Lindsay Clancy repeatedly asked to change her medications before she killed her three children in January 2023, according to a nurse who treated the then-postpartum mom in late 2022.
Psychiatric nurse practitioner Rebecca Jollotta testified in court on Tuesday, August 11, that Clancy, 35, asked several times to change her medications despite concerns about her sticking to a treatment plan, according to CNN.
Jollotta, who works at South Shore Hospital in the perinatal behavioral health program, said she created a plan to treat Clancy’s anxiety, depression and insomnia beginning in late November 2022 and ending the following month.
She said that Clancy repeatedly sought changes to her medications and claimed that they caused her to have intrusive thoughts, insomnia and numbness. Clancy also expressed concerns about becoming dependent on the benzodiazepine Ativan she had been prescribed.
“It’s just a very scary stressful time for me, and starting new meds with side effects is very scary to me,” Clancy previously wrote in a note amid the medications.
In response to Clancy’s concerns, Jollotta said she understood where she was coming from but said it would take weeks for the medication to be effective.
Jollotta also told Clancy that she believed her problems were more likely postpartum depression instead of side effects from the drugs.
“All of this sounds like postpartum depression,” Jollotta wrote in a note during the time she worked with Clancy.
Clancy is currently on trial after she was accused of killing her children Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months, in January 2023. After she asked her then-husband, Patrick Clancy, to run errands, he returned home to find that Lindsay had jumped out of a second-story window after strangling her three children to death.
Lindsay has not denied killing her kids — instead, her defense attorney is arguing the mom is not criminally responsible for the murders because she was experiencing a psychotic episode that stemmed from her postpartum mental illness at the time the incident occurred.
Also during her testimony, Jollotta explained one of her main goals while working with Lindsay was to help her obtain an actual full night’s sleep.
Jollotta recalled an appointment on December 6, 2022, in which Lindsay said she first experienced issues with insomnia when she took Zoloft and was unable to sleep for 48 hours straight.
Jollotta said that insomnia was an “unusual” reaction to Zoloft and that it may have been a sign suggesting that Lindsay could have underlying bipolar disorder.
While Jollotta was concerned that Lindsay was in a mixed manic or hypomanic state, she said she was back to a regular sleep schedule the following week. However, Jollotta testified that Lindsay said she still felt hopeless and numb.
The last time Jollotta treated Lindsay was on December 21, 2022, which was one more before the killings.
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