Throwaway05
13d ago
So much of this is based off of misunderstandings and this is why I get so tremendously frustrated with people here.
Psychology is not a medical field. Psychiatry is. Large chunks of psychiatry are functionally psychology, large chunks are not and have just as good or bad of an evidence base as the rest of medicine. Usually people here complaining about medicine and psychiatry don't seem to realize that everyone involved has a very good understanding of what has firm and shaky evidence and so on. Psychiatry also is the victim of long running smear campaigns by august institutions like Scientology and individuals who literally have the inability to acknowledge they have an illness even as the voices tell them to kill their family.
With respect to the specific issue at hand only part of this is medical at all, a large chunk of it is multi-century long discussions in the fields of law, politics, and ethics about how governance, criminality, and the law work. Coming into an intellectual tradition of some of the wisest and smartest people who have ever lived trying to figure out how to organize society and going "IDK insanity defense is bad" is profoundly ill advised.
Yes screeching women on TikTok are making weird arguments but none of the actual knowledge holders or decisions makers are trying to excuse women from committing crimes because they are on their periods. This is a profound misunderstanding of the issue at hand.
You can get a serious, permanent mental illness (ex: schizophrenia) from menopause, you can kill someone because of that illness, and you can still be held criminally liable.
People are just pouncing on preexisting biases without any understanding of how this works.
Throwaway05
13d ago
More broadly though, I think more people will see these supporters as the real societal problem that needs to be addressed.
Yeah toxic positivity, female in-group bias and her mentality as well as social media are really making a large slice of women into intellectual zombies. I'd hazard that lots of men have always been this way but they've tended to go into a variety of directions which limits social disruption. Since the current epidemic in women functions as a voting bloc it causes...problems.
Throwaway05
13d ago
Issues with the specific legal framework in MA may in fact be valid and reasonable but are not the responsibility of physicians, psychiatrists, or Lindsay Clancy.
Throwaway05
13d ago
Psychosis doesn't let you conveniently rationality yourself in a 'just so' way that works in your interest.
Why not? How many psychotic people have you interacted with deeply? Disorganization is a common symptom but not required, and people's brains are excellent at post-hoc rationalization and justification, especially when oscillating in and out of psychosis as appears to be case here.
Throwaway05
13d ago
Assuming experts are wrong without any investigation is even worse mental hygiene than assuming they are right without any investigation, and is a massively common intellectual failure in certain communities including our own.
Yes, expert witnesses are paid to support a side during the trial, but that doesn't mean that all expert witnesses are equally credible. Some expert witnesses wrote the textbook. Some expert witnesses evaluated the Unabomber and Timothy McVeigh. Some are random fillers. Guess which the Clancy defense team got?
Likewise experts in the field may in fact not be involved in the case at all and taking a stance, as in my link.
Lastly - I hate woke and see it everywhere, but Jesus you can't reach to it for everything. Forensic physicians are some of the least woke people around for obvious reasons.
Throwaway05
13d ago
While it is common for people with mental illness this severe to be grossly disorganized (think homeless guy wandering around mumbling to himself) it is not required. People who don't understand what is real, what is happening, and what is right/wrong can engaged in organized behavior to accomplish psychotic goals.
That's what makes this shit scary.
See: Charles Whitman
Throwaway05
13d ago
My intake of the details of the case has led me to believe in the insanity defense.
As I said elsewhere the insanity defense is a very specific thing that doesn't mean what people think it does.
Throwaway05
13d ago
The insanity defense should be trivially deemed appropriate - do you want to send your grandmother to jail because she has a UTI and attacks her nurse while in the ICU? No, she doesn't know what's going on, doesn't know what she is doing, and doesn't know if it's right or wrong.
The insanity defense is a very specific thing with a specific definition that doesn't do what people think it does.
Throwaway05
13d ago
Some thoughts as I've been forced to learn much more about this case than I've wanted to know:
-A common response to the media conversation around this case is to criticize women for brainless takes that do not engage with the information about the case or expert commentary. This includes me, I've been frustrated.
-It seems like actual experts in this field are landing on a psychotic process (most likely postpartum psychosis) as the explanation of events. That is to say she is legitimately not guilty by reason of insanity. This moved the needle for me. How can I criticize women for being retarded and not listening to actual information if I don't listen to experts and people with specific knowledge of the case.
-As a legal matter, it sounds like the expectation from knowledgable parties has been a hung jury or not guilty by reason of insanity because of structural, jurisdiction specific aspects of this type of defense in MA.
-I don't know how easy it will be to parse this without a medical background, but for a relevant podcast by a forensic psychiatrist you can search on YouTube " Lindsay Clancy Trial: Forensic Psychiatrist Explains Psychosis, Malingering, & Insanity Defense."
-Incidentally I strongly suspect one or both of the hosts of that podcast are Rationalist/Scott diaspora types, so if you are reading this: loved the metal gear reference.
Throwaway05
17d ago
I don't understand what you are saying.
There is overwhelming female interest in pediatrics to the point where programs will incentive recruitment of male residents even if they aren't good.
That's affirmative action.
Throwaway05
18d ago
Not going to argue that all kinds of problems aren't around, but it's pretty "normal" AA. Can get higher positions with a weaker application because of the bits between your legs.
Throwaway05
18d ago
Yes they have higher desire for those positions and Peds pays a lot less. That makes it hard to attract men.
Throwaway05
18d ago
An interesting outcome is that it has gotten so bad that in some specialties (Peds, most famously) you do have outright affirmative action for men.
Throwaway05
23d ago
Fair enough!
