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

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The more I read, the less I understand how her husband can forgive her so completely. I cannot fathom it. I almost couldn’t look at the photo of her; she’s a monster.

He wrote that just days after his children were killed. His brain was probably on some sort of denial/self preservation mode. Can you imagine finding out the person you love and have built a life with is a monster? All their happy memories together are now clouded by this awful act and it’s probably a difficult thing to reconcile. So of course his immediate reaction is to tell himself that wasn’t her. That wasn’t his wife that he has known for a decade.

But with time it will settle in. He is probably already in the process of filing for divorce and will testify against her at trial.

[Anonymous]

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.

Some babies are bad sleepers, even after sleep training. Some parents don't feel comfortable with sleep training because there is a whole school of thought that sleep training is cruel and gives your child lifelong attachment problems (I don't agree with that, but many many people push that view and tell moms it's cruel to sleep train, including on this board). In other developed countries parents can take leave for the whole first year and so they have time to work through this stuff. But here, if you aren't performing at full capacity at work after 12 weeks you are a failure.

At many many jobs in the US, it's actually less than 12 weeks. Some jobs don't give any paid parental leave at all so some moms literally have to be back at work days after giving birth. Some jobs (including the job I had when I became a parent) only give 6 weeks leave. For me, only half of that 6 weeks was paid so if I didn't have enough $$ to get by I would've had to go back to work at 3 weeks post partum. Luckily, I had enough $ saved plus a spouse who was working that I could take more time off but many of my co-workers indeed had to return to work at 3 weeks post partum. It's insanity. It's a really terrible system we have here with very little support for parents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The other thing is that NONE of us have access to her medical records. We have no idea what was going on. She was on an anti-psychotic. This was not garden variety post-partum depression.

In any cases, being on an antipsychotic means nothing - in terms of psychosis. Some anti-psychotics only act like antipsychotics at specific doses. At lower doses, they act on other receptors and are used frequently off label for these effects. She was on Seroquel, and Seroquel is very commonly used for sedation (sleep), anxiety / agitation, depression in addition to psychosis. It only has antipsychotic properties at high doses. This link has a graphic that shows you what receptors it acts on at various doses.

https://bipolarnews.org/?p=251

Yeah I have a relative who has dementia and takes Seroquel to help her sleep because the sundowning is so bad. It is not just for people who are psychotic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The other thing is that NONE of us have access to her medical records. We have no idea what was going on. She was on an anti-psychotic. This was not garden variety post-partum depression.

I agree with the PP about Seroquel, but I think it's also worth agreeing with this PP that "garden variety postpartum depression" is usually treatable with ONE antidepressant and weekly therapy. Maybe Zoloft doesn't work well and you try something else. Maybe you do a group instead of an individual therapy appointment. But either way, "garden variety" PPD doesn't require 12 different medications over 7 months, inpatient hospitalization, intensive outpatient therapy. That amount of treatment indicates A CRISIS in this family. There is an attitude on this thread that someone somewhere should have done something differently. Realistically, it doesn't always work that way. This was a person who had a ton of resources, knowledge, and support. She was engaged with a lot of treatment. Maybe she was overmedicated, it definitely happens, but sometimes it also happens that the intensity of someone's mental health problems is just so severe that all the treatment in the world can't prevent tragedy from happening.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Could be she didn't think she'd really get injured from the jump

Even if she hadn't been really injured from the jump, what kind of life could she have imagined having after killing 3 kids? She will either be in jail or a mental institution for the rest of her life. There are hardly any sane people who would choose that for themselves.

[Anonymous]

Lindsay had been on leave since May and had 2 children prior to this newest one. She wasn’t lacking in leave or knowledge of how to get babies to sleep.

[Anonymous]

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.

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.

A mix of shame, self-loathing, fear, and denial?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Could be she didn't think she'd really get injured from the jump

Even if she hadn't been really injured from the jump, what kind of life could she have imagined having after killing 3 kids? She will either be in jail or a mental institution for the rest of her life. There are hardly any sane people who would choose that for themselves.

Well she did plead not guilty.

[Anonymous]

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.

[Anonymous]

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.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Lindsay had been on leave since May and had 2 children prior to this newest one. She wasn’t lacking in leave or knowledge of how to get babies to sleep.

