Second medical malpractice suit filed in Lindsay Clancy case

Days after her husband sued her medical providers, Lindsay Clancy has filed her own medical malpractice lawsuit.

Clancy, 35, is accused of strangling her three young children to death in January 2023. She has pleaded not guilty in the deaths of 5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson, and 8-month-old Callan, and her trial is scheduled for July.

In the lawsuit filed on Jan. 22, Clancy alleges that her medical providers negligently worsened her mental health condition as she continually sought care after the birth of her third child by overprescribing and not properly monitoring her condition.

“Lindsay Clancy did everything a mother in her situation could do,” the lawsuit says, claiming that her medical providers “each failed to properly diagnose Lindsay’s bipolar disorder with postpartum onset and instead subjected her to a disorganized, uncoordinated course of polypharmacy that exacerbated her condition and precipitated a severe psychotic break.”

Further, the lawsuit cites medical experts who say there were clear signs that Lindsay Clancy had bipolar disorder, including hypomanic behavior and prescribed antidepressants worsening her condition.

The lawsuit filed by Patrick Clancy names Dr. Jennifer Tufts, nurse Rebecca Jollota, Aster Mental Health Inc. and South Shore Health System Inc. Lindsay Clancy’s suit also names these defendants and McLean Hospital and Women & Infants Hospital of Rhode Island. Her lawsuit was filed by criminal defense attorney Rosemary C. Scapicchio, who is not representing Lindsay Clancy in her murder trial.

The allegations against the medical providers include negligence or medical malpractice that led to personal injury; loss of parental and spousal consortium; and vicarious liability against Aster Mental Health and South Shore Health Systems.

Lindsay Clancy’s lawsuit provides more insight into her condition leading up to her children’s deaths. It describes some anxiety after the birth of Cora, but “manic behavior” following Dawson’s birth. This behavior included an obsession with decluttering, having racing thoughts and feeling “pressure to be active.” At the time, she was offered an antidepressant to try by a psychiatrist, but she declined because she did not want it to affect her breastfeeding.

The hypomanic behavior grew after Callan’s birth in May 2022, first with intense exercising one week after delivery. The lawsuit says Lindsay Clancy would wake up every day at 4 a.m., run three miles, spin on her Peloton bike for 30 minutes, and then do another half hour of aerobics. Her sister said she “impulsively bought into a ‘beach body’ multilevel marketing scheme,” according to the lawsuit, and often posted exercise videos on Facebook and encouraged friends to join the program.

At 12 weeks postpartum, the lawsuit says Lindsay Clancy’s demeanor changed to anxiety and depression. She could not sleep and lacked motivation. Over the ensuing months, she sought psychiatric care, in-patient and out-patient, first with Dr. Tufts at Aster Mental Health. The lawsuit alleges that the medications she was prescribed exacerbated her condition, which she reported to her medical providers, to the point where she began having auditory hallucinations and suicidal ideation.

When seeking care at Women & Infants Hospital in Providence, she was told that the day program was not “appropriate” for her but a doctor agreed that she should stop taking an antipsychotic she was prescribed. The hospital reached out to nurse Jollotta at South Shore Health, who had also prescribed Lindsay Clancy medications, for follow-up care but she did not respond, according to the lawsuit.

On New Year’s Eve 2022, Lindsay Clancy checked herself into McLean Hospital, a psychiatric hospital in Belmont, but was not seen by a doctor for three days, the lawsuit says. Lindsay Clancy asked to be discharged for her daughter’s birthday and because her thoughts had improved, she was approved to go. Her hallucinations came back within a week, the lawsuit says.

Four days before her children’s deaths, Lindsay Clancy searched “what is a psychopath?” to learn about the traits and to see if they applied to her. On Jan. 24, 2023, Lindsay Clancy awoke with suicidal thoughts and severe depression. She made her children breakfast, took one to the pediatrician, and built a snowman with her children in their backyard.

She continued to experience hallucinations and, when her husband left to pick up take-out dinner, the voice told her “this is your last chance” and to kill her children and herself, the lawsuit says. She says in the lawsuit that she “lost all control” and her “body started acting without any control.” She told her children, “Go to God, baby,” as she strangled them, the lawsuit says.

Lindsay Clancy then harmed herself and jumped out of a second-story window at their home in Duxbury. She is now paraplegic and is being held at Tewksbury Hospital.

Dr. Margaret Spinelli, who is a clinical professor of psychiatry at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, evaluated Lindsay Clancy in person and over the phone for eight hours more than a year after her children’s deaths. In diagnosing Lindsay Clancy with bipolar disorder with psychosis and anxious distress with postpartum onset, Spinelli is quoted in the lawsuit as saying that “an antidepressant medication can create manic or hypomanic symptoms and mood instability in one who has bipolar illness.”

In a request to comment to WCVB, McLean Hospital did not comment on Lindsay Clancy’s case, citing patient privacy. In the statement provided to WCVB, McLean Hospital said it is “committed to providing high-quality mental health care,” including “advancing the understanding, diagnosis, and treatment of mental health conditions that uniquely affect women, including postpartum mental health conditions.”

Reporting by Hannah Morse, The Patriot Ledger / The Patriot Ledger

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