Hearing that, and knowing what I’d do in a similar situation, the thought occured to me to ask everyone else’s opinions on the matter.
Here’s the setup: you find out (possibly after coming to your senses in a prison hospital), that, during a bout of temporary insanity, that you had brutally murdered all of your own children. What would you do with yourself, afterwards?
Personally…I couldn’t live with it. I’d commit suicide. I’d figure oblivion was the best I could hope for, or deserve. (Failing that…either I’d be going to Hell anyway, or if the universe didn’t want to punish me for filicide, it probably wouldn’t punish me for killing myself out of guilt and grief. No change in outcome.)
Anyone else?
*Or, alternately, you’d gone just insane enough to still know what you were doing was wrong, or at least illegal, but you didn’t care, or you thought you could get away with it, or something.
I agree with the Yates decision, but I personally would commit suicide if I did that. How could you possibly hope to ever have one moment of happiness for the rest of your life? It would be too much to bear for me.
Another hypothetical… let’s say you were driving in your car with several passengers. Suddenly you have a heart attack or stroke, and you involuntarily veer into the wrong lane. Everyone else ends up dead but you. Would you commit suicide and never forgive yourself? If you were genuinely insane at the time of the killings, it would basically be the same deal morally.
Oh, yes, I realize that. I feel that postpartum psychosis is a valid diagnosis, and I don’t hold her responsible. Quite the opposite- I have defended her to people that don’t see it that way.
But regardless of whether I blamed myself or not, I just don’t see living after that. That scenario is completely out of my tragedy-scope.
I personally would like to know more about postpartem psychosis. As a man, never having born children, I would very much like to know what this experience is like. Is it a physiological thing? Or a psychological thing? When does it start?
Blalron, do you really expect different answers from most people to the two posed hypotheticals in this thread? I couldn’t live with myself after causing the death of an innocent person, no matter what the particulars.
Just google it. It’s a form of psychosis and can include delusions, hallucinations, and bizarre thinking. It is a mental illness, much like schizophrenia. It can begin shortly after birth or develop over the next several months. Andrea Yates was known to have severe postpartum depression, IIRC, after each birth, and it was argued that her husband was neglectful as he knew she was at risk and did nothing.
If the passengers were anyone but my children, I’d probably be racked with guilt but would be okay. If my children were the passengers, I could not live with that.
In the service I’ve deliberately caused death to quite a few people. No guilt there.
If I inadvertantly killed somebody today I’d feel terrible at the time, but it’d hardly be a psychological issue 3 months later. Just move forward; each day is a new day with new challenges.
If I inadvertantly or in a bout of insanity killed one of my kids it’d be damn tough to get past. I’d be haunted for years. But commit suicide over it? You gotta be kidding me.
If I received treatment afterwards, so it wouldn’t happen again, I’d get over it. It’d haunt me, but not to the point of suicide. I’ve often wondered, since I became a dad, how I’d deal with losing my child. Suicide has never crossed my mind, even in scenarios where it was my fault (never thought of a Yates-type situation, but have considered the car-crash one)
I would kill myself in the heart attack/car situation. Hell, the main reason I don’t drive is because I’m terrified of killing someone. I would not get over it.
I have two kids. If they were to die under any circumstances, I would kill myself because I couldn’t handle the grief. It’s almost worse to think what would happen if only one of them were to die, because then I would feel obligated to live.
The thing is, I don’t see suicide as all that bad, which is a whole separate debate. But it’s important to know that when reading my answer. I see suicide as a “reset” button: I believe in reincarnation, so while it would sadden me to see this life end, I know that there’s another one waiting. (And if I’m wrong about the reincarnation thing, then there’s just nothingness, which doesn’t sound so bad, either.) I think our current culture’s fear of death and suicide is a bit odd - but I’ve absorbed enough of that fear that I would not choose to live with the guilt of killing my children.
