Why are people more sympathetic to Lindsay Clancy than Andrea Yates? (Child death mentioned)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My friend had a post partum nervous breakdown at six months after weeks of insomnia triggered by baby sleep struggles. She tried to go on fmla but her boss forced her to quit instead with threatening action letters because she said she had ‘already taken too much maternity leave.’ This is the society we live in that tells moms they are too big a burden until some moms say ok i get it, I’m worthless, I will just kill my kids and myself. Which of you who are so disgusted or outraged at her has founght for universal maternity leave? Which of you has lobbied for safe affordable subsidized daycare? Or adequate (first world) maternal medical care? You are the disgusting ones, desperate to see a public lynching while this very minute there is an exhausted mom in the verge of crisis with no one to turn to. You are handmaid’s tale characters. Your righteousness is blasphemy.

This is dumb. You sleep train. Put the baby to bed at 7 and go back in at 6. That’s all it takes.

That’s why it’s hard for a manager to have empathy for a woman who is voluntarily getting up for a six month old baby.

Yeah I wonder if this plays a role in PPD too. I had a subordinate who was constantly complaining of complete exhaustion but was getting up 3, 4, 5, times a night with a 9+ month old baby (after taking 6 months of maternity leave) because she and her husband didn't let the baby cry, ever, for even a second, for any reason. The baby had never fallen asleep on his own in his entire life. I mentioned to her that we had sleep-trained our kids and they slept 12 hours a night at her baby's age (younger actually) and she looked at me like I was some sort of child abuser. The baby is now over 2 and I still don't think he sleeps well at all and she's still sort of a zombie.

I had 2 babies who were STTN 7-7 by about 4 months old (minus the occasional regression) with very little effort to sleep train. And then my third baby humbled me and had only STTN a handful of times by 9 months. Her room was right next to the older kids’ rooms so I couldn’t leave her to cry loudly for extended periods without waking them (which would then extend the time of getting everyone back to bed). And every time we found a long weekend or some break where we thought we could try some form of sleep training, the baby would get sick and we didn’t have the heart to let a sick baby cry. Our nanny even tried to help us get her on a better sleep schedule, but it took a full year to get some semblance of normal sleep.

Only in America would blame a mom of an infant for being tired because she should just be shutting her young child in a room for 11 hours and ignore their crying, so that she can prioritize work instead. We are a stand out this way in the industrialized world, caring more about workplace productivity than caregiving for babies.

Seriously? Tell me what they do in Italy. Sweden? Syria? Kenya? Peru? You don’t really mean to argue that there is a strict procedure that all new parents in those countries use to help young mothers get their babies to sleep that we, because we are Americans, refuse to use here. Babies cry and parents suffer in all countries. Babies die by their mothers’ hands in all countries. Stop blaming horrible things that are a dark part of the human condition on policy. It’s not always policy. This woman had all the leave, medical support, and family support that one could hope for. You’re seriously telling me that she would’ve been better off in any other country? She was sick. Sicker they she probably even knew. She was trying. Her family was trying. Mistakes were made. But it is not because of America’s policies. Sh!1t happens. In this case. it happened to an affluent white woman so you can’t blame America.

That comment was in response to the posters who blamed the PP's coworker for her mental breakdown by saying she should have just sleep trained her baby. Other countries have this thing called a year of parental leave which allows mothers to not have to work fulltime while dealing with an infant who doesn't STTN. So yes, I guess they have a "strict procedure" for that.

Yes, I am aware that LC was still on leave, and that in her particular case, balancing work and her infant was not the trigger for her PPD. Again, this was in response to PP's comments about "just sleep training".

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't understand how she was not diagnosed with postpartum depression or anxiety, yet she had suicidal ideation and an infant at home. What ruled it out as PPD/PPA and made it GAD instead? Also, she had a terrible reaction to zoloft. SSRIs can trigger mania and even psychosis in people with bipolar disorder. At any rate, her mental health sounds complicated and ambiguous. I made the mistake of watching the arraignment.

Providers make mistakes. Sometimes a lot of them.

Where did you see she had bipolar disorder?

