Why are people more sympathetic to Lindsay Clancy than Andrea Yates? (Child death mentioned)

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:How sad to have a life, a pretty nice life it seems, and for it to vanish in a blink. I feel so terrible for the grandparents and extended family and friends too. How tragic the whole thing. So many lives destroyed.

I feel bad for her, too.

I feel bad for Cora, Dawson, and Callan.

We truly lack understanding of severe mental illness.

[Anonymous]

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People here also seem to have a perception of psychosis that is very inaccurate. Many have probably only interacted with severe mental illness with someone on the street with a particular type of psychosis happening. Sometimes delusions are quite quiet and impossible for the person experiencing them to determine what is happening. They are completely unaware. If she had fallen deeper it may explain why she had been raising flags earlier but stopped. Frankly based on my experience it all makes sense. The mental illness got worse and she was now in a state where she couldn’t decipher between which often looks like hiding it - she likely later would have said if this didn’t happen that she doesn’t really remember this time (now she might say that too but folks will be suspicious)

Thank you for this very cogent description. Since I fully believe that you're speaking from experience, I wonder if you would be willing to expand a bit on the bolded?

Pp here. Speaking from professional experience, not personal but for example, in order for something to be a delusion a person basically has to believe in something wildly untrue (not using clinical speak here ha) despite clear evidence to the contrary. But what can often be tricky is someone with delusions (this is just an example, I have no idea if she was having delusions), can be very normal in all other scenarios until something comes up about the delusion. You can be having an incredibly normal conversation and if you avoid the particular topic where the delusion lies, you would truly never know. It’s only if you happen to engage on that particular belief that suddenly things will seem very off. And the person doesn’t realize how off it is because for them it is reality so they wouldn’t say oh hey I’m concerned about myself I need help. There isn’t self awareness at this point.

I am in no way saying this particular situation with delusions being primary is what was happening, but instead trying to share that it is far more common than people here seem to think that someone could be having very scary thoughts or thoughts not aligned with reality and it not be immediately obvious every moment (like you can still call the pharmacy). Also, more likely in her scenario someone can at some points be in a place where when they have auditory hallucinations or intrusive thoughts where they are still aware and feel separate from them and then are more likely to say hey something is going on with me I need help like she did for the initial intrusive thoughts. But in different states, people can be very unaware and it’s like the self awareness is removed so they are in a state where they believe the voices or feel almost disconnected to themselves and very unaware of themselves and what they are doing. So they wouldn’t necessarily say anything to anyone even though they aren’t intentionally hiding it. Anyway there are so many ways it can present and I just think we cannot say what was going on for her based on the fact that she could have some conversations before this happened.

That is really fascinating. It almost sounds as though you are saying that if someone had a deeply delusional belief that was the product of postpartum psychosis that developed from postpartum depression or anxiety, she might have gone through a course of illness in which she seemed outwardly "better"--less floridly depressed--while actually being much more dangerously ill. Y/N?

Yes. It’s kind of like how someone who is deeply depressed can seem better before they complete a suicide attempt. The mind is powerful and it can trick us, trick really good humans into doing things they would never do when not in that state. I have no idea of knowing what happened that day or the weeks before but I do know that mental illness and the way it presents is complex.

And folks are asserting that I don’t want to think a suburban mom could kill in cold blood, I personally think that those jumping to cold blood arguments despite the evidence of postpartum depression that makes way more sense don’t want to think that they too could lose control of their mind. That we are all less in control than we’d like to think, that psychosis or deep depression can happen to any of us and take away much of our rational thinking. It’s a scary scary thought. And it’s easier in a way to think it’s just an evil person because then you can say it won’t/couldn’t happen to you or someone you love and you can take the easy route of saying she’s a monster.

It’s the other way around. You’re jumping to “PPD/ PPP made her homicidal!” despite her having no diagnosis of PPP/PPD by medical professionals who treated and knew her better than you, because it’s a scary scary thought that the nice white lady could plan and execute such a horrific crime. All you Lindsay fans and army of love’ers are basically just racists writing paragraphs of conjecture and word salad because you’re terrified an umc white lady could be blamed and locked away for a crime she did commit.