She checked herself into a psych hospital three months ago and has been on 12 different psych meds since. Her husband called her psych doctors the week before begging to help her as she was “like a zombie.” They were trying to get help. She was clearly losing her sanity. She might never get it back and probably doesn’t want to, I wouldn’t. He should have left his job entirely until she was out of crisis but we all know work is priority #1 in the US and taking leave is frowned upon. Now they have lost everything. No, there’s not enough support for parents, not enough childcare options, not enough mental healthcare or maternity and postpartum medical and psychological support. Maybe none of that could have stopped this tragedy. But we could certainly prevent others. The truth is we say ‘you chose to have a kid it’s all on you to deal with it, not my problem.’ Even in states where women don’t have that choice. Jobs punish you or fire you for having to take time to care for young kids. Paid leave is rare, short, and discouraged. No one in our society wants to pay any extra to support new parents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Lindsay had been on leave since May and had 2 children prior to this newest one. She wasn’t lacking in leave or knowledge of how to get babies to sleep.

She checked herself into a psych hospital three months ago and has been on 12 different psych meds since. Her husband called her psych doctors the week before begging to help her as she was “like a zombie.” They were trying to get help. She was clearly losing her sanity. She might never get it back and probably doesn’t want to, I wouldn’t. He should have left his job entirely until she was out of crisis but we all know work is priority #1 in the US and taking leave is frowned upon. Now they have lost everything. No, there’s not enough support for parents, not enough childcare options, not enough mental healthcare or maternity and postpartum medical and psychological support. Maybe none of that could have stopped this tragedy. But we could certainly prevent others. The truth is we say ‘you chose to have a kid it’s all on you to deal with it, not my problem.’ Even in states where women don’t have that choice. Jobs punish you or fire you for having to take time to care for young kids. Paid leave is rare, short, and discouraged. No one in our society wants to pay any extra to support new parents.

All that may be true in the US but I don’t think any of it applies in this particular case. But I’m sure it felt good for you to get that off your chest!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The other thing is that NONE of us have access to her medical records. We have no idea what was going on. She was on an anti-psychotic. This was not garden variety post-partum depression.

I agree with the PP about Seroquel, but I think it's also worth agreeing with this PP that "garden variety postpartum depression" is usually treatable with ONE antidepressant and weekly therapy. Maybe Zoloft doesn't work well and you try something else. Maybe you do a group instead of an individual therapy appointment. But either way, "garden variety" PPD doesn't require 12 different medications over 7 months, inpatient hospitalization, intensive outpatient therapy. That amount of treatment indicates A CRISIS in this family. There is an attitude on this thread that someone somewhere should have done something differently. Realistically, it doesn't always work that way. This was a person who had a ton of resources, knowledge, and support. She was engaged with a lot of treatment. Maybe she was overmedicated, it definitely happens, but sometimes it also happens that the intensity of someone's mental health problems is just so severe that all the treatment in the world can't prevent tragedy from happening.

Almost all the meds she was on were for anxiety and sleep - not depression.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The other thing is that NONE of us have access to her medical records. We have no idea what was going on. She was on an anti-psychotic. This was not garden variety post-partum depression.

I agree with the PP about Seroquel, but I think it's also worth agreeing with this PP that "garden variety postpartum depression" is usually treatable with ONE antidepressant and weekly therapy. Maybe Zoloft doesn't work well and you try something else. Maybe you do a group instead of an individual therapy appointment. But either way, "garden variety" PPD doesn't require 12 different medications over 7 months, inpatient hospitalization, intensive outpatient therapy. That amount of treatment indicates A CRISIS in this family. There is an attitude on this thread that someone somewhere should have done something differently. Realistically, it doesn't always work that way. This was a person who had a ton of resources, knowledge, and support. She was engaged with a lot of treatment. Maybe she was overmedicated, it definitely happens, but sometimes it also happens that the intensity of someone's mental health problems is just so severe that all the treatment in the world can't prevent tragedy from happening.

Almost all the meds she was on were for anxiety and sleep - not depression.

And her formal diagnosis was also GAD, not PPD.

[Anonymous]

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.

+100

also people are expecting that she woke up at the hospital and was herself as she was say a year ago and expect her to be acting that way but she is still within whatever mental illness is plaguing her right now. It may take her months to be more like herself, if ever at this point, and be able to process what has happened and what she did under this horrible state. Did you see the letter she wrote a friend at her baby shower? It’s posted on Reddit. I could have written that letter. This woman was not in her right state of mind and our mental health care system failed her. She shared her thoughts, got hospitalized and what was put on a new med and released?