Mom Ordered to Stay Away From Baby Before Decapitation

a reply to: retiredTxn

Woman normally recover from postpartum psychosis in about one year.

She needs to be put in a mental hospital and kept there until she is no longer psychotic.
AND
Then kept a little longer going through therapy.

Jail time in cases like this only make people like you happy.

She will most likely punish herself more in the long run than anyone else can punish her.

If you think someone should get jail time for it, and I don't disagree, it should be the social worker or whoever let her back on the street and did not hospitalize her , or the Aunt who let her move in and live with the baby. But probably the Aunt didn't know enough about postpartum psychosis to be held accountable. I actually think the social worker who let her on the street should be the one to go to jail as an accessory to murder.

The woman herself, was too mentally ill to be held responsible, especially after being diagnosed with psychosis and not locked up where she would be safe and her baby would be safe.

That is where the true blame lies, with whoever made the decision not to lock her up in a mental health facility until the psychosis was over, about a year.

Loosing ones mind is a scary thing.

Obviously some people have never once had a slip up, or a medical issue, or anything else.

Apparently, one must have experience, in order to have some compassion.

FYi, mine was due to an almost fatal blood sugar low. It's a scary thing, loosing your mind, hallucinations can make reality a nightmare.

originally posted by: grandmakdw


Jail time in cases like this only make people like you happy.

People like me? You assume too much. Tell me about me, please. I asked a couple of questions, stated some of my thoughts, and agreed with you on an awful lot of points.

She will most likely punish herself more in the long run than anyone else can punish her.

If you think someone should get jail time for it, and I don't disagree, it should be the social worker or whoever let her back on the street and did not hospitalize her , or the Aunt who let her move in and live with the baby. But probably the Aunt didn't know enough about postpartum psychosis to be held accountable. I actually think the social worker who let her on the street should be the one to go to jail as an accessory to murder.

I'm pretty sure it takes a Dr. to diagnose any mental illness, and prescribe medication. So why not jail the Dr. instead of the social worker?

The woman herself, was too mentally ill to be held responsible, especially after being diagnosed with psychosis and not locked up where she would be safe and her baby would be safe.

So, my question again is, what happens with her after the year and so many months? Is society to release her, or what?

That is where the true blame lies, with whoever made the decision not to lock her up in a mental health facility until the psychosis was over, about a year.

Again, the Dr. is top of the food chain. They are able to diagnose, prescribe medication, and place someone under a hold for further evaluation. Yes a judge can do it, but they will rely on the info supplied by a Dr..

a reply to: retiredTxn

If the Dr. was the one who made the decision not to hospitalize her, then yes, he/she should be the person held