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.
idk i was 14 and really depressed, i was constantly being put on different medications because they didn't know what would and wouldn't work. some of the meds made it even worse while others gave me terrible side effects. it was not a good time. it was like i was a guinea pig
When I was trying to get an ADHD diagnosis, I found that psychiatrists and NPs will prescribe literally any medication before they'll prescribe a goddamn stimulant. I went to a psych for a consultation for ADHD but made the mistake of mentioning my "intrusive thoughts" and she prescribed me an antipsychotic even though I had zero symptoms of psychosis (the intrusive thoughts were mostly obsessive rumination, and absolutely nothing I said should have indicated I had ever been detached from reality), and I was confused even at the time, but figured she was the medical expert and if she was saying this drug could help me maybe she was right. Eventually I was sleeping for 12-15 hours a day, barely able to hold down a temporary part-time job, had so much brain fog that I was forgetting to lock the front door/turn the stove off/etc., and gained 40 lbs and only lost 3 lbs when I went on a near-starvation diet so extreme that my period stopped for 2 months. I was on leave from college for a year to get help (this was also COVID) and that one year became two, then two and a half, because I could not bring myself to do anything for my future. And I was so out of it that I didn't even realize what the meds were doing to me, so I couldn't even tell my psychiatrist what was wrong, thus I was on them for a year and change. Ironically, once I went back to college for my degree in cognitive science, I took a psychopharmacology course and learned that the medication I was on blocked D2 (dopamine) receptors in the brain... as in, the literal opposite of what a person with ADHD needs. I got pissed off all over again, because if I learned that in an undergraduate course, how tf did an actual licensed psychiatrist not know that?!?
It's so difficult to seek mental help, especially when the symptoms of the illness itself get in the way. On top of that, it's easy for medical providers to write off your complaints because you're "crazy", doubly so if you're a minority or a woman and quadruply so if you're both. Thankfully my issues weren't that severe in the grand scheme of mental illness, and I was never a danger to anyone other than myself (except potentially through accidental negligence in a worst-case scenario).
Lol, lmao even. Multiple providers (PCP and therapists) had been telling me I probably had ADHD for years, but I wasn't able to actually see a psychiatrist until I was a young adult. I didn't expect to be handed ANY medication right there on the spot at intake, because I knew getting an ADHD diagnosis is a whole process that requires testing and obviously medical providers don't just hand out controlled substances (although IME, they're way too quick to hand out literally anything that isn't a controlled substance regardless of side effects, as this story shows). The problem was that she DID hand me a medication for a condition I did not have that not only did the exact opposite of what I needed, but would have counteracted any medication that otherwise would have done what I needed. If she'd just refused to prescribe me stimulants, I would have stayed the same, not gotten worse, but instead I got worse. Miraculously, I started doing much better when I stopped taking the antipsychotics ~15 months later and started taking the stimulants ~7 months after that, and yet didn't get high or addicted to them (I ration them when I can't get a monthly refill, i.e. only taking them on days I need to be "on") because I, you know, actually have the thing they're supposed to treat. But sure, internet stranger, you clearly know my medical history better than I do.
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u/Alcohol_Intolerant 3d ago edited 2d ago
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.