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

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Look she is a murderer. This is not complicated[/quote]
This. 25 pages and this is still the answer.[/quote]
Yes, we can blame PPD/PPP all we want but in the end, she viciously murdered her three children. It’s the same as the the mentally unstable school shooter, or a mentally ill father who kills his family, who we demonize. Why is PPD/PPP held to a higher standard and empathized with any more than schizophrenia or any other mental illness, or having a long history of being bullied and ostracized?[/quote]

Postpartum illnesses ARE different than schizophrenia BECAUSE of how they arise. These illnesses are a direct result of predisposition, hormonal imbalances, lifestyle changes, and the many other circumstances that go into someone's mental state. People experiencing postpartum depression and anxiety often have a history of anxiety and depression, but people experiencing postpartum psychosis do not have a history of psychosis. They are not schizophrenic and when the psychosis breaks, they are largely the same people they were before, albeit with the consequences of whatever happened during the psychosis to grapple with.

Postpartum mental health problems have a huge history of stigmatization, even more so than other mental health problems. You need look no further than this thread to see that in action. The prosecutor understands what they're talking about. The posters who have experienced this or have family members who have. But most of you posters have no idea what you're talking about.

As for what treatment she was engaged in, there are various levels of psychiatric care. Your regular outpatient therapy appointments once a week or every other week is the lowest level. It sounded to me like Lindsay Clancy was in an intensive outpatient program, which is essentially 3-4 hours of therapy 3-5 times a week. When I worked in an IOP, it was group therapy, individual therapy, family therapy, and medication management. This was for teenagers, but those are pretty standard components of any higher level of psychiatric care. People who are deemed clinically appropriate for an IOP have been determined to not be actively suicidal or homicidal, not actively psychotic, etc. They are essentially deemed safe enough to stay at home. I don't know the extent to which any of Lindsay's doctors felt that it was safe for her to care for children or be alone with them, but it definitely sounds like her problems were more severe than anyone realized.

I just have a huge issue with the large number of posters who either don't believe that postpartum psychosis is a real thing. It remains to be seen what actually happened here, but it is mindblowing to me that what seems to be such a clear case of postpartum psychosis to me, and the prosecutor, and the PPs who have experience with psychosis, is such a clear case of something else to so many of you.[/quote]

It reminds us how much stigma there still is around mental illness, and how poorly educated most of us are until we have personal reasons to learn about it. I certainly didn’t understand these things at all until I became an attorney and first worked with people suffering from mental illness when I was a legal aid attorney. When I transitioned into criminal law and did defense, prosecution and representation of the state in dependency/neglect cases I had a crash course in psychology which was much more extensive than what I’d learned from a few psych courses in college. At this point I’ve seen hundreds of psychological evaluations and seen the behavior of the people who were subjects of them and I’ve taken hundreds of hours of continuing education focused on mental health issues. There are so many trainings because law enforcement is at least one third managing people with mental illness because that’s how we roll in the USA. Our investment in mental health resources is abysmal compared to the need. [/quote]

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