As with countless courtroom proceedings that have been sensationalized, the agonizing testimony during the opening days of the murder trial of Lindsay Clancy, the former labor and delivery nurse accused of killing her three young children in Massachusetts, has produced a wave of public commentary debating the forces that might have driven a mother to kill her children.

The ruling theories go something like this: Clancy, as her defense team argues, should not be held criminally responsible because she had been overmedicated, with some of the medications worsening her later diagnosis of bipolar disorder. Prosecutors say the responsibility for the crime is entirely Clancy’s as she “deliberately and meticulously” killed her children. Online, criticism has even been directed at Clancy’s husband, Patrick, for supposedly leaving his wife to suffer in the throes of depression, while he got brunch with friends.

In the absence of a clear source to blame for this family’s catastrophe, it is the list of medications that had been prescribed to Clancy in the months leading up to the tragedy that has received outsized attention, often inspiring fierce judgment online. “Great opportunity to hold the antidepressant industry accountable for serious harm,” Alex Clark, the MAHA wellness influencer, wrote on social media, as courtroom filings revealed doctors had prescribed a range of medications— including antidepressants, sleep aids, and antipsychotics—to treat symptoms of severe postpartum depression after Clancy gave birth to her third child in 2022.

“Four months. Thirteen different medications,” the Boston Globe wrote in an Instagram post that featured a list of the medications with the full names of the doctors who prescribed them. As others, including Katie Miller and Jack Posobiec, expressed alarm over Clancy’s treatment plan, over on TikTok, clips concluding “textbook psych harm” were also going viral. Consider some of the responses to the Globe post:

“That literally will induce severe psychosis.”

“Pure malpractice. Those doctors........

© Mother Jones