08/08/2026
This is the most self-protective move the psychiatrists could make in this trial - claiming that there was no evidence of psychosis pushed the liability, capacity and responsibility back on the individual (Clancy) and away from them.
If the psychiatrists admit in court that they did all believe she was psychotic, then the defence strategy would easily move towards their own culpability for recognising she was ‘psychotic’ and then not safeguarding the children properly or effectively from a ‘psychotic’ mother.
So the important question is - if Clancy was NOT psychotic, why did they have her on antipsychotics? Why did they have her on 13 medications? Why did they have her on mood stabilisers?
This trial is demonstrating exactly how psychiatry can be used for and against victims and perpetrators of crime - and the way psychiatric medications and diagnoses can be used back and forth, moulded into whatever the person wants it to mean at that time.
Psychiatrists and medical services do not want to end up on the line for these murders, so the arguments have to become strategic. They have to begin arguing that there was no evidence of psychosis so they can argue she had full capacity to plan and carry out the murders - so they cannot be held responsible for failure to safeguard children.
The defence however, has repeatedly raised the conduct, choices and rationale of so many psychiatrists and medical staff putting this woman on endless rotations of powerful medications whilst not actually addressing the issues, the environment, the distress or the support she was asking for.
If the defence is successful in arguing that Clancy was inappropriately medicated, sedated, taken on and off medications, was in medication-induced psychosis, was failed by multiple services and therefore should not be held responsible for the murders - this would be a landmark case that would open the floodgates for cases and lawsuits that the psychiatric industry cannot afford.
This case is increasingly becoming an expose of pathologisation of women’s distress, and what really happens when the issues are being ignored in favour of psychiatric medications and diagnoses.