Lindsay Clancy, Are You Ill or Evil?

Lindsay Clancy is the Massachusetts mother who strangled her three young children in 2023 and then attempted suicide, leaving herself paralyzed. She admits the murders, but the courts are currently trying to determine if she can be held criminally responsible for them, or if mental illness exonerates her from that responsibility.

What a difficult job they have! While the internet has leapt to conclusions acting as judge, jury, and executioner, the courts will take perhaps months to comb through the evidence, deliberate, and reach a verdict. As they should. As imperfect as it is, thank God for our justice system.

Her Story in Brief

After years of struggling with depression and anxiety, then postpartum depression (PPD), and being prescribed over 30 psychotropic medications, 13 of which she was taking at the time, Lindsay Clancy snapped (https://www.patriotledger.com/story/news/local/2026/07/27/lindsay-clancy-was-prescribed-several-types-of-psychiatric-medications-lawsuits-say-trial-children/91062568007/). Without clear warning signs, she strangled her three small children with resistance bands, then walked up the stairs to her bedroom to down a handful of pills, slit her wrists and throat, and jump out the window.

Because Lindsay Clancy’s story seems to involve both, I’d like to explore the somewhat blurry line between insanity and evil.

The Reaction

The online reaction to her trial has been split. A mostly female cry has gone up about the need for better medical care for female mental health issues like PPD. After all, weathering female hormone changes can be like riding a storm on the high seas. In the mind of this cohort, Lindsay Clancy is an underserved victim of a misogynist system.

A mostly male group has a different take. It is that Lindsay Clancy’s irrationality proves at the very least that women need to take responsibility for their actions regardless of emotional state, and at most that women, because of emotional weaknesses, should lose the right to occupy positions of civic leadership and even the right to vote.

Now, these are the extremes of the debate, but they give you an idea of how this particular issue has played out in the online polarization machine.

To be fair to the first group, hormones can do a number on a woman. I see echoes of this in the Genesis 3:16 curse: “I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception;
In pain you shall bring forth children.” God said that thing about childbearing difficulties twice. Premenstrual syndrome (PMS), premenstrual dysphoric disorder (a monster form of PMS), postpartum depression and psychosis, perimenopause, menopause—these hormone fluctuation conditions are hard. Perimenopause made me feel like the KGB was after me even as excruciating monthly migraines rendered me non-functional. But my story pales in comparison to some.

To be fair to the second group, women have roughly twice the anxiety, depression, and PTSD that men have. We tend toward what’s called neuroticism, which comes from the same word as “neuron” and means “nerve” or “sinew.” A charitable take would be that women’s nervous systems tend to be very delicate. A less-charitable take would be that we’re too emotional to be much good in the public space.

Here’s what this argument misses: neuroticism should be distinguished from psychosis, which is defined as a psychological state in which the person loses touch with reality. To be neurotic is to be emotionally distressed, but to be psychotic is to be cognitively unhinged. The defense in Lindsay Clancy’s trial claims she had postpartum psychosis, a rare beast of a disorder. But note that males overall have more psychotic disorders than females. So to assume women more prone to psychological instability ignores the psychological conditions that affect males.

This brings us back to the purpose of this blog, differentiating between insanity and evil. I’d like to identify two main categories of mental illness: Psychotic disorders and sociopathic disorders.

Psychotic Disorders

First, allow me to give a list of the disorders that cause this reality detachment we call psychosis.

Schizophrenia features delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech, catatonic behavior, and negative symptoms lasting six months or longer.

Schizophreniform disorder is a short-term version of schizophrenia lasting one to six months.

Schizoaffective disorder is like a mash-up of the psychotic symptoms of schizophrenia and the severe mood problems of bipolar disorder.

Delusional disorder is characterized by false beliefs, typically themed as persecutory or jealous, but without the hallucinations and disorganization of schizophrenia.

Brief psychotic disorder is a sudden, short-term bout of psychotic symptoms from a day to a month long.

Schizotypal personality disorder involves persistent social and interpersonal difficulties, and cognitive or perceptual distortions.

Psychosis can also be induced by medications, street drugs, and health conditions. I read about a woman who had a psychotic break due to extreme dehydration. It happens.

Sociopathic Disorders

Sociopathy, as a general term (it’s not an official diagnosis) is characterized by traits like: 


Lack of empathy and remorse


Manipulation


Aggression


Lying


Flat affect


Impulsivity

Imagine Satan. He’s the poster child for sociopathy.

(Sociopathy bears the same traits as another condition, psychopathy, but is thought to be inbred through childhood trauma versus inborn through genetics or other biological brain development impactors.)

The diagnosis that best reflects this set of traits is antisocial personality disorder (APD). Here is a boil-down of the criteria for APD:

Breaking social norms and laws


Pathologically dishonest 


Impulsivity, lack of planning 


High levels of irritability 


Emotionally and/or physically aggressive 


Reckless disregard for the safety of self and others 


Failing to keep a steady job and be responsible


Parasitic, exploiting or freeloading off others 


Lacking remorse for wrongs done

Again, Satan-like.

Back to the Ill or Evil Question 


I once posted an opinion that a mass shooter was mentally ill. The blowback bowled me over. “He was racist!” they said, “Stop making excuses for him!” I tried to explain that when I mentioned mental illness, I was thinking he was sociopathic, not psychotic. In other words, he wasn’t so much mentally unfit as just plain evil. Sociopaths are thought to be rational and in touch with reality, but so deeply flawed in character that they act out of sync with accepted social norms, human decency, and very often the law.

Another helpful way of framing this might be to consider that psychotic people have a disordered brain and sociopathic people a disordered character.

Maybe Demons?

And a third dimension must also be considered—the spiritual aspect of evil behavior.

Notice the tripartite model of human nature offered by Paul in his first letter to the Thessalonians. “May your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” (5:23). Humans can be disordered in brain and in character, but also in spirit. And it’s all connected. The crown of the brain, the frontal lobe, acts as a “shield of faith with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one” (Ephesians 6:16). When that brain function weakens, the person becomes more susceptible to demonic influences. As one who believes the Bible is the ultimate describer of reality, I must embrace this spiritual dimension.

This brings us back to the case of Lindsay Clancy. We’ll have to leave the courts to sort out whether she was psychotic or sociopathic, a madwoman neurologically detached from the horror of what she did or an evil lawbreaker with no excuse. Likely, the court will find she was somewhere in between.

But we can assume one thing—that only forces of evil working through a human being could want those children’s last moments to be spent looking into the face of a mother who wanted them unalive. We’re told of Satan, the author of evil: “He was a murderer from the beginning” (John 8:44).

Our deepest sympathies belong to those children who said goodbye to life that day, suffering at the hand of a mother turned human agent of death.

And to “the whole creation” which “groans and labors with birth pangs together until now” (Romans 8:22).

Come, Lord Jesus.