DP here. The only official medical diagnosis that has so far been released is GAD. (Generalized Anxiety Disorder.) She herself referred to it as anxiety in Social media posts.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m very concerned to hear that McClean Hospital discharged her after only five days inpatient. That is far from ideal standard of care of post partum depression requiring inpatient treatment. When I used to be a prosecutor and I would commit patients involuntarily, I was always shocked in following the cases to see how quickly they would street people who were seriously mentally ill, but that was the state hospital. I once put a guy there whose family cut him down from a tree and revived him, he was dead but they restarted his heart with CPR, a miracle really. He was cognitively intact but obviously suicidally depressed and the state hospital discharged him in a week with SSRIs. SSRIs take weeks to reach full efficacy. But that’s our mental health system in this country.

I just don’t think this woman murdered her children with mens rea formed in a sane mind.

Ah, this picture explains everything. Y’all see a white woman hugging her kid and relate to her. That’s the reason for all the mental gymnastics to defend her and “she couldn’t have plotted to murder those kids!” UMC white women everywhere are scared to death that one of them could just be a cold blooded killer and not a victim of mental illness and a failed healthcare system. Perpetual victims..

I just don't understand how you can read this story, including that she was by all accounts a great mom prior to being hospitalized with severe mental health issues after birth of her child, and decide that the most rational explanation is that she was in fact a cold-blooded killer pretending to be a normal, loving mom for years while waiting for her moment

I think there is a lot of space between “none of this was her fault whatsoever” and “she was a cold blooded killer who plotted and planned this.” A lot of space. And that is where the truth is.

I disagree. Her actions are too extreme, which to me means she’s insane either by a temporary postpartum circumstance or has been for a longer time. Saying there’s a lot of space between those two statements indicates levels of reasonable thinking may have been present.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't understand how she was not diagnosed with postpartum depression or anxiety, yet she had suicidal ideation and an infant at home. What ruled it out as PPD/PPA and made it GAD instead? Also, she had a terrible reaction to zoloft. SSRIs can trigger mania and even psychosis in people with bipolar disorder. At any rate, her mental health sounds complicated and ambiguous. I made the mistake of watching the arraignment.

Providers make mistakes. Sometimes a lot of them.

Where did you see she had bipolar disorder?

DP here. The only official medical diagnosis that has so far been released is GAD. (Generalized Anxiety Disorder.) She herself referred to it as anxiety in Social media posts.

That's right. But as everyone here who has been through serious mental health problems--our own or those of family members--knows, it is not uncommon for a psychiatric illness to have what is effectively a prodromal phase, where some symptoms are present and it looks like one thing, and then a full-blown phase, where many more symptoms are present and it's clear what is or is not wrong. Some people are psychiatric patients for decades with diagnoses that are not perfectly clear and medication histories that match that.

People want to believe that diagnosing mental illness is a straight one in column A, any three out of these seven in column B thing. The DSM is written that way. But if you talk to providers who are conscientious, they will all tell you that the DSM is not the Gospel. It is psychiatrists' best collective effort at characterizing various states of psychiatric illness and health. Actual patients exist outside the boundaries of those efforts pretty frequently.

So: she could have had PPD or PPA that she hid (because it's stigmatized! which promotes hiding) and become psychotic in the course of that.

But PP is also, with reason, raising the question of whether she might be a person who is bipolar, whose initial symptoms were activated rather than depressed (looking more like generalized anxiety, less like mania), and who had deterioration triggered by medications that are often (NOT ALWAYS) a poor fit for people with bipolar disorder.

[Anonymous]

I'm confused. So she was sick enough and able to articulate/present symptoms in order to get her 12-13 drugs, and admitted to McLean? That much we know is true.

...but she *wasn't* articulating/presenting symptoms in order to get the PPA/PPD diagnosis? So the default conclusion is, welp, doctors got it wrong, she was psychotic, and she should walk after murdering her children?

I think she went to Women & Infants in Providence (and why there, btw - nowhere close to Duxbury?), they told her it was GAD only, and when she was told it wasn't PPA/PPD, she spiraled and that's when she self-presented at McLean. McLean (different health system, BTW) came to a a similar conclusion and released her when they deemed her to not be a danger to herself/anyone else.

I totally agree that nobody in their right mind would do what she did. However - if I'm on that jury (and I live in MA, just not in Plymouth County), I'm having a reallll hard time not trusting the experts that treated her and going with their assessment as legitimate. I can think that she had MH issues that don't absolve her of what she did or needing to serve justice for what she did.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm confused. So she was sick enough and able to articulate/present symptoms in order to get her 12-13 drugs, and admitted to McLean? That much we know is true.

