Lindsay Clancy repeatedly asked to change medications, psychiatric nurse says
A psychiatric nurse practitioner who treated Lindsay Clancy in the weeks before her three children were killed testified Tuesday that the Massachusetts mother repeatedly asked to change her medications, even as clinicians urged her to give the treatment time to work.
Rebecca Jollotta, a psychiatric nurse practitioner with South Shore Hospital’s perinatal behavioral health program, said she developed a treatment plan for Clancy in late November and early December 2022 to address anxiety, depression and insomnia. But Clancy kept returning with requests to switch drugs, saying the medications produced intrusive thoughts, sleeplessness and numbness. She also worried aloud about becoming dependent on Ativan, a benzodiazepine, Jollotta testified.
“It’s just a very scary stressful time for me, and starting new meds with side effects is very scary to me,” Clancy wrote in one message to Jollotta, according to testimony.
Jollotta said she understood Clancy’s concerns but explained that the medications could take weeks to become effective. In her written response, Jollotta concluded that Clancy’s symptoms pointed more toward postpartum depression than drug reactions.
“All of this sounds like postpartum depression,” Jollotta wrote.
Jollotta’s testimony came three weeks into Clancy’s trial on three counts of murder in the January 2023 deaths of her children — Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and Callan, 8 months. She is one of several psychiatric professionals who have taken the stand this week to describe the care Clancy received in the months before the killings.
Prosecutors have argued that Clancy “acted intentionally, rationally and swiftly” when she fatally strangled the three children in the family’s Duxbury home and then tried to take her own life on Jan. 24, 2023. Her defense team, meanwhile, has mounted an insanity defense, arguing that she was in the grip of a psychotic episode caused by postpartum mental illness and therefore not criminally responsible.
Family and friends have uniformly described Clancy as a caring mother whose mental health was deteriorating in the months before the killings. But several testified they never saw signs of psychosis and did not believe she was a danger to herself or her children. One friend told the court that Clancy said in January 2023 that a medication had given her “some dark thoughts.”
The case has become a flashpoint in the national conversation about postpartum psychiatric care, particularly around the difficulty of balancing mothers’ reports of medication side effects with the need for consistent treatment. For maternal-health advocates, the trial has also put a spotlight on how hard it can be for women to get timely, coordinated mental health care in the months after childbirth.
Jollotta said one of the central goals of her treatment plan was to get Clancy a full night’s sleep. During an in-person visit on Dec. 6, Clancy said her insomnia first began after taking Zoloft, which she said left her awake for 48 hours. Jollotta described that as an “unusual” reaction and testified that it raised the possibility that Clancy had an underlying bipolar disorder.
She was concerned, Jollotta said, that Clancy might be in a mixed manic or hypomanic state — a combination of restless, high-energy symptoms and depression. A week later, Clancy had returned to a more normal sleep pattern, but she still described feeling hopeless and emotionally numb.
On Dec. 15, Clancy reported persistent intrusive thoughts of suicide and went to the emergency room at Massachusetts General Hospital. She also sought treatment at Women & Infants Hospital in Rhode Island, but was discharged. Jollotta said her last contact with Clancy was on Dec. 21, 2022.
Jollotta’s testimony followed a combative cross-examination Monday of Dr. Jennifer Tufts, Clancy’s primary psychiatrist, by defense attorney Kevin Reddington. Reddington pressed Tufts on her qualifications, her reliance on telemedicine, her prescription decisions and her notes, repeatedly cutting off her answers and prompting objections from prosecutors.
Tufts, who finished her residency in August 2022 and began treating Clancy a month later, said she had worked with at least 50 postpartum patients during her training. All 14 of her sessions with Clancy were conducted by video, and she testified that the trial marked the first time they had been in the same room.
Reddington questioned whether that virtual format allowed Tufts to truly evaluate Clancy’s mental state.
“I couldn’t give her a hug, but that’s not actually something psychiatrists typically do with patients,” Tufts responded.
Tufts also acknowledged that she relied almost entirely on Clancy’s own descriptions of her symptoms. She did not speak with Clancy’s parents and spoke with Clancy’s husband, Patrick Clancy, only once, during a session in December 2022. At one point, according to Tufts, Clancy said: “I think it’s my problem. I keep reaching out to different people and not sticking with the plan.”
Earlier Monday, psychiatric nurse practitioner Julie Paul testified that Clancy came to her in November 2022 with anxiety, racing thoughts and an overwhelming sense of stress — symptoms Paul described as typical for postpartum patients. She prescribed Prozac and told Clancy it would take time to work, but within days Clancy said she wanted to try a different medication.
Clancy, who turned 36 on Tuesday, is being held at Tewksbury Hospital, a public psychiatric facility in Massachusetts. If convicted, she faces life in prison. The trial, now in its third week in Plymouth, Massachusetts, is expected to last six to eight weeks.