You have several people here saying that it is entirely possible, and more statistically likely, that she was misdiagnosed or on a path to psychosis that was not detected than that she is a stone cold psychopath. You are presenting no argument against that—just ad hominem. Weak tea.

+1 it is apparently triggering for folks that some of us think Lindsay’s documented mental illness may have escalated and played a role here. I truly don’t understand why. Yet those folks are not showing any evidence that I see that shows the contrary (evidence of prior abuse? Domestic violence in the home? Neglect?) just that she googlemapped a takeout order?? I literally did that last week for a new place I wanted my husband to pick up at. Our diagnostic system is limited. It is helpful and necessary, and has limitations. We do not have good diagnostic criteria for postpartum issues. It was obviously more than GAD or they wouldn’t have hospitalized her. That’s just not something someone ends up in patient for. She had suicidal thoughts and thoughts of harming her children. Thoughts that everyone who knew her is saying unequivocally were not aligned with how she typically is.

You feel like I’m tying myself up in knots to defend her but I feel like you are tying yourself in knots trying to convince yourself this was in cold blood with very little evidence. The prosecution was making their case that she was not safe to leave and that she committed this crime. Everyone agrees with that.

There may be projection happening for me sure, but there is for anyone who is also adamantly saying they know it was in cold blood despite a recent inpatient hospitalization for SI/HI. The jump is huge.

She self-presented at McLean stating she was afraid of hurting herself. At one point (once!) prior to Janaury, she had told her husband that she had thoughts of harming the children she resented so much. The McLean doctors did not come up with a psychosis diagnosis - in fact, the word was not uttered by Lindsay until +10 days after everything occurred... during the same conversation she told her husband she still loves him. She sounds like a master manipulator.

It feels awfully convenient where she was treated by the best doctors at multiple health systems, psychosis never came up, but now it's all, "oh, well, she could've been PPP but not yet diagnosed". It feels like a literal get out of jail free excuse to me. I will grant you, you have to be not in your right mind to do what she did, but can't you say that for anyone who commits a horrible crime? We still punish those people. Plenty of school shooters have severe mental health issues (welllllll beyond GAD), report heaving voices (Parkland shooter, for one), with horrible home lives/extenuating circumstances, but they don't walk free. Why is it different w/ Lindsay?

Why would a master manipulator say either of those things months before committing these acts? It just doesn't make sense.

And agree with PP: I'm not saying she deserves to walk free.

Also folks are acting like she needed those 30-45 min alone and that’s why she planned this whole take out excursion intentionally. Again this makes no sense to me, she was the primary caregiver if you look at the timeline she had plenty of time alone with the children. And if she was a master manipulator why wouldn’t she have planned better??? This left 0 chance she wouldn’t be very clearly the killer. The whole argument makes nooo sense. If she was such a master and wanted a different life why wouldn’t she have planned even a tiny bit better?

Also folks are acting like they know the extent of what Lindsay has said over these last days because they’ve heard a few small sound bites. We know very little.

She really wasn't "alone" with the kids. Her husband worked from home. Do you think she could have strangled her five year old in the doctor's office?

Her husband worked in the basement. She could easily have killed her kids on the top floor without him hearing. A child being asphyxiated by an exercise band cannot scream or cry, so if she killed them one by one in separate rooms they wouldn’t even be able to alert each other of the danger.

This was a psychotic break. As Rusty Yates said, if she’d had a cardiac arrest or seizure while driving and all three kids perished but she didn’t, it wouldn’t even be a consideration to prosecute her. Since she is a woman of childbearing age she should be hospitalized and supervised until she no longer is a woman of childbearing age. That’s appropriate justice, I think.

Well yes. If there is any man we can trust, it's Rusty Yates. I'm so glad he has spoken up.