...but she *wasn't* articulating/presenting symptoms in order to get the PPA/PPD diagnosis? So the default conclusion is, welp, doctors got it wrong, she was psychotic, and she should walk after murdering her children?

I think she went to Women & Infants in Providence (and why there, btw - nowhere close to Duxbury?), they told her it was GAD only, and when she was told it wasn't PPA/PPD, she spiraled and that's when she self-presented at McLean. McLean (different health system, BTW) came to a a similar conclusion and released her when they deemed her to not be a danger to herself/anyone else.

I totally agree that nobody in their right mind would do what she did. However - if I'm on that jury (and I live in MA, just not in Plymouth County), I'm having a reallll hard time not trusting the experts that treated her and going with their assessment as legitimate. I can think that she had MH issues that don't absolve her of what she did or needing to serve justice for what she did.

A lot may hinge on your reaction to those experts when they testify. My guess is that a provider who diagnosed her with GAD only, with these results, is going to be quite defensive of that, including in ways that may be turnoffs to a jury.

After all, in the alternate theory, that person has to explain why they did not notice that this woman was a narcissist or a psychopath or whatever else is being speculated here. If that happened, it would be a pretty significant medical mistake itself.

Psychiatric patients in crisis are often routed away from closer hospitals and towards those with beds. I don't find the fact that she want to something other that the closest/closer hospital suspicious in any way.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My friend had a post partum nervous breakdown at six months after weeks of insomnia triggered by baby sleep struggles. She tried to go on fmla but her boss forced her to quit instead with threatening action letters because she said she had ‘already taken too much maternity leave.’ This is the society we live in that tells moms they are too big a burden until some moms say ok i get it, I’m worthless, I will just kill my kids and myself. Which of you who are so disgusted or outraged at her has founght for universal maternity leave? Which of you has lobbied for safe affordable subsidized daycare? Or adequate (first world) maternal medical care? You are the disgusting ones, desperate to see a public lynching while this very minute there is an exhausted mom in the verge of crisis with no one to turn to. You are handmaid’s tale characters. Your righteousness is blasphemy.

This is dumb. You sleep train. Put the baby to bed at 7 and go back in at 6. That’s all it takes.

That’s why it’s hard for a manager to have empathy for a woman who is voluntarily getting up for a six month old baby.

Yeah I wonder if this plays a role in PPD too. I had a subordinate who was constantly complaining of complete exhaustion but was getting up 3, 4, 5, times a night with a 9+ month old baby (after taking 6 months of maternity leave) because she and her husband didn't let the baby cry, ever, for even a second, for any reason. The baby had never fallen asleep on his own in his entire life. I mentioned to her that we had sleep-trained our kids and they slept 12 hours a night at her baby's age (younger actually) and she looked at me like I was some sort of child abuser. The baby is now over 2 and I still don't think he sleeps well at all and she's still sort of a zombie.

I had 2 babies who were STTN 7-7 by about 4 months old (minus the occasional regression) with very little effort to sleep train. And then my third baby humbled me and had only STTN a handful of times by 9 months. Her room was right next to the older kids’ rooms so I couldn’t leave her to cry loudly for extended periods without waking them (which would then extend the time of getting everyone back to bed). And every time we found a long weekend or some break where we thought we could try some form of sleep training, the baby would get sick and we didn’t have the heart to let a sick baby cry. Our nanny even tried to help us get her on a better sleep schedule, but it took a full year to get some semblance of normal sleep.

Only in America would blame a mom of an infant for being tired because she should just be shutting her young child in a room for 11 hours and ignore their crying, so that she can prioritize work instead. We are a stand out this way in the industrialized world, caring more about workplace productivity than caregiving for babies.

Seriously? Tell me what they do in Italy. Sweden? Syria? Kenya? Peru? You don’t really mean to argue that there is a strict procedure that all new parents in those countries use to help young mothers get their babies to sleep that we, because we are Americans, refuse to use here. Babies cry and parents suffer in all countries. Babies die by their mothers’ hands in all countries. Stop blaming horrible things that are a dark part of the human condition on policy. It’s not always policy. This woman had all the leave, medical support, and family support that one could hope for. You’re seriously telling me that she would’ve been better off in any other country? She was sick. Sicker they she probably even knew. She was trying. Her family was trying. Mistakes were made. But it is not because of America’s policies. Sh!1t happens. In this case. it happened to an affluent white woman so you can’t blame America.

