Woman kills her 2 children b/c of postpartum depression & gets 8 years prison time

[Khaza-R]

Seems heavily premeditated. Poisoning someone and then drowning them is not a rage killing. They should offer her psychiatric help, but she should never be allowed to rejoin society. And certainly never allowed anywhere near a child again.

But honestly, best case is someone kills her in prison.

[Deleted]

Postpartum depression is very common, it's not any sort of mitigating condition when committing murder.

While postpartum depression is quite common, postpartum psychosis is not (approx 1 in 1000 women will suffer it). While people in general are now quite accepting that "post natal depression" happens there is less exposure and so understanding surrounding what happens in the case of someone who suffers psychotic symptoms as they will likely be only in contact with their partner while at their most unwell and/or often they may well be hospitalised if they pose a risk to themselves or others. So unless someone gets to see it first hand they are unlikely to ever appreciate how unwell (irrational, lacking insight that they are so, and sometimes totally incapable of verbal communication)someone can be. In general people who have never witnessed psychosis never really have an understanding of what it is or how it can alter someone's behaviour and that it most definitely might be both acute and result in behaviour totally at odds with that person's normal behaviour.

It is very much worth noting that a common delusion in such cases (those where infanticide takes place, not all pp illness) is that infanticide is the only way to save the baby from an even worse fate. This will be a firmly held, concrete belief in the sufferer not a "my kid might be devil spawn, might as well have a go at a bit of killing because the whole crying gig is annoying me." You might be tempted on reading that to rationalise it. Forget it. Along with belief in the outlandish, psychosis is often accompanied by severely impaired cognitive capacity. e.g. It's extremely unlikely someone can question their actions and motivations when they temporarily don't have the words with concepts at hand.

Acute psychosis is rarely a suitable reason to find that someone is not culpable, or totally so, in the same way that we wouldn't hold a previously undiagnosed epileptic responsible for killing a car load of people if they suffered their first recognised seizure while driving, someone who does something we all consider to be abhorrent while unwell and only because they were unwell is in essence in the same situation. Our bodies sometimes fail us and unless we all agree a space monkey put a little bit of star glitter in our "souls" then we have to accept that this includes the brain and behaviour. It is in no way similar to getting drunk and killing someone in a fight. If someone chooses to be intoxicated they accept the gamut of possibilities that may lead to. A grey area often exists where drugs or alcohol have contributed to the onset of a psychotic episode in establishing capacity at the time of the act and this is usually argued out in a court. Postpartum psychosis is outside of that (assuming their is no dual diagnosis of substance abuse).

The reason the legal and medical systems don't lead to everyone being acquitted by claiming insanity is that while "bat shit nuts", people extremely rarely do bad shit as a direct and sole consequence of being so. When they do there is often a catalogue of failure on the parts of professionals, family, law enforcement and social services with whom that person had contact prior to the act. Often one of the people found to be responsible for that failing is the person accused. This might hinge upon intermittent insight being present, especially in the case of chronic conditions,of which that person failed to make use and so could have averted what eventually took place while they had the capacity. Extremely rarely, with everyone involved acting to the best of their ability and in good conscience something terrible and unforeseen might still happen.

Flip side of all this is a bunch of potential tragedies also routinely get averted but we don't get to hear about them in the press as "family and mental health unit help ill woman recover and resume fulfilling life over a difficult 6 months - mother and baby doing fine!" is way less snappier than "Evil woman drowns innocent baby"

And the thing is unless you can accept that there might be warning signs of such a tragedy, and treat those, without judgement, who are able to report the delusions they might be subject to at times and recognise that sometimes, but rarely, people act on all of this, then more infanticide takes place.

For those that just want to bay for some blood still: I'll be the first to agree that someone can be both mentally unwell AND totally responsible for a violent act. In fact, that is more often the case when the two coincide. In some cases it is a mitigating factor. In some very rare cases it is in no way that person's fault. I accept that this is really hard for people to accept that haven't had much exposure to people while they are acutely psychotic. Some will still say "fuck em, they're nuts lock em up!" The other side of exposure to this part of life is you also see people get better, and in the case of postpartum illnesses often totally, and most usually without avoidable harm having come to them or others.

[Nerdgasm]

The whole "do not kill other people" is such a basic and easy thing to follow that I just can't comprehend any kind of emotional state that could in any way justify breaking that. Only possible exception would be some kind of experimental mind control/altering drug that would physically overwrite what is considered right and wrong.

Not hard at all to happen. Even easier when you are in a state where the brain semantics is affected, it's not only about losing your sense of right or wrong, it's about losing even structural concepts as "people". Some people can't even understand unit (meaning they can't understand where an object start on end).

Think about situations where your brain makes you act from reflex, or when you don't have control over your body (sleepwalking).

All of the above, and even more, can happen due to puerperal psychosis.

[Cephilia]

As someone who soon graduates to become a health advisor to pregnant women and families with small children and has actually worked with families where there are both small children and mental illness, I see them as victims of mental illness, all though every case should be investingated and the parents evaluated by multiple psychiatrists to make sure there really is an illness there. In some cases there could also be criminal negligence by the perpetrator or other people close to them or their health care provider if they have not received help and support with their illness. People saying the prepetrator should have gotten help don't understand what depression is like: these people do not believe they can be helped, all is hopeless and just getting up the bed, let alone going out is physically exhausting. They have hard time planning things and may have forceful thoughts about self-harm or harming theor children that scare them too. They may be scared that if they tell anyone, their children will be taken away. These people love their children, but their perception of the world and the future is so grim and twisted they truely believe killing their children is an act of mercy, or may be consumed by uncontrollable rage. People are not psychotic when things are a bit hard and they have issues, people are psychotic when they are completely absorbed by their own delusions.

I've seen and helped people with post-partum psychosis (which is often, but not always, linked to post-partum depression. Post-partum depsression doesn't usually lead to post-partum psychosis, but is usually the case when mothers kill their children). These are good an caring parents who are seriously ill and can be helped. Sometimes it requires moving the children to someone elses care for a while, often they have a family member move in for a while and help, and sometimes they can cope with lighter support. It's a tragedy, it causes anger, suffering and it is hard to understand; but still, mental illness is not a crime. Killing all people who have ever had a psychosis and thus haven't been able to control their actions would, in my country, mean killing 3,5% of the population. This includes several of my family and friends, who are productive and quite normal members of society and have raised happy, normal children.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Horrible. She should serve her sentence by getting mental help. I can't forgive what she did but I do believe she needs help. Also if it was a man(Men don't really have post partum depression so note that) that did this. People would want him murdered in the most brutal way possible.

[Mil Mascaras]

LOL!

Bitch* finds out husband has a baby with another woman (as stated by prosecution), goes off the rails and kills her children.
PPD, my ass.

I'm willing to bet good money PPD was the only chip left on the defenses' table and was used as such to get her off with as little time as possible.

* I can think of worse words to use, but bitch will do.

[Socialhealer]

life in prison, she could get depressed and murder more people what do we have in place to make sure she never gets depressed again?

nothing? too dangerous to release back into society then.

[Wildberry]

Death penalty would be ideal, but that's just mean and hurts feelings; I guess life in prison will do.

[Captainn]

I googled 'post partum depression' and found an article where a woman was denied therapy from her insurance company because they only treat real health issues. Pretty much sums up my feelings on the whole thing. You don't kill people, end of story. It's not that hard of a rule. Actually, it's probably the easiest one to follow. Aaaand she failed. Not sure why she isn't getting the needle.

[Fojos]

Whenever women commit crimes like this there's always someone else or something else to blame apparently. If a guy shoots someone we don't go around thinking that he must have been feeling bad or been abused.

Because the death penalty is retarded.
And rules aren't easy to follow when you are in a psychosis, it's impossible since you don't know what is real and what isn't.
It also tells me how idiotic the insurance companies are in your country, since when are they trained to decide who suffers from a health issue?

In all these cases the women have known they killed their children. It's not like they accidently did it thinking their child was some other object entirely.

And postpartum psychosis is not even close to the same thing as real psychosis. Just like PPD is not close to real depression, even though they have similarities.

[Nerdgasm]

a woman was denied therapy from her insurance company because they only treat real health issues.

If that was the real reason, that's tremedously fucked up.

[Symphonic]

Postpartum depression is one thing, postpartum psychosis is another. Almost every woman who gives birth will go through post-partum depression. It's quite common. And yet, none of them are killing their children because they seek help; their husbands, too, recognize the symptoms. My wife talked to me while she was pregnant and said that if she starts acting weird, or not wanting to do anything, not wanting to take care of the baby, to seek help, because we hate hearing about these kinds of stories. Postpartum psychosis is way worse. I would say that untreated Postpartum depression can lead to postpartum psychosis. I feel so sad for those children that died.

[Azadina]

She should never see the outside of a jail cell again.

This right here is the right answer.

[Tackhisis]

Eight years is far too much.

[Deleted]

Eight years is far too much.

What if it was a man who was driving and ran over 2 small children

What would the appropriate punishment be

[Polarthief]

I have horrible depression. Know what I do? Take pills. They've been incredibly effective.

Fucking killing your kids because you're depressed? You don't deserve to live you filthy scum.

But prosecutors had argued that Ms. Bamenga acted in a jealous rage after learning that Mr. Noel had fathered a child with another woman and that she killed the children to punish him. They asked for 20 years on each manslaughter charge.

Fucking jealous cunt. You're the type of person who shouldn't have kids. Don't breed when you get out of jail you psychopath.

[Simulacrum]

Did a mental illness cause him to drive over the two children?

Sure, why not. Let's say he's a drunk.

[Lenonis]

Not sure why "Both" isn't a poll option.

You can have mental illness.

You can commit murder.

You can commit a murder while having a mental illness.

I think with any claim of mental illness it needs to be examined quite harshly to ensure that's actually a factor and not an excuse the defense is using to reduce the sentence.

[Deleted]

It's murder. Yes, postpartum depression can affect women and it can make them have depression and be overly emotional etc. Some might try to hurt themselves, and then it's a mental problem that needs aid but... if they try to hurt others, it goes beyond that, in the end it shows that they have those tendencies and would act on them in some cases. This goes past the depression and emotional aspect. It's clear murder.

[Fojos]

That is not how a psychosis works.
It's the same thing.
Perhaps she also didn't get treatment because "depression is not a real health issue" and that is what caused it to turn into a psychosis?

No, it's not the same thing. Just in the same way an occasional headache is not the same as migraine.

Even in psychosis you know it's wrong to kill, unless you don't have this block.

You don't hear about some parent getting a bad trip on LSD with full on paranoia with delusions and hallucinations killing their child.