I share your disgust for pre-murders Rusty Yates, but having seen him interviewed a few times over the years, I think he has learned SO much that he didn’t understand before Andrea had the break that caused her to kill all their children. I would go so far as to suggest that he suffered from the same arrogant ignorance that many commenting here do, until he learned firsthand the extremes that psychosis can instill, and how psychosis is not readily apparent even to the people living closest to the sufferer.

Rusty Yates was and is a disgusting human who created the conditions for his wife to have a psychotic break. But it’s nice to know you’re a hypocrite who’s giving him a break bc it serves your narrative of “LiNdSaY iS iNnOcEnT!!!” You even go so far as to compare him to dcum posters, who are normal people and non killers just living their lives.

You are aware that Rusty Yates didn't kill anyone, right? You sound kind of unhinged.

I’d say he had a hand in those killings. If you don’t even know about the Yates case, don’t bother bringing him up. And honestly, you Lindsay fans are the unhinged ones. I can’t imagine what kind of nut job would excuse a person who slaughtered children with their bare hands.

I don't feel any particular way about Lindsay Clancy, but I've read the entire forensic psych eval of Andrea Yates and I am very familiar with the history. If you want to be on a high ground about who is responsible for killings, it's important not to put people who have not actually killed anyone together with people who have.

Nice try deflecting, and Wikipedia is not the entire psych eval.

Right. That’s why I said the entire forensic psych eval. It’s about 100 pages long. Easily available. Not Wikipedia.

Solid effort, though! Keep doing what you do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How sad to have a life, a pretty nice life it seems, and for it to vanish in a blink. I feel so terrible for the grandparents and extended family and friends too. How tragic the whole thing. So many lives destroyed.

I feel bad for her, too.

I feel bad for Cora, Dawson, and Callan.

We truly lack understanding of severe mental illness.

Weird response.
We hold others accountable when they do bad things and are mentally ill. Why would she be the exception?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How sad to have a life, a pretty nice life it seems, and for it to vanish in a blink. I feel so terrible for the grandparents and extended family and friends too. How tragic the whole thing. So many lives destroyed.

I feel bad for her, too.

I feel bad for Cora, Dawson, and Callan.

We truly lack understanding of severe mental illness.

Well we don’t feel bad for school shooters. We aren’t feeling bad for the Metro shooter.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How sad to have a life, a pretty nice life it seems, and for it to vanish in a blink. I feel so terrible for the grandparents and extended family and friends too. How tragic the whole thing. So many lives destroyed.

I can’t imagine being her parents. I mean, our kids are really our first true loves. There is no love greater. And then there is the love for grandchildren. So your first true love kills your next true loves. It’s unimaginable. And I have been married for more than three decades and really love my spouse. But every other love in my life pales in comparison to that of my kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How sad to have a life, a pretty nice life it seems, and for it to vanish in a blink. I feel so terrible for the grandparents and extended family and friends too. How tragic the whole thing. So many lives destroyed.

I feel bad for her, too.

I feel bad for Cora, Dawson, and Callan.

We truly lack understanding of severe mental illness.

Weird response.
We hold others accountable when they do bad things and are mentally ill. Why would she be the exception?

In the legal system there is an entire framework regarding accountability for criminal acts and mitigation because of mental illness.

Nicholas Cruz undoubtedly and indisputably had mental illness and a history of being abused as well as other mitigating factors like FAS which the jury considered in deciding to spare him from the death penalty despite his horrific actions, which were determined to be crimes because he was not floridly psychotic at the time he committed them.