That comment was in response to the posters who blamed the PP's coworker for her mental breakdown by saying she should have just sleep trained her baby. Other countries have this thing called a year of parental leave which allows mothers to not have to work fulltime while dealing with an infant who doesn't STTN. So yes, I guess they have a "strict procedure" for that.

Yes, I am aware that LC was still on leave, and that in her particular case, balancing work and her infant was not the trigger for her PPD. Again, this was in response to PP's comments about "just sleep training".

Lindsay was on leave. She was not working full time. The leave policies in other countries don’t necessarily prevent a crime of this magnitude

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm confused. So she was sick enough and able to articulate/present symptoms in order to get her 12-13 drugs, and admitted to McLean? That much we know is true.

...but she *wasn't* articulating/presenting symptoms in order to get the PPA/PPD diagnosis? So the default conclusion is, welp, doctors got it wrong, she was psychotic, and she should walk after murdering her children?

I think she went to Women & Infants in Providence (and why there, btw - nowhere close to Duxbury?), they told her it was GAD only, and when she was told it wasn't PPA/PPD, she spiraled and that's when she self-presented at McLean. McLean (different health system, BTW) came to a a similar conclusion and released her when they deemed her to not be a danger to herself/anyone else.

I totally agree that nobody in their right mind would do what she did. However - if I'm on that jury (and I live in MA, just not in Plymouth County), I'm having a reallll hard time not trusting the experts that treated her and going with their assessment as legitimate. I can think that she had MH issues that don't absolve her of what she did or needing to serve justice for what she did.

A lot may hinge on your reaction to those experts when they testify. My guess is that a provider who diagnosed her with GAD only, with these results, is going to be quite defensive of that, including in ways that may be turnoffs to a jury.

After all, in the alternate theory, that person has to explain why they did not notice that this woman was a narcissist or a psychopath or whatever else is being speculated here. If that happened, it would be a pretty significant medical mistake itself.

Psychiatric patients in crisis are often routed away from closer hospitals and towards those with beds. I don't find the fact that she want to something other that the closest/closer hospital suspicious in any way.

Re: Providence. She probably wanted to be as far away from her work for various reasons.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Personally, I think she was a regular mom who had debilitating PPD after her 3rd child that turned into postpartum psychosis. It makes zero sense to me that she would commit this crime, in this way, if she was thinking rationally.

I think all the people insisting that she did this because she's an evil person are afraid to consider the possibility that an otherwise normal person can do something like this when suffering from a severe mental illness.

Disagree. Sociopaths and narcissists exist and people who insist she is mentally ill are afraid to consider the possibility they can be manipulated and fooled by such people.

Yeah, she really put one over on me by completely destroying her own life

I’m not talking about her specifically manipulating you, but people like you are easy targets for narcissists in general because you deny it even when it’s staring you in the face. I’m sure she’d be overjoyed there’s fools out there who consider her a victim whose life has been destroyed. She’s happy her kids are gone and she’s already looking towards the future. Her first written words when she woke up were “do I need a lawyer?”

Looking toward a future paralyzed and in prison?

Makes no sense.

She won’t be in prison if she gets off on insanity or some other “overmedicated” defense. Other child killers have gotten off, why can’t she with the best lawyer $ can buy? She probably won’t stay paralyzed after PT either. I think we’ll see an increase in child murders honestly.

So people are going to now going to follow her example and kill their kids?

Okay….

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm confused. So she was sick enough and able to articulate/present symptoms in order to get her 12-13 drugs, and admitted to McLean? That much we know is true.

...but she *wasn't* articulating/presenting symptoms in order to get the PPA/PPD diagnosis? So the default conclusion is, welp, doctors got it wrong, she was psychotic, and she should walk after murdering her children?

I think she went to Women & Infants in Providence (and why there, btw - nowhere close to Duxbury?), they told her it was GAD only, and when she was told it wasn't PPA/PPD, she spiraled and that's when she self-presented at McLean. McLean (different health system, BTW) came to a a similar conclusion and released her when they deemed her to not be a danger to herself/anyone else.

I totally agree that nobody in their right mind would do what she did. However - if I'm on that jury (and I live in MA, just not in Plymouth County), I'm having a reallll hard time not trusting the experts that treated her and going with their assessment as legitimate. I can think that she had MH issues that don't absolve her of what she did or needing to serve justice for what she did.

