Stoid,
I feel compelled to point this out: The Andrea Yates case was not about you.
I venture that she was insane, but not crazy. What she did was perfectly rational, in her way of thinking. Possible sequence: She had four boys that were irritating her to no end. She expected a girl would be different; but the girl was as much bother as the boys. And she’s angry at her husband for getting her into this mess.
She decides that killing the children will solve both problems at once. All that noise will stop, and she’ll get even with her husband. The police will ask some questions, but let’s think about that later. For now, lets stop the noise.
That’s definately a fair reading of what stoid said. That’s also the way I read it.
Can anyone corroborate this? I’ve heard all the reports of him not allowing her out, forcing her to do such and such, but this is the first I’ve heard of him trying to do anything to alleviate the situation.
Isn’t it possible for psychiatrists to have someone they deem dangerous to others/themselves committed to a mental institution? Or is that only possible if the family agrees? Could the psychiatrist have called child proctective services and tried to get the children out of a dangerous situation? Or would patient confidentiality laws not allow that?
As a devout Christian she knew that what she was doing was a sin that SHE would be punished for, both here and in the afterlife. She made the choice to commit the sin because she believed that her children would be better off. (To oversimplify: If her children were starving and she had no money to feed them - she would steal food to feed them even knowing that she could be punished because it would be more wrong for her to let them suffer) She didn’t care what happened to herself, only that her children were in a better place.
How much of what she experienced did she keep quiet about? We know she wasn’t the stereotypical raving lunatic. We know that she was able to maintain a semblance of a normal life. She was trying to keep herself together and to provide her children with as a good a life as she could. How would running around screaming about the devil controlling her help her provide that (in her mind)?
From the DSM-IV(Postpartum Onset Specifier - page 386):
“Postpartum mood episodes with psychotic features appear to occur in from 1 in 500 to 1 in 1000 deliveries……The risk of postpartum episodes with psychotic features is particularly increased for women with prior postpartum mood episodes.……Once a woman has had a postpartum episode with psychotic features, the risk of recurrence with each subsequent delivery is between 30% and 50%.
Andrea Yates has stated that she first starting hearing voices [had a psychotic episode] after her first child was born. But how long was it before she realized there was something really wrong and sought treatment? How long was it before she had any indication that she was physically ill in her mind? How long did they try to treat the problem with prayer(if at all)?
Was she receiving psychotherapy along with psychopharmacolgic treatment? Was anyone doing anything to convince her that it wasn’t her fault that she was experiencing these psychotic episodes? Or did she just see the medication as a method of containing an evil she thought she possessed?
How long had she been off the medication before she killed the children? Was she experiencing any movement side effects of the drug? Could this have contributed to her belief that Satan was trying to control her?
My thoughts:
I don’t doubt/deny (neither does she) that she knowingly killed all five of her children. I don’t think that she should be set free. I think that the most humane choice in her case is to kill her too or not allow her to recover from her psychosis. I think that if she were to receive psychotherapy and fully comprehend what was going on in her mind, the knowledge that if she had pursued/been allowed to pursue the appropriate treatment, that she might have been able to raise her children well would be torture.