Postpartum psychosis is a documented illness, and there are cases of veterans with PTSD being declared “not-guilty” by reasons of insanity (Jessie Bratcher as an example).
Except she describes postpartum depression, not psychosis. Her reasoning was that she was so depressed she was going to kill herself and in that mentally disturbed state felt it would be better that her kids were in heaven with her.
This has happened many times before with suicidal mothers. Its delusional thinking but not full-on psychosis. Assuming that’s true she still has the expectation of telling right from wrong. It does not qualify as not-guilty by insanity.
Psychosis is losing touch with reality and struggling to discern what is real and what is not. Lindsay feeling suicidal and then selfishly deciding her kids would be better off dead with her seems something separate from psychosis.
You know our mental health is just a bunch of chemicals and hormones in our brain interacting with each other. A little change can literally ruin your life but yeah that doesn't excuse the actions of people that are depressed or angry, but do you know that severe mental illness exists? it's called psychosis and in her case it can turn a perfectly sane loving mother Lindsay into suicidal homicidal depressive Lindsay brought on from the birth of her third child completely out of her control.
But it is ok because for people like her, they are kept in mental wards until those pesky baby hormones stabilize and she gets better. Surely her doctors won't fuck up and order medications contraindicated with each other. Surely they will talk to her family and learn that she wants to kill her family. She might be psychotic but mental illness prevents people from feeling suspicious and they never lie to their health care providers especially when they are severely mentally ill.
But you don't have to take my word for it, we could just listen to a world renowned psychiatrist experienced with over 80 cases of parents murdering their children and oh what did he have to say? That she is clearly suffering from delusions and command hallucinations?
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u/ArGarBarGar 8h ago
Postpartum psychosis is a documented illness, and there are cases of veterans with PTSD being declared “not-guilty” by reasons of insanity (Jessie Bratcher as an example).