A lot may hinge on your reaction to those experts when they testify. My guess is that a provider who diagnosed her with GAD only, with these results, is going to be quite defensive of that, including in ways that may be turnoffs to a jury.

After all, in the alternate theory, that person has to explain why they did not notice that this woman was a narcissist or a psychopath or whatever else is being speculated here. If that happened, it would be a pretty significant medical mistake itself.

Psychiatric patients in crisis are often routed away from closer hospitals and towards those with beds. I don't find the fact that she want to something other that the closest/closer hospital suspicious in any way.

Re: Providence. She probably wanted to be as far away from her work for various reasons.

And being a health care provider may also have had an impact on how the people who treated with her assessed her (ie did they probe deeper when she gave them clinical words to describe symptoms, or take her use of those words as proof that she was a reliable informant and leave it at that?). It may even have impacted what they were willing to diagnose. GAD is a pretty low-lift psychiatric diagnosis--not likely to cause her problems being medically cleared for a scheduled return to work, for instance.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm confused. So she was sick enough and able to articulate/present symptoms in order to get her 12-13 drugs, and admitted to McLean? That much we know is true.

...but she *wasn't* articulating/presenting symptoms in order to get the PPA/PPD diagnosis? So the default conclusion is, welp, doctors got it wrong, she was psychotic, and she should walk after murdering her children?

I think she went to Women & Infants in Providence (and why there, btw - nowhere close to Duxbury?), they told her it was GAD only, and when she was told it wasn't PPA/PPD, she spiraled and that's when she self-presented at McLean. McLean (different health system, BTW) came to a a similar conclusion and released her when they deemed her to not be a danger to herself/anyone else.

I totally agree that nobody in their right mind would do what she did. However - if I'm on that jury (and I live in MA, just not in Plymouth County), I'm having a reallll hard time not trusting the experts that treated her and going with their assessment as legitimate. I can think that she had MH issues that don't absolve her of what she did or needing to serve justice for what she did.

Most likely because it offers a special program where you can take your baby to the hospital with you for treatment. It’s a multi week psychological program where the moms aren’t separated from their babies, which is what keeps many moms from getting the help they need.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm confused. So she was sick enough and able to articulate/present symptoms in order to get her 12-13 drugs, and admitted to McLean? That much we know is true.

...but she *wasn't* articulating/presenting symptoms in order to get the PPA/PPD diagnosis? So the default conclusion is, welp, doctors got it wrong, she was psychotic, and she should walk after murdering her children?

I think she went to Women & Infants in Providence (and why there, btw - nowhere close to Duxbury?), they told her it was GAD only, and when she was told it wasn't PPA/PPD, she spiraled and that's when she self-presented at McLean. McLean (different health system, BTW) came to a a similar conclusion and released her when they deemed her to not be a danger to herself/anyone else.

I totally agree that nobody in their right mind would do what she did. However - if I'm on that jury (and I live in MA, just not in Plymouth County), I'm having a reallll hard time not trusting the experts that treated her and going with their assessment as legitimate. I can think that she had MH issues that don't absolve her of what she did or needing to serve justice for what she did.

A lot may hinge on your reaction to those experts when they testify. My guess is that a provider who diagnosed her with GAD only, with these results, is going to be quite defensive of that, including in ways that may be turnoffs to a jury.

After all, in the alternate theory, that person has to explain why they did not notice that this woman was a narcissist or a psychopath or whatever else is being speculated here. If that happened, it would be a pretty significant medical mistake itself.

Psychiatric patients in crisis are often routed away from closer hospitals and towards those with beds. I don't find the fact that she want to something other that the closest/closer hospital suspicious in any way.

Yes beds are in incredibly short supply it is not uncommon to end up far from home and anyway, McLean is considered a very top hospital for psychiatric care so she may have sought it out because she didn’t feel she was getting he help she needed. Everyone should remember that our diagnostic criteria has limitations. For example, there is no specific diagnostic criteria for postpartum anxiety. That is likely why she received a GAD diagnosis at one point. It’s a huge flaw and has been flagged by many but it takes many years to get something in the DSM and postpartum anxiety has typically gone under treated for a lot of reasons. There is a great book on it actually the name is escaping me though.

