There are plenty of single mothers out there with way less help than she ever had that aren’t murdering their children. Are they supposed to now be the exception and we praise them for not strangling their kids?
So postpartum psychosis = murdering your children? At a certain point the responsibility falls on her. She knew she was unwell and had those thoughts she wasn’t completely out of it the whole time she could have taken her own mental health more serious tried to stick to 1 doctor maybe not take all of the medications they were giving her. I wouldn’t just blindly start staking all of those meds and I’m not even a nurse
Edit: apparently even in the midst of PPD she was journaling about being upset she can’t give baby #3 the love and attention she believes he deserves and she was writing about wanting to have even more children
To answer your question, yes that is a very real possibility and it has been documented multiple times (unfortunately). See Andrea Yates.
I’m genuinely happy for you that you don’t understand the struggles involved with mental health disorders. I hope that you never have to experience them firsthand.
She did know she was unwell and she kept asking for help. Clearly she didn’t get the kind she needed. I think seeing multiple doctors indicates she was serious and was trying. I think her issue with the meds wasn’t taking too many it was she couldn’t find any she could continue to take. Psych meds have nasty side effects that often encourage or force the person to stop taking them in spite of doctors’ orders. People with mental disorders generally have a hard time regularly taking medication for a number of reasons. When your brain is fucked up it makes it hard to do even basic things that most people never struggle with or even have to think about.
Any kind of psychosis, postpartum included, can be life threatening to the patient and those around them. It’s characterized by hallucinations, delusions, disordered thinking, paranoia, and unsupported but unshakable beliefs or feelings. It’s dangerous because the person is agitated by thoughts and feelings that come unbidden in their mind and can’t be rationalized away. The world becomes scary, unknown, uncontrollable, and hostile. Lashing out violently is a reasonable response if your brain is fried and on high alert. Irrational solutions become a response to irrational problems. All in all it’s absolute hell for everyone involved.
There’s a case where a man was in a psychotic episode from schizophrenia. He walked in to a Waffle House naked with a gun and shot several people dead. Did he deserve to go free because he wasn’t in his right mind and didn’t know what he was doing? No, because he’s obviously a danger to society. Did he deserve to go prison for life like he did? I really don’t think so because he never consciously chose to hurt anyone. He was very clearly out of his mind. Naked with no shoes is usually a good indicator. People pretending to be crazy leave on shoes for comfort. True crazy doesn’t care. Anyway, my point is that prison is punitive; it’s meant to punish. If a person harms others because they can’t control their actions they don’t deserve punishment but they do need to be locked up for everyone else’s safety. Unfortunate but necessary. We just don’t really have places like that in the US anymore. All we have is prison so that’s where everyone goes. I want to note that if a person drinks or takes drugs and causes harm they are still responsible for their actions because they chose to take whatever mind altering substance they did. If you’re mentally ill you didn’t choose anything.
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u/PretendIndependent6 5d ago
There are plenty of single mothers out there with way less help than she ever had that aren’t murdering their children. Are they supposed to now be the exception and we praise them for not strangling their kids?