Thirty years ago, a close friend killed herself and her new baby under PPD. She was a perfectly normal person. She didn’t home school. She didn’t belong to some kooky religion.
PPD is serious business.
Nightline reported that Texas has seen PPP (not PPD< people, there is a DIFFERENCE) used as a defense twice before. Once it resulted in a 2 year probation, another time it was aquittal.
stoid
There are some pretty good reasons this might have occurred - Haldol is, apparently, pretty strong stuff. Unfortunately, anti-depressants can, after a time, stop working. When they do, all hell breaks loose - the person is in much, much worse shape than they would have been had they never taken anti-depressants, and haldol is stronger than average (no, no cite for this, except for my friend karri, who is a walking PDR, from personal experiance). Doctors simply switch the patient to new meds.
Typically, there is a particularly bad time from when the person realizes that the meds have quite working, until the new meds can kick in.
“Particularly bad” in this instance means, well, a 24 hour a day bad acid trip for a few weeks. Not pretty.
minty green is, of course, correct, when he says that this is speculation and not really going to lead anywhere. Best to leave this sort of stuff to the expert witnesses.
I agree with Primaflora (I think) that she probably wasn’t suffering from PPD, but Post Partum Psychosis, which is rarer. Depressed people don’t usually kill anyone but themselves, but having a psychotic break would make one more likely to harm their children. The fact that she was on Haldol (the “chemical straight jacket”) makes me think that her condition was more severe than depression as well, at the very least they had to think she was suicidal to prescribe that to her.
I think the husband should be brought up on some charges, as well, such as crimial negligence of his children. He knew she wasn’t well…This sad case makes me think of the “if onlys.” If only the older boys had been in school instead of being home schooled, they might be alive now(just not being home could have saved their lives), and perhaps their not being there would have made less presure for their mom, and maybe the littler ones would be ok too.
A woman in MA was arrested yesterday for murdering her 15 month old son. It’s chilling to think that this tragedy could be turned into the new “trendy” crime like school shootings after Columbine seemed to.
Good post, Mr. Furd. You make several very good points. I canNOT understand why a woman taking prescriptions for psychosis was left alone all day, day after day, to care for five babies and children under eight. What was wrong with her husband, with her doctors, with social services?
I hope your wife will be okay soon.
In Texas, we have a woman with a long history of mental illness, significant enough to require hospitalization and medication, she drowns her 5 children, and prosecutors (and many others) are talking death penalty.
In Pennsylvania we have a husband and wife who set fire to their house to collect the insurance and oops, their three children and 2 children of another woman living with them die, too. Roomate (who testified against them) is doing 3 - 15 years, dad spent 3 years waiting trail and negotiating a plea agreement that let him out after those three years, mom pled guilty to a reduced charge and was released from jail.
draw your own conclusions.
It’s utterly amazing how this tragedy has wound up as fodder for so many obsessed ideologues of every stripe, on issues ranging from feminism to criminal justice.
The bottom line is that she’s crazy until proven otherwise, even a half-witted defense lawyer (and there will be none of those in this publicity-strewn affair) could conjure up sympathy in a jury, and she will not be executed. No way.
A plea bargain cometh. Sooner or later.
Lemur, there aren’t too many Black people who commit murder and get away by claiming insanity. If Colin Ferguson couldn’t, who could?