I really think a lot of folks with no mental health training are making a lot of assumptions based on brief mentions of diagnoses from the prosecution that do not give the full picture. Any clinician knows that sometimes our criteria and available diagnoses do not perfectly fit the person presenting. And also that mistakes in diagnosing are made all of the time especially in a postpartum situation with a lot of rule outs. She was clearly not in her right mind and it blows my mind that people are trying to say otherwise.

People here also seem to have a perception of psychosis that is very inaccurate. Many have probably only interacted with severe mental illness with someone on the street with a particular type of psychosis happening. Sometimes delusions are quite quiet and impossible for the person experiencing them to determine what is happening. They are completely unaware. If she had fallen deeper it may explain why she had been raising flags earlier but stopped. Frankly based on my experience it all makes sense. The mental illness got worse and she was now in a state where she couldn’t decipher between which often looks like hiding it - she likely later would have said if this didn’t happen that she doesn’t really remember this time (now she might say that too but folks will be suspicious)

[Anonymous]

Its weird that she was admitted at the beginning of January but had been acting like she was so much better to everyone. Why didn't she tell anyone that she was feeling bad again and needed to be admitted again. She had already been admitted once so she knew it was possible. She had loving and involved parents and husband, why didn't she just tell her parents she needed them to stay, or take the kids, or anything? She had already admitted previously to having thoughts of harming the kids. So why didn't she admit those thoughts were back? She chose not to do this and the most likely reason is that she didn't want to be stopped this time.

Suicidal people will sometimes reach a point where they pretend not be suicidal so they can make their attempt without intervention. It's also possible that, if she were psychotic (because we won't know until the trial what the medical evaluation really is), her delusions implored her to hide the symptoms and plan so she could carry it out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My friend had a post partum nervous breakdown at six months after weeks of insomnia triggered by baby sleep struggles. She tried to go on fmla but her boss forced her to quit instead with threatening action letters because she said she had ‘already taken too much maternity leave.’ This is the society we live in that tells moms they are too big a burden until some moms say ok i get it, I’m worthless, I will just kill my kids and myself. Which of you who are so disgusted or outraged at her has founght for universal maternity leave? Which of you has lobbied for safe affordable subsidized daycare? Or adequate (first world) maternal medical care? You are the disgusting ones, desperate to see a public lynching while this very minute there is an exhausted mom in the verge of crisis with no one to turn to. You are handmaid’s tale characters. Your righteousness is blasphemy.

This is dumb. You sleep train. Put the baby to bed at 7 and go back in at 6. That’s all it takes.

That’s why it’s hard for a manager to have empathy for a woman who is voluntarily getting up for a six month old baby.

Yeah I wonder if this plays a role in PPD too. I had a subordinate who was constantly complaining of complete exhaustion but was getting up 3, 4, 5, times a night with a 9+ month old baby (after taking 6 months of maternity leave) because she and her husband didn't let the baby cry, ever, for even a second, for any reason. The baby had never fallen asleep on his own in his entire life. I mentioned to her that we had sleep-trained our kids and they slept 12 hours a night at her baby's age (younger actually) and she looked at me like I was some sort of child abuser. The baby is now over 2 and I still don't think he sleeps well at all and she's still sort of a zombie.

I had 2 babies who were STTN 7-7 by about 4 months old (minus the occasional regression) with very little effort to sleep train. And then my third baby humbled me and had only STTN a handful of times by 9 months. Her room was right next to the older kids’ rooms so I couldn’t leave her to cry loudly for extended periods without waking them (which would then extend the time of getting everyone back to bed). And every time we found a long weekend or some break where we thought we could try some form of sleep training, the baby would get sick and we didn’t have the heart to let a sick baby cry. Our nanny even tried to help us get her on a better sleep schedule, but it took a full year to get some semblance of normal sleep.

Only in America would blame a mom of an infant for being tired because she should just be shutting her young child in a room for 11 hours and ignore their crying, so that she can prioritize work instead. We are a stand out this way in the industrialized world, caring more about workplace productivity than caregiving for babies.

Seriously? Tell me what they do in Italy. Sweden? Syria? Kenya? Peru? You don’t really mean to argue that there is a strict procedure that all new parents in those countries use to help young mothers get their babies to sleep that we, because we are Americans, refuse to use here. Babies cry and parents suffer in all countries. Babies die by their mothers’ hands in all countries. Stop blaming horrible things that are a dark part of the human condition on policy. It’s not always policy. This woman had all the leave, medical support, and family support that one could hope for. You’re seriously telling me that she would’ve been better off in any other country? She was sick. Sicker they she probably even knew. She was trying. Her family was trying. Mistakes were made. But it is not because of America’s policies. Sh!1t happens. In this case. it happened to an affluent white woman so you can’t blame America.

