Psychiatrist Reacts to Matt Walsh's Lindsay Clancy Comments

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Matt Walsh says temporary insanity is a myth, something from the movies. Millions of people heard him say it about the Lindsay Clancy case. In this video I respond as a psychiatrist, because I think he is asking a fair question and arriving at the wrong answer, and the difference matters enormously for how we understand this tragedy.

His argument is intuitive: a functional, coherent person cannot suddenly lose all agency, commit an act like this, and then get it back. I take that seriously, and he is right that there is no lab test that can prove what was happening in someone's mind at a specific moment in the past. But that is not how the question actually gets decided. Juries integrate evidence, and in this case the evidence is unusual: months of medical records documenting a woman deteriorating on psychiatric medications while she and her husband told doctors she was getting worse, a rapid benzodiazepine taper, an antidepressant dose doubled the day before the tragedy, no motive, no history of violence, and a husband who lost his three children still standing by her. I walk through why I believe the medications drove what happened, and why I think Massachusetts' legal threshold points toward a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity.

I also respond to his framing of postpartum depression as largely an adjustment problem, hardest for the most selfish among us. The transition to motherhood is genuinely jarring, and he is not wrong that it demands the surrender of your own desires. But I have sat with too many struggling new mothers to accept selfishness as the explanation. What I see is isolation: mothers raising children far from family, without community, sleep deprived, and too often handed a prescription instead of support. I believe the enormous public interest in this case exists because so many women recognize a version of their own experience in it.

And on the GoFundMe controversy, I explain why I think a grieving family seeking help through the worst circumstances imaginable deserves something better than our contempt.

Whatever you conclude, this case deserves more than a culture war take. These children deserve to have the whole truth told about how this happened.

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DISCLAIMER: All the information on this channel is for educational and/or entertainment purposes and not intended to be specific/personal medical advice from me to you. Watching the videos, or getting answers to comments/question, does not establish a doctor-patient relationship. If you have your own doctor, these videos can maybe help you prepare for your discussion with him. We do our best to spread awareness with these videos, but for legal reasons we can’t answer health questions in the comments. If you leave questions, we’ll make videos about common questions in the future! If we catch incorrect health information, hate speech, illegal solicitation of drugs in the comments, we will remove them.