Jennifer Aspen

The Lindsay Clancy case is not an outlier. It is a window into how psychiatry actually operates. Psychiatrists are downplaying the polypharmacy of the 13 different psychiatric drugs prescribed to Lindsay Clancy in just four months, claiming most were “low-dose” and rarely taken all at once. This is an attempt to blunt the public’s reaction to the sheer number of drugs she was given once that information became public. The defense is typical of mainstream psychiatry: ignore the FDA-documented psychological and physical effects of these drugs and the profession’s own minimal standards—standards it routinely fails to meet. For example, the 2026 American Society of Clinical Psychopharmacology (ASCP) task force—one of the main U.S. organizations psychiatrists are supposed to rely on for the practice of psychopharmacology—states clinicians should begin with monotherapy and that “every time you add a medication, you should stop a medication.” Even Stahl’s Prescriber’s Guide—a practical handbook doctors are supposed to use to switch psychiatric drugs—requires accounting for residual activity and half-lives. That means the doctor must factor in how much of the old drug is still affecting the brain so the patient is not exposed to overlapping or conflicting drug effects, unexpected side effects, or withdrawal while the new drug is being introduced. These are the low bars psychiatry sets for itself. In the Clancy case, even these lowest of bars were ignored. Current FDA labeling and clinical guidelines have long recognized that even low-dose psychiatric drugs can require weeks—or longer—to taper and clear, leaving residual effects that continue to act on the brain. In reality, “weeks” is often not long enough. The fact that HHS and SAMHSA are now developing new clinical guidance and training on tapering and deprescribing only confirms what has been known for years: residual effects from these drugs can persist well beyond a few weeks, and current practice has failed to account for it. With current FDA labeling and clinical guidelines, fluoxetine’s active metabolite can persist for weeks. Short-half-life agents such as paroxetine and venlafaxine are well-known for producing anxiety, irritability, and insomnia during withdrawal. Benzodiazepines can trigger rebound anxiety or paradoxical excitation. SSRIs themselves can cause activation, heightened anxiety, insomnia, emotional blunting, or intrusive thoughts. When these drugs are piled on in quick succession by multiple uncoordinated prescribers—sertraline, fluoxetine, mirtazapine, trazodone, zolpidem, lorazepam, clonazepam, diazepam, quetiapine, lamotrigine, and others—no clinician can distinguish drug side effects, residual effects, withdrawal, interactions, or the underlying condition. The patient’s condition deteriorated under this uncontrolled pattern of one psychiatric drug being piled on after another. What this public trial has exposed is how ignorant mainstream psychiatrists are of what has already been publicly proven or disproven. Dr. Sejal Shah, presented as an “expert” as an Associate Chief at a Harvard-affiliated hospital, explained SSRIs as correcting a “lack of serotonin” in the brain—the debunked chemical imbalance myth that mainstream psychiatry claims to have stopped using decades ago. Yet this Harvard psychiatrist apparently didn’t get the memo. Or psychiatrist Jennifer Tufts, who claimed the FDA’s black-box warning on antidepressants causing suicidal ideation applied only to children. The actual FDA warning covers adults through age 24. And as common sense would dictate, there is no scientific basis for claiming the risk vanishes the day after a patient’s 24th birthday. Psychiatric nurse practitioner Rebecca Jollotta responded to Clancy’s extreme reaction to Zoloft—48 hours without sleep—by declaring it “unusual” and evidence of possible bipolar disorder, then prescribing the antipsychotic Seroquel. This was not clinical science. It is the same pharmaceutical marketing script engineered in the early 2000s: reframe SSRI-induced agitation and sleeplessness as “unmasked bipolar” so another profitable drug class can be added. Internal Lilly materials trained sales representatives in exactly this diagnostic switch. The company later paid $1.415 billion to settle charges that included illegal off-label promotion of Zyprexa for such uses. This trial is showing the public that the emperor—psychiatry—has no clothes. Behind the titles, Harvard affiliations, and talk of chemical imbalances and “unmasked bipolar” sits a profession that runs on behavioral checklists, not science. It shows little interest in ruling out real physical causes—such as thyroid problems in the postpartum period—before prescribing psychiatric drugs. Side effects are rebranded as new disorders and used to justify the next prescription. Drugs are piled on with no reliable way to know what remains in the patient’s system, no required training in how to take people off them safely, and no accountability when the resulting deterioration is labeled a new “mental illness.” This is not an unusual case. This is mainstream psychiatry in every day practice: no medical workups for underlying physical conditions—just label, drug, and then blame the damage from the drugs on the patient’s ‘disease.’”