They likely sleep with their babies. I did with my third and it was great for my mental health. I followed the LLL advice for breastfeeding moms and decided it was safe enough.

Not that simplistic explanations work here. Of course there’s more to it. Like another poster said, there’s a huge space between insanity and cold blooded killer and that’s probably where the truth is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm confused. So she was sick enough and able to articulate/present symptoms in order to get her 12-13 drugs, and admitted to McLean? That much we know is true.

...but she *wasn't* articulating/presenting symptoms in order to get the PPA/PPD diagnosis? So the default conclusion is, welp, doctors got it wrong, she was psychotic, and she should walk after murdering her children?

I think she went to Women & Infants in Providence (and why there, btw - nowhere close to Duxbury?), they told her it was GAD only, and when she was told it wasn't PPA/PPD, she spiraled and that's when she self-presented at McLean. McLean (different health system, BTW) came to a a similar conclusion and released her when they deemed her to not be a danger to herself/anyone else.

I totally agree that nobody in their right mind would do what she did. However - if I'm on that jury (and I live in MA, just not in Plymouth County), I'm having a reallll hard time not trusting the experts that treated her and going with their assessment as legitimate. I can think that she had MH issues that don't absolve her of what she did or needing to serve justice for what she did.

A lot may hinge on your reaction to those experts when they testify. My guess is that a provider who diagnosed her with GAD only, with these results, is going to be quite defensive of that, including in ways that may be turnoffs to a jury.

After all, in the alternate theory, that person has to explain why they did not notice that this woman was a narcissist or a psychopath or whatever else is being speculated here. If that happened, it would be a pretty significant medical mistake itself.

Psychiatric patients in crisis are often routed away from closer hospitals and towards those with beds. I don't find the fact that she want to something other that the closest/closer hospital suspicious in any way.

Yes beds are in incredibly short supply it is not uncommon to end up far from home and anyway, McLean is considered a very top hospital for psychiatric care so she may have sought it out because she didn’t feel she was getting he help she needed. Everyone should remember that our diagnostic criteria has limitations. For example, there is no specific diagnostic criteria for postpartum anxiety. That is likely why she received a GAD diagnosis at one point. It’s a huge flaw and has been flagged by many but it takes many years to get something in the DSM and postpartum anxiety has typically gone under treated for a lot of reasons. There is a great book on it actually the name is escaping me though.

I really think a lot of folks with no mental health training are making a lot of assumptions based on brief mentions of diagnoses from the prosecution that do not give the full picture. Any clinician knows that sometimes our criteria and available diagnoses do not perfectly fit the person presenting. And also that mistakes in diagnosing are made all of the time especially in a postpartum situation with a lot of rule outs. She was clearly not in her right mind and it blows my mind that people are trying to say otherwise.

People here also seem to have a perception of psychosis that is very inaccurate. Many have probably only interacted with severe mental illness with someone on the street with a particular type of psychosis happening. Sometimes delusions are quite quiet and impossible for the person experiencing them to determine what is happening. They are completely unaware. If she had fallen deeper it may explain why she had been raising flags earlier but stopped. Frankly based on my experience it all makes sense. The mental illness got worse and she was now in a state where she couldn’t decipher between which often looks like hiding it - she likely later would have said if this didn’t happen that she doesn’t really remember this time (now she might say that too but folks will be suspicious)

I agree about the misperception of psychosis. My mom was psychotic for weeks before intervention. I knew something was really wrong with her but didn't have the language to tell anyone. To this day I don't understand why it took my dad and other relatives so long to see the severity-I think it was just too hard for them to process how far gone she was. They didn't want to see it. During that time only one person, one of my mom's friends, commented that something seemed wrong. Everything came to a head when my mom drove to my high school to pick me up during the day and I refused to go with her because I was sure she was going to kill me (I didn't say that to anyone because it would have sounded crazy, I was just a difficult teen about it). After that my dad took her for an evaluation and she was involuntarily committed. And she was receiving psych care during and for years before this episode including weekly sessions with a psychiatrist (who was a total hack and should have lost her license).