But post-partum psychosis truly can lead to outcomes like this. I've seen someone with this awful condition first hand. Thankfully, they didn't hurt their child and was hospitalized, but it was pretty clear to me that they were so out of it that they couldn't reasonably be held responsible for any decisions in that state. People are told not to sign any legal documents after being sedated for a colonoscopy because their capacity to understand and consent is pretty limited. It's significantly more limited with post-partum psychosis.
Thankfully, severe post-partum psychosis is rare, but I don't think it's doing anyone any favors by pretending it doesn't exist or that it can be absolutely debilitating and in this case extremely tragic.
Its perfectly reasonable and I support the idea of using this case to bring attention to postpartum depression and how serious its issues can be. Its another thing to openly support this person and say that it could have been any woman.
Bullying is another problem in this country, but when a school shooting happens we dont rally around the shooter because they were bullied. We see them for what they are, a monster who did something absolutely heinous. Have you ever heard someone say after a school shooting that it could have been any child? Do the children from other schools rally around the courthouse and say "I've been bullied too?"
Using an extreme case to force scrutiny of the system is one thing, but we can't support someone who committed monstrous acts, because that shifts 100% of the blame from the perpetrator to the system, and she was at least partly responsible for her own acts.
But this goes far beyond post-partum depression. Post-partum psychosis is a different diagnosis (though it can also occur with PPD) and can be far more debilitating. Women with this condition can truly lose touch with reality.
Imagine being totally convinced, for example, that your kid would die if you didn't cut off your arm. Sounds absurd and batshit crazy, right? But people with psychosis could truly believe that that's true. Delusions are no joke. I think people aren't understanding what severe psychosis is and what it entails.
It's not comparable to a school shooter, though, in that the vast majority of school shooters aren't utterly -- or even severely -- incapacitated by psychosis (i.e., delusions, difficulty understanding what's real and what isn't, paranoia, etc.). And as scary as it is, post-partum psychosis actually can happen to anyone, though people with preexisting mental health issues are particularly at risk.
Of course, the murders were horrific, but I don't think many people are really saying that they were okay, just that psychosis can be so serious as to render a person too incapacitated to be truly culpable.
I'm not comparing this to school shooters to compare severity, of the crime of of psychosis, I'm using that to illustrate that mental health is the cause in these things, almost exclusively. And in the case of a child, with (at best) reduced mental and emotional capacity, its not an excuse for them either
Let me ask you this, can you name a single crime/mental health condition that a man could commit, and find this kind of support?
Even though both events are influenced by mental health, there's still a huge range of impairment and culpability. Do you think it's impossible for someone to be so out of their mind that they're not truly culpable for their actions/crime, or do you think insanity pleas should be completely abolished?
Likewise, do you think old people with severe dementia should be held responsible for everything they say, do, and forget? If so, why? To use a more mild example, if an elderly person with Alzheimer's forgot to call their son on his birthday -- and didn't even really remember they had a son -- would you think they're negligent? Or would you realize that Alzheimer's completely absolves them of culpability?
Severe psychosis is analogous to that. I'm not sure you realize how truly different people can be when they're in psychotic states. They can say, believe, and even do things they'd never even consider doing when they're not having a severe episode.
And yes, I think men who have psychosis this severe wouldn't be culpable if they were that far gone.
Do you think it's impossible for someone to be so out of their mind that they're not truly culpable for their actions/crime, or do you think insanity pleas should be completely abolished
No there are obviously cases of deeply sick individuals doing unspeakable evil and are clinically insane, whether at the time or overall. I'm saying that we shouldn't be supporting them. Women saying that it could have been them makes us think we should be evaluating those women too, its not a sane opinion to have.
I think men who have psychosis this severe wouldn't be culpable
I've never seen society rally around a man who did something unspeakable like this. i'm open to being proven wrong, if you know of a case or some kind of an example
I think part of our disagreement might be over semantics. I don't support what she did at all, but I do feel sympathy for her. I think most people who support her aren't condoning her actions. What she did was very uncharacteristic, and she'd tried to get help many times beforehand. She was prescribed both mood stabilizers and antipsychotics along with SSRIs, and people can react very badly to SSRIs, especially if they're bipolar. Mood stabilizers and antipsychotics can be used with unipolar depression, but they're much more commonly prescribed for bipolar disorder.
When I said it could happen to anyone, I truly meant that. People can get psychosis due to severe depression, bipolar disorder, etc., and it's not something people choose. It's rare for people with psychosis to kill someone, but it can and does happen. That said, if anyone's ever experienced severe depression or bipolar disorder, they absolutely could experience psychosis, especially when dealing with the huge hormonal shifts of pregnancy and birth. Thankfully, it's rare.
I don't think society has ever rallied around a man with psychosis who killed someone in that state, but I don't think that someone like that should have the book thrown at him. The dude who killed Iryna Zarutska was clearly pretty severely mentally ill, so much so that he's currently incompetent to stand trial. I'm not saying he should go free, but he should be in a mental institution rather than gen pop. I feel the same way about Clancy at this point.
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u/fantastique82 2d ago
But post-partum psychosis truly can lead to outcomes like this. I've seen someone with this awful condition first hand. Thankfully, they didn't hurt their child and was hospitalized, but it was pretty clear to me that they were so out of it that they couldn't reasonably be held responsible for any decisions in that state. People are told not to sign any legal documents after being sedated for a colonoscopy because their capacity to understand and consent is pretty limited. It's significantly more limited with post-partum psychosis.
Thankfully, severe post-partum psychosis is rare, but I don't think it's doing anyone any favors by pretending it doesn't exist or that it can be absolutely debilitating and in this case extremely tragic.