During deliberations in the recent murder trial of Lindsay Clancy, jurors made an unusual request. They asked to see the bags of prescription medication bottles that had been introduced into evidence.
Clancy’s defense had argued that she was suffering from postpartum psychosis when she killed her three young children in 2023, and that her condition had been compounded by overmedication and inadequate psychiatric care. Prosecutors disputed that account. After weeks of testimony, the case ended in a mistrial when the jury could not reach a unanimous verdict.
I cannot know what role medication played in Lindsay Clancy’s psychosis. But I understand why those pill bottles matter.
I am a physician, and I too descended into psychosis while taking the same medications Lindsay Clancy did, plus four more psychoactive medications. A total of eighteen were prescribed within a six-month period. In my case, the possibility that prescribed drugs were contributing to my mental state was repeatedly overlooked, leading to eight involuntary hospitalizations and a mistaken diagnosis rubber-stamped by twelve psychiatrists.
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My nightmare began with exhaustion. I was a practicing physician in my fifties, struggling to stay awake through the day. A sleep study showed severe obstructive sleep apnea, a common and treatable condition. But another sleep specialist dismissed that diagnosis and instead diagnosed me with periodic limb movement syndrome (PLMS), a rare disorder involving involuntary leg movements during sleep. He prescribed Mirapex, which can cause serious psychiatric side effects in some patients. When I did not improve, the dose was increased, and another psychoactive drug was added.
Then I began to unravel. I became paranoid, convinced that I was being surveilled. I tore apart much of my house looking for hidden devices. Eventually I was involuntarily hospitalized and diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
The truth? I wasn’t bipolar. My severe sleep apnea remained untreated, while medication effects compounded my chronic sleep deprivation. I developed substance-induced psychosis.
When people hear “substance-induced,” they may think of cocaine or some other illicit drug. But prescribed medications are substances too. They can have side effects, interact with one another, and in some circumstances, contribute to profound changes in mood, thinking, and perception. When a patient develops new psychiatric symptoms while medications are being started, stopped, increased, decreased, or combined, the clinician must ask: Could the treatment itself be contributing to what I am seeing?
In my case, that question was not pursued. Once the bipolar diagnosis entered my chart, it acquired a momentum of its own.
My own objections became evidence against me. One psychiatrist wrote that I “rationalized manic and psychotic symptoms as a result of medication effects.” Another recorded that I believed my psychotic behavior “was the result of medications taken at the time.”
Because I was now a psychiatric patient, my explanation was treated as evidence that I lacked insight. My clinical judgment, honed over decades of treating patients, had become another symptom.
This is where polypharmacy becomes especially dangerous. One medication may produce a side effect. Another may be added. A dose may be increased or abruptly changed. Several clinicians may be involved, each seeing only part of the picture. Before long, nobody is standing far enough back to ask the most basic question: What changed?
The Clancy trial exposed some of these same concerns without resolving them. We should resist drawing a simple causal line from a bottle of pills to an act of violence. Psychiatric medications are essential, and often lifesaving, for millions of people.
But refusing simplistic conclusions is not the same as refusing to ask hard questions. When someone undergoes a dramatic psychiatric change during a period of intensive medication adjustment, medication-induced symptoms should be part of a differential diagnosis.
Patients and families also need to track symptoms and ask whether a medication could be contributing. If the concern is dismissed while the patient continues to deteriorate, seek another assessment. Psychiatric medications should never be stopped abruptly without medical supervision.
What happened to Lindsay Clancy and her children is an almost unbearable tragedy. I would not presume to explain it from afar. What I can say is that medication-induced psychiatric deterioration is real, and failure to recognize it can be catastrophic.
I eventually recovered, but by the time my mind cleared, my career, finances, and relationships were in ruins.
We cannot prevent every psychiatric crisis. But we can do far more to recognize medication-induced deterioration before it becomes catastrophic.
Scott Standage is a Stanford-trained specialist in physical medicine and rehabilitation (PM&R) with more than two decades of clinical experience in musculoskeletal and neurological rehabilitation. He has practiced medicine at leading institutions, including Stanford and Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, and currently sees patients at an outpatient clinic in California.
After being misdiagnosed and treated with powerful psychiatric medications for a sleep disorder, he endured years of medical maltreatment that cost him his career, his reputation, and nearly his life. His new book, White Coats and Black Swans: A Doctor’s Descent into Misdiagnosis and Madness (Amplify Publishing, October 13, 2026), advocates for diagnostic reform, mental health accountability, and evidence-based treatment pathways. Learn more at scottstandage.com, and follow him on LinkedIn.
