A recently discovered Reddit account belonging to Patrick Clancy shows him quietly seeking medical advice from strangers online for months before his wife Lindsay killed their three children.
On January 23, 2023, Patrick Clancy posted on Reddit asking for help with an app for a real estate open house.
By his own account, there was no sign that day that anything was wrong. It would turn out to be his last post on an account he’d used since 2017.
The New York Post got access to account’s history, and it paints a heartbreaking picture.
Turning to Reddit for a second opinion
For months before that final post, Patrick had been active in Reddit’s medical forums, including “Ask Docs” and “Ask Psychiatry,” laying out his wife’s symptoms and asking doctors and psychiatrists on the site to weigh in on what was happening to her.
The trouble reportedly started with Lindsay’s anxiety about going back to work as a labor and delivery nurse after having their third child.
In a December 7 post written “for my wife,” Patrick explained that Zoloft had been his idea originally, though her psychiatrist suspected bipolar disorder. He said her anxiety hadn’t been severe before starting the medication, noting she’d been eating and sleeping fine, and had even danced at a wedding they’d attended shortly before.
Things took a dark turn
According to the posts, within a week of starting Zoloft, Lindsay was barely sleeping, at one point going 48 hours straight without rest, and typically getting only three or four hours a night even though she didn’t feel tired. She dropped around 15 pounds over two months, falling to 115 pounds.
By December 9, Patrick’s questions had taken a darker turn.
He asked a psychiatry forum whether medication side effects could cause someone to have “thoughts of hurting others, including loved ones,” and whether those thoughts could escalate into action.
Treatment shifted repeatedly as doctors worked through what they initially believed was straightforward insomnia, prescribing Ativan, other benzodiazepines, sleeping medication, and eventually Prozac.
On December 15, Lindsay went to the ER at Massachusetts General Hospital after telling Patrick she felt severely depressed and was having thoughts of suicide.
A postpartum program in Rhode Island declined to admit her five days later because they deemed she needed more intensive psychiatric care and she was hospitalized at McLean from December 30 to January 5.
By the time she came home, Patrick testified she seemed much better. He said he had no concerns leaving her alone on January 24. That day, Lindsay killed Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and 8-month-old Callan and attempted to kill herself.
Where the case stands now
Experts on both sides of Lindsay’s trial have pointed to bipolar disorder as key to understanding what happened, with her defense arguing a manic episode spiraled into psychosis.
The trial ended in a mistrial on September 4, 2026 after nearly 40 hours of deliberation.
Lindsay and Patrick have since filed a joint lawsuit against the doctors who treated her, arguing they failed to catch the bipolar diagnosis in time.
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