Throwaway05
23d ago
Clancy, on the other hand, had some history of psychiatric treatment, but not nearly to the same degree Yates did.
To expand on this, she was evaluated many times prior to the killings (including specifically for the type of pathology she allegedly exhibits) and those many evaluations did not find she had that type of illness.
Usually in these cases the person has a known and obvious illness or has never presented for psychiatric care.
It seems questionable that someone had been seen by probably more than a dozen mental health workers of various types and nobody spotted it. Either her presentation was exceptionally unusual, she lied about her symptoms, or she was able to minimize in a very productive way. Or she made it up on the advice of her attorney.
Throwaway05
23d ago
I think it's better characterized as an extension of the increasing trend towards people feeling very comfortable having opinions (especially those that are political adjacent) without any expertise or full context and the related resistance to updating views on getting new information (especially from experts), as well as just lack of critical analysis (especially from social media).
Most of the takes I've seen that engage with the facts are missing pretty big pieces of legal or medical context leading to incorrect or incomplete conclusions - and unlike with "real" scissors people who want to hear more about the circumstances update pretty strongly.
I've also seen takes that totally don't engage with the facts at all, like female doctors going "IDK the husband seems sus" and just refusing to actually look at information about the case, just sucking up whatever pops on TikTok.
It's pure brain rot.
Throwaway05
24d ago
A complex discussion about SSRI side effects leading to unmasking of occult bipolar disorder is not the kind of thing that spreads well on social media, especially in the setting of the defense actively presenting (lets call it biased) information to the jury to make their case.
Everybody is taking out their favorite axes to grind on this one, but that doesn't really help clear anything up.
Throwaway05
24d ago
Post partum psychosis is not post partum depression. Post partum psychosis is an immediate psychiatric emergency with significant threat to mother and child and different symptoms.
PPP vs. Bipolar are the two main psychiatric entities raised by the defense, to my understanding.
Throwaway05
24d ago
It depends on what is happening.
Most of these people fit into specific buckets, which bucket tells you what to do, for example -
-Motivated by secondary gain? (Ex: stimulant seeking). May become a drug addict, otherwise not too problematic since they are doing this to succeed and don't end up in the fail state.
-People who actually just have depression or anxiety and don't want to admit that? Get them treatment for what they actually have.
-People with "something else" many of these people have a personality disorder or something like a conversion disorder and they've found a way to excuse their psychology and experiences. If you can get them the treatment for what they have, do so. Many of these people were never going to flourish anyway.
Lots of people get shunted into all three buckets at higher rates because of modernity sucking.
Throwaway05
24d ago
There is a strong element of the very popular "anti-psychiatry" and "anti-healthcare" trends. This is absurdly popular online you can see lots of stories of "I brought my husband to the doctor so they would listen" and so on. Never mind that most healthcare workers are female.
In this case it's stupid because she was clearly doctor shopping, signed herself out of inpatient care, and at best lied about her symptoms to multiple people involved in her care.
These kind of people don't let facts get in the way however.
Throwaway05
24d ago
Please see example of Grandma above.
Throwaway05
25d ago
While I wish it wasn't as big of a deal as it is, it is filling that "scandalous legal case" niche that happens periodically in America (what was the last one, Heard vs Depp?) with the biggest probably being OJ.
A lot of the country is thinking about it, in a time where most media isn't scratching that broad itch if you want to know what your common man is doing, it's this.
Throwaway05
25d ago
I don't buy the insanity defense. I can't think of a mother I know that wouldn't do suicide attempts till success if she did such thing in a moment of blackout. It is just not something you can live with when the haze over your brain lifts.
This cuts both ways - the murders were probably not cold blooded, if they were she wouldn't have tried to kill herself and she would have done things in a way that she could have had a life afterwards. The cause of the behavior was probably something else - a formal personality disorder (ex: Borderline), issues of general personality structure, or "less serious" mental illness (like postpartum depression, other forms of depression, or anxiety) interacting with stressors and other features of her environment. These things should not impair her "reality testing" and should leave her with an understanding that what she is doing is morally wrong and a shitty idea. That type of explanation is going to function pretty similarly to a psychotic state in terms of feeling miserable about events afterwards. For both she'd end up with some pretty hefty treatment afterwards to try and reduce the impulse to suicide. They'd look the same three years later, at least looking from the outside as we are.
Just giving flesh to the meme that the only thing white liberal women really fear is accountability.
Much as my impulse is to give them zero credit I can't really do that here. Most people are aware of men as the sex of violence and killing, and some people are aware of "family annihilator" crime (as this may have been) and when that happens it almost always men. If you live in a bubble with little crime than you just aren't going to see the existence of cases like this or of women committing violence, which does happen in the real world but not in their milieu.
Throwaway05
25d ago
While the information I have is somewhat limited, with the information I have I do not believe she was afflicted by a psychiatric condition that would make her not guilty. It is worth noting that she was examined by one of the gods of forensic healthcare and while he is somewhat doddering at this time he did side with the defense (and has more information than I do).
All of that being said, what you are saying is both somewhat untrue historically (and is more of a meme than anything) and is very specifically not applicable to the conditions being evaluated in this case (ex: psychosis).
This is a complex technical discussion involving healthcare and legal structures, people trying to shove the culture war into it are walking into a long running conversation with limited understanding.
If charged granny would justifiably be able to say she was not in her usual state of health (medical or psychiatric), did not know what was real or was not real (psychosis), did not have capacity, and did not know what was right or wrong.
We choose not to press charges because yes that's a waste of resources, but the same fundamentals apply. She's not guilty by reason of mental health. The restoration of capacity is straightforward in that case but it can be in others also.
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