The Lindsey Clancy trial needs to be a serious wake up call but I think not in the way most people are talking about.
Lindsey Clancy “got help.” She saw numerous mental health “providers” and was put on a dozen psychiatric medications and her condition continued to worsen. Unfortunately, this isn’t at all a one off this is a fairly standard approach in our psychiatric care harm system.
A patient, often a woman, presents with symptoms of depression or anxiety that are interfering with her life but not totally impairing function and is put on medication. The medication causes symptoms which make her worse and these symptoms are not attributed to the medication but to some underlying disorder. The patient is then put on numerous medications sometimes 4+ at once and symptoms worsen. Does anyone ever say “hey let’s stop for a bit let’s taper off the medications in a secure place to go back to baseline and we can go from there.” Nope. It’s always “the wrong meds” or “it’s just her condition making her worse.”
Contrary to popular belief these medications, especially poly pharmacy are not well studied. The long term efficacy is not well researched. Medications, particularly SSRIs are known to induce mania and suicide in some patients and it’s appalling they are prescribed without proper oversight and without proper discussion of risk and benefit and warning signs. Are SSRIs and psych meds life saving for many people! Absolutely! But it’s appalling that individual practitioners refuse to acknowledge these well known complications of meds and blame them on the patient pushing them down a rabbit hole of over medicalization.
I think many people don’t understand that psychiatry can cause iatrogenic psychiatric disorders (basically medically induced). There are many people, including myself who have experienced much more harm than benefit from psychiatric care and would have been better off never seeking “help.” Improper care can be disabling (or life ending) and when your issue is “psychiatric” you may have no say in your treatment.
It just makes me so angry that Lindsey Clancy’s access to “professionals” may have worsened her symptoms and contributed to the tragic outcome. And for anyone with disagrees, i don’t think you understand what being on multiple inappropriately prescribed high dose psychiatric medications (as well as being taken on and off them in a short time) can do to your brain. It’s so tragic and I think we need to acknowledge as a culture the entire psychiatric industry is pseudoscientific at best and abusive at worst and demand better.
Bad psychiatrists kill people. Just like bad surgeons or anesthesiologists or ER doctors. Bad medical science kills people. Lindsey Clancy deserved better.
