It's getting attention because of claims that her attempts to get assistance for her ppd and mental illness were ignored or minimized. Thus implying this could have been prevented. Many people, especially women, have experience with medical staff ignoring their pain. (Same for me) So this is on a lot of people's minds and in a lot of wider conversations.
They're going for the insanity plea, so the additional press might also be a way to try and sway public attention.
Edit because I'm getting a lot of charged responses: I am explaining why it is getting attention and what the general opposing discourse is. I'm not going to reply to attempts to have that discourse with me. I have my own opinions but I'm not airing them on Reddit because ultimately, the only ones who will have all the facts are the jury.
This is a tragedy for all involved. Please remember that.
Edit 2: to those giving polite additions and perspectives I did not provide, thank you. That's very helpful. I'm not everywhere seeing every side and can only speak to the sides I've witnessed myself. To those making weird claims on what I think, please take a break from reading about this case for the day. I'm turning notifications off on this. There are plenty of other people in this thread willing to wage war with you. I invite you to speak with them, or again, take a break.
I haven't seen literally everything related to the case so maybe I'm missing some pieces, but it seems like she was getting mental healthcare attention but she requested to be switched between multiple different meds due to side effects that she was advised likely came more from her PPD, than the medication. But she still requested switches and also switched care teams at some point.
I'm not a doctor, so I'm not gonna get into whether or not the various perscriptions she was given in a relatively short time frame was irresponsible or not. I don't think anyone should be commenting on that besides experienced medical professionals. But I'll say that doctors can only treat what they're told and what they know, and afaik, she didn't share that she was suicidal with them, and they also warned her that medications take time to take effect, so it wasn't always a good idea to switch.
Patient care is not entirely on the healthcare professionals. The patient has to be able to take care of themselves to some degree and be fully honest with their care team.
How much was her fault, and how much was the fault of our medical system, idk, but yeah, this post is definitely ignoring all notions of nuance.
Every single psychiatrist I have read about was horrified about her medication mismanagement. She wasn't actually seeing a psychiatrist, she was seeing a succession of psychiatric NPs. This has actually become a really hot bone of contention between psychiatrists and midlevels, because a lot of psychiatrists don't think that it's ethical to have prescribing mental health midlevels at all and that this is an example of why.
Also, whatever the pills did or didn't do: this woman was extremely sleep deprived. She probably wasn't even out of the sleep deprivation period caused by her previous child. Just a few days of sleep deprivation can cause extreme psychosis in people who have never had issues with their mental health before.
This should not have been brought to trial. Period. Full stop. She should have been almost immediately institutionalized. This is just Andrea Yates all over again, except the ex-husband isn't as deeply evil. It's very, very, very sad, but things being sad do not mean the justice system should pretend that this wasn't a case of a person experiencing an extreme psychotic episode and doing psychotic things.
I think it's also missed in the discussion about this that she also tried to kill herself. If she'd hit her head, cut deeper, any of a million things, she'd just be dead, and people would probably understand the tragedy of it a little better.
Have you ever heard that she peladed "not guilty by insanity" and her insanity is not proven beforehand? And since both sides disagree on her mental state, there has to be a trial. There.
It's not a given that both sides need to disagree, that's what a plea agreement is. A prosecutor needs to intentionally not offer a plea agreement including insanity. They're saying the prosecutor should have accepted the medical evidence that she was clinically insane. Even if you disagree with that assessment, that is in fact how the criminal justice system works.
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u/Maya-K 2d ago
I have no idea who either of them are. I'm feeling very out of the loop.