By Dec. 9, he was asking increasingly urgent questions about her behavior.
“Has your [medication] experience ever involved thoughts of hurting others, including loved ones?” Patrick asked. “Did you ever feel like you came close to acting on them? Or were they just thoughts?”
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A repeated concern in Patrick’s posts was that Lindsay might never have needed medication. After Zoloft, doctors prescribed Ativan and other benzodiazepines, along with sleeping pills, as they initially treated what they believed was insomnia. She was later switched to Prozac, another antidepressant, Patrick wrote.
“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 the “Ask Psychiatry” forum.
“She was eating well, sleeping great as usual, dancing at the wedding we went to and socializing,” he said.
Patrick explained that Lindsay had experienced anxiety about returning to her job as a labor and delivery nurse after the births of their first two children. In those instances, he said, therapy and renewed coping skills had helped her recover relatively easily.
“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 wrote. He then asked the online psychiatry community whether therapy could have addressed her anxiety without medication.
By Dec. 15, Lindsay was described in one of the Reddit posts as “severely depressed, numb, don’t really care about anything . . . even had suicidal thoughts.” Patrick took her to the emergency room at Massachusetts General Hospital that day, according to testimony at her criminal trial.
She was turned away from a postpartum treatment program in Rhode Island on Dec. 20 after doctors determined she needed more comprehensive psychiatric care. Lindsay was later admitted to McLean Hospital on Dec. 30 and remained there until Jan. 5, according to testimony from the psychiatrists who treated her.
In his final Reddit post before the killings, dated Jan. 23, Patrick sought advice from a technology forum about developing an app for a real estate open house.
Patrick testified that Lindsay appeared significantly better after leaving the hospital and that he noticed nothing alarming on Jan. 24. That day, she sent him out to run errands before strangling their three children with exercise bands. She then cut her wrists and neck and jumped from a bedroom window in an unsuccessful suicide attempt.
Lindsay’s psychiatric diagnosis became a central point of debate during the trial. Medical experts for both sides suggested she may have had bipolar disorder, a condition marked by episodes of 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.