Andrea Yates and other post partum moms suffering psychosis have been found not guilty by reason of insanity- or the equivalent language, it differs by jurisdiction- because they were floridly psychotic at the time of the actions and that is a level of mental illness which the law recognizes removes from the person the ability to choose to conform their behavior to the law. It is akin to a compulsion defense. Florid psychosis is the one of the few mental illness manifestations which meets the legal standard for insanity. The kid in Florida who killed a couple in their garage in the midst of a florid psychotic episode wherein he was suffering from a Lycanthropy delusion in which he believed he was a werewolf and he tried to eat the face off one of his victims, total strangers to him and he attacked them on a walk home from dinner. Law enforcement tazed him and beat him repeatedly and EMS finally had to sedate him to get him to stop eating the victim's face. No, he was NOT on drugs. Does anyone really dispute that such behavior is INSANE?

About one quarter to one third of people in prison are mentally ill. It is quite likely higher than that, even. Some of them should have benefitted from alternative dispositions but most are benefit just of some mitigation at sentencing because the level of mental illness doesn’t arise to absolution because of being incapable of forming mens rea - intent - in the context of a sane mind.

Yes, some mentally ill people are still competent to comport their behavior and thus belong in prison when convicted. Some mental ill people lack the capacity to comport their behavior and they belong in a forensic psychiatric hospital setting until deemed no longer a danger to themselves or society. Like John Hinckley Jr.

[Anonymous]

Had dinner with a friend who has worked for decades in the PPD field and she is confident Clancy was psychotic, with no sense of right or wrong or reality when she did this - it can happen in an instant and is often precipitated by new meds.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Had dinner with a friend who has worked for decades in the PPD field and she is confident Clancy was psychotic, with no sense of right or wrong or reality when she did this - it can happen in an instant and is often precipitated by new meds.

Your anonymous friend on this anonymous message board does not get any more weight to his/her opinion than anyone else.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Had dinner with a friend who has worked for decades in the PPD field and she is confident Clancy was psychotic, with no sense of right or wrong or reality when she did this - it can happen in an instant and is often precipitated by new meds.

Your anonymous friend on this anonymous message board does not get any more weight to his/her opinion than anyone else.

What's your point? Nobody's saying she should. Goodness me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Had dinner with a friend who has worked for decades in the PPD field and she is confident Clancy was psychotic, with no sense of right or wrong or reality when she did this - it can happen in an instant and is often precipitated by new meds.

Your anonymous friend on this anonymous message board does not get any more weight to his/her opinion than anyone else.

The former defense attorney/prosecutor’s opinion gets the most weight because she uses the word “floridly” a lot so must be really smart. Don’t you know she was a defense attorney and a prosecutor and that the rest of us are clueless morons?

[Anonymous]

DCUM: relevant expertise not wanted here

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Had dinner with a friend who has worked for decades in the PPD field and she is confident Clancy was psychotic, with no sense of right or wrong or reality when she did this - it can happen in an instant and is often precipitated by new meds.

Your anonymous friend on this anonymous message board does not get any more weight to his/her opinion than anyone else.

The former defense attorney/prosecutor’s opinion gets the most weight because she uses the word “floridly” a lot so must be really smart. Don’t you know she was a defense attorney and a prosecutor and that the rest of us are clueless morons?

It’s the medical term in the DSM. But heaven forfend you should be concerned with facts. What a child you are.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Had dinner with a friend who has worked for decades in the PPD field and she is confident Clancy was psychotic, with no sense of right or wrong or reality when she did this - it can happen in an instant and is often precipitated by new meds.

And? School shooters say the same thing and yet they are prosecuted. What’s different with this chick?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Had dinner with a friend who has worked for decades in the PPD field and she is confident Clancy was psychotic, with no sense of right or wrong or reality when she did this - it can happen in an instant and is often precipitated by new meds.

But this didn't happen "in an instant." It was HOURS prior to the murders that she used google maps to see how far away the restaurant was, and also called CVS to verify they did not have the specific medication.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Had dinner with a friend who has worked for decades in the PPD field and she is confident Clancy was psychotic, with no sense of right or wrong or reality when she did this - it can happen in an instant and is often precipitated by new meds.

And? School shooters say the same thing and yet they are prosecuted. What’s different with this chick?

She's a thin white likely liberal UMC female who posted cutesie Instagram photos