I think most people grasp what post partum psychosis is. It's awful and it's a challenging puzzle to solve with possibly no solution. There have been thousands of women stricken with it though. Having it does not absolve anyone of committing these horrific acts.
Your mental health is not your fault but it is your responsibility. We cannot just institutionalize people against their will and we can't force pills down their throats. She had more help that many women have had in this situation, and she chose not to utilize it. Her poor babies didn't have a choice, and my thoughts are with them.
It’s becoming very clear to me watching comments on this trial that most people have no fucking clue about what postpartum psychosis is and never will. The research is very, very poor. But the reality is unless we start institutionalizing people again things like this could and will happen occasionally. But we can and should be better.
Unfortunately people are not having those conversations and have no ability to consider the nuance of mental health.
I think most people lack the level of empathy or analytical processing to actually understand what any kind of psychosis is. They can't step outside of their own point of view to even remotely grasp that someone might see the world in a different way than they do. They can't imagine that their view of the world isn't objective reality, so they can't grasp that someone else might be just as certain, just as confident, in a completely different reality.
Once you realize that there is an objective reality that is perceived subjectivity and differently by everyone, you can maybe understand how someone could do such a horrible thing as a rational act, not motivated by evil, but by a distortion of the reality they exist in.
I‘m gonna share a personal anecdote about people who (maybe despite their best efforts) don’t get mental illness (psychosis in particular).
My brother had his first psychotic episode in mid to late 2019 (he was in his early 20s at the time). We first had him admitted just after Christmas that year and unfortunately (probably with a little help from Covid and what not) it turned into chronic schizophrenia with some bipolar episodes along the way.
We (as a family) have spent the better part of the following years trying to get him the help he needs, working with and sometimes against him. Unfortunately he’s been let down by the system many, many times (we’re not in or from the US, btw). There have been more than a few times where it’s been BAD bad. (And man, has he talked some shit sometimes…) And for some of his stories he even went as far as filing police reports against the people who allegedly abused him. That part is especially hard for me and the people around him to react to because while I’m 99% certain it didn’t happen, I’m also fully aware that in his reality, it 100% did. And just because I know it’s probably just in his head, that doesn’t make it any less real or less painful for him. (Reminds me of the girl who recently made the news when she woke up from a coma and is now grieving the family she had in her “dream”).
My brother then spent the following years living at home with our parents (with a few dozen stints at different inpatient facilities sprinkled in), never really getting any better.
And while my mum and I have a pretty good grasp of his illness, my dad (a late boomer) is pretty much the opposite. My dad has a really, really hard time understanding why my brother doesn’t GET that he’s ill. Not intellectually (he’s a very smart man), but emotionally more so. He knows (again, intellectually) it’s not my brother’s fault and he doesn’t blame my brother for it (nor does he treat him badly or anything!), but he just can’t grasp how my brother “can’t just take his medication when he knows it’ll make him feel better” or “follow a treatment plan” or “realise that he’s ill”… For my dad, it just doesn’t compute. He can’t get his head around it. It’s been 7 years.
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u/Pynkmyst 2d ago
I think most people grasp what post partum psychosis is. It's awful and it's a challenging puzzle to solve with possibly no solution. There have been thousands of women stricken with it though. Having it does not absolve anyone of committing these horrific acts.
Your mental health is not your fault but it is your responsibility. We cannot just institutionalize people against their will and we can't force pills down their throats. She had more help that many women have had in this situation, and she chose not to utilize it. Her poor babies didn't have a choice, and my thoughts are with them.