Itâs unfortunate she died, but the most important thing is no one was killed in her rampage, bystanders and especially her child.
The âIf left untreatedâ stuff seems so important in a case like this, especially given the stigma and lack on information available about this illness. I would image PPD is one of the more spiral-likely forms of depression. At a time when everyone expects a woman to be unconditionally happy and head over heels in love with their child the âwhat the hell is wrong with me, what kind of disgusting non-human am Iâ depression boxes must pile-up pretty quickly.
Wait, 1 in 1000 actually seems really huge, considering how common birth is. 4000 briefly psychotic new mothers every year seems like something I wouldâve heard about before now.
You have to take these psychiatric statistics with a (large) grain of salt. Itâs like the latest DSM, a lot of made up âspectrumâ disorders. Iâm sure thereâs a number of so called experts getting ready to jump on the post-partum bandwagon right now. This tragedy gets turned into an opportunity for funding, prestige, and, especially, FUNDING.
Even more important: Why would you have heard about this before? Mental health issues, especially those involving hallucinations, are things that people tend to keep pretty quiet out of fear of stigma. Most women with postpartum psychosis probably arenât talking about it. And, because the vast majority of them arenât a threat to other people, thereâs no reason their secrets would have gotten out.
Also, I get what youâre saying here about estimations of how many people a disorder affects being pretty inexact. That said, Iâm going to go ahead and request that we NOT start claiming mental illnesses are âmade upâ, especially if said declaration is based largely on speculation. Postpartum psychosis may be rarer than estimated. Who knows. (And Iâve honestly not delved very deeply into how the estimations are made here.) But it is a real condition and itâs demeaning to the people whoâve experienced it to armchair undiagnose them.
Have you ever been near new mothers? Even ones that donât get full PPD tend to be a bit crazy for the first few months. Babies are stressful. You add lack of sleep and the bazillion worries a new child brings top of that and it shouldnât be a surprise at all that new mothers get kind of messed up in the head.
Yes, but did she play Grand Theft Auto?
Oh I donât mean to under diagnose the illness. I donât know where youâre from but around me it was actually quite the illness de jour a couple of years ago. Posters and magazine ads were pretty common. Of course it was pretty much just pill pushing and âawarenessâ campaigns for people in the medical field. It came after bipolar disorder kind of faded out and well after depression. My own wife went pretty nutso after our third so I know what it can be like.
I have had a friend with postpartum depression and my former secretary had postpartum psychosis. My secretaryâs story was very frightening to hear. It started shortly after the birth of her triplets and went away with medication. She saw things such as a black cloud over her house, threatening her babies. A real black cloud that hovered only over her house. Her idea of how to protect the infants was to wall them up in her house so they could not be found and harmed. She noted that it was completely illogical and it would have killed them to be walled up alive, but it made perfect sense to her at the time.
More like, the â1 in 1000â number sounds way off. If true, every small community in the country would have a psychotic new mom in its midst. And that would something very difficult to ignore untilâŚjust now?
Almost sounds like they happily mixed pre-existing mental illness in and then blew the numbers elsewhere as well. Because, mentally ill women have children, too. And they are often faced with having to go off their meds for a period, as well as with the hormonal whim-whams that can happen afterward I merely question the number given - not the existence of the condition itself. Even ordinary PPD sux pampers.
I didnât mean to suggest it wasnât. I was just saying that for something this serious that apparently occurs in 1 out of 1000 births. For example, the rate of being temporary psychotic (in the clinical sense, not just using âcrazyâ as colloquial shorthand for stressed and emotional) about 6 times higher than the maternal mortality rate in the US, which is already one the highest among the ârichâ developed world.
But as Maggie said, maybe itâs just a case of a lot of it being under-reported or not diagnosed.
I donât have kids, but based on what I have seen among my friends and family who do, the most likely factor in wanting to kill your childrenâŚis having children.
Dear US Govt et al
Rather than bombing countries Americans canât find on a map, how about funding a healthcare system that treats mental disorders as something other than weakness?
Failure to do so may result in people running in to your buildings and gates.
Well I guess we need to declare the war on postpartum depression. Everyone should get involved and report their neighbor, family member or a friend if they notice any suspicious activity. Definitely create a black-ops program where members of postpartum depression group(s) can be taken care of by the trained specialists from the government. We simply canât have this happening again.
A friend of mine used to work in the county mental health clinic, and they dealt with a number women that were fully psychotic before, during, or after birth. I post partum psychosis probably accounts for some of those familiar cases where âGodâ tells the woman to do something really awful to their baby.
This woman had PPD and became obessed with jumping off a bridge. She only survived because a cop sprinted onto the scene and an grabbed arm after she already jumped. Sheâs fine now and even got a book deal out of it.
My Neighborâs Kids By: The Duh
I wanna kill my neighborâs kids!
I really hate them; yes I do!
I wanna kill my neighborâs kids!
If you met 'em, you would, too!
I wanna kill my neighborâs kids!
I wanna rip out all their brains!
Really hate my neighborâs kids!
I wanna throw
them under a train!Oh, yeah, I hate 'em a lot, I do! Oh, yeah, oh, dig it, uh-huh, itâs
true! I really hate my neighborâs kids! (Do I start yet? Lemme know
when Iâm supposed to start, OK?!)Oh, when theyâre playinâ in their yard,
You hear their screams a mile away!
And when they throw stuff at my house,
Then they smile as if it were okay!
And the dog poops on my steps,
Stink a smell that is so sweet.
And when I go out of my house,
I get to wear it on my feet!Oh, yeah, I hate 'em a lot,
I do! Oh, yeah, oh, dig it, uh-huh, itâs true!
Cause Iâmâa kill my neighborâs kids!
I really hate my neighborâs kids!
I agree 100% with most of what is written, a tiny note of exception; I would considered a automobile driven dangerously be be effectively âarmingâ someone, to the point where saying âShe was unarmed.â would seem incorrect to me. Saying âreportedly she didnât have a firearmâ seems to be as true as the rest of that paragraph.
We absolutely, unequivocally need to invest more resources into all our health systems.
Sure, thatâs why we just shut down the government, because who the hell would want healthcare for all citizens? Fuck that.
Not all mothers with PPD are targeting their children, a lot of them are locked onto their husbands. You donât hear about that because it doesnât result in an arrest, it results in a divorce where the depressed person will make literally any accusation to âwin.â This is not hard, because as the new mother she will get the house, car, and child support. As soon as the idea arises, itâs fait accompli, and no lawyer could resist that sort of slam-dunk. Trust me on this, guys donât go around saying âWeâre trying to get pregnantâŚso I may be homeless by this time next year.â
This is very very common, and you wonât hear about it Oprah.
Mental illness doesnât just have stigma it has profit and power, and psychoanalysts call it âsecondary gain.â
