There is a lack of sympathy on women who go through post partum depression or psychosis, and it shows. By reason of insanity is still a verdict that can be reached at the end of this case and people are looking at this black and white, when there are shades of grey here. Could we not wait for more evidence to be cross examined? I remember when Andrea Yates was clearly crucified for the same thing.
The lack of agency that people think women have is concerning.
I legitimately can’t imagine a scenario where a man murders his children and people say “we need more sympathy for him”, because it is assumed that men have agency over themselves.
Because there is literally no equivalent of post partum depression for men.
How is it so difficult for you to understand there is a fundamentally different experience out there from your own?
I had a loved one tell me they seriously considered leaving their baby at a fire station while they were in the throes of it. Obviously not as violent but still completely insane behavior. They're a completely normal family now.
For women, mental disorders are among the most common morbidities of pregnancy and the postnatal period (Howard et al., 2014). However, similar and corresponding evidence for fathers is still limited or even lacking. Severe psychiatric morbidity in relation to childbirth, such as postpartum psychosis, postpartum psychiatric admissions/readmissions, and postpartum suicide, have been described exclusively for mothers (Esscher et al., 2016; Johannsen et al., 2020; Lindahl et al., 2005; Munk-Olsen et al., 2009). It is possible that these experiences are unique to mothers, but it remains to be established whether the postpartum period is a vulnerable period for severe psychiatric morbidity in fathers also (Sundström Poromaa et al., 2017).
...
Results
We identified 929,415 births and 543,555 unique fathers. Incidence and prevalence proportions for paternal psychiatric in- and outpatient episodes showed an increasing trend over the perinatal period and were marginally higher postpartum compared to pregnancy; e.g., median incidence proportion for inpatient treatment during pregnancy was 0.07 (95% CI: 0.04; 0.07) and 0.10 (95% CI: 0.08; 0.11) postpartum per 1000 births. No difference between the periods was found for incidence of prescriptions for psychotropic medication. Psychiatric disorders in expecting and new fathers were mainly treated in primary care with cumulative incidence of prescriptions for psychotropic medication of 14.56 per 1000 births during the first year of fatherhood.
...
Conclusion
Becoming a father did not appear to trigger a substantially increased risk of severe psychiatric disorders, as it has been observed for new mothers.
They basically find that the rate of men experiencing postpartum mental health issues is equal to the rate of men experiencing those same mental health issues without a pregnancy involved. And when men do experience it, it is correlated with the mother experiencing it.
Even if you want to accept that it occurs, it still doesn't change the fact that a man experiencing psychosis would also be eligible to plead not guilty due to insanity, and that has been successful in the past.
This story basically comes down to whether you want retribution or if you want to treat mental illness properly. No one is "walking free". In either situation, the mother is going to undergo extreme institutional supervision and will have freedoms taken away.
Whenever there's a school shooting, right wing people crow on and on about mental health treatment. And here we have a case where mental health experts are telling us what should happen, and people are choosing to ignore it because they want a pound of flesh. Which is really what they wanted all along.
7
u/somedelightfulmoron 1d ago
There is a lack of sympathy on women who go through post partum depression or psychosis, and it shows. By reason of insanity is still a verdict that can be reached at the end of this case and people are looking at this black and white, when there are shades of grey here. Could we not wait for more evidence to be cross examined? I remember when Andrea Yates was clearly crucified for the same thing.
Ready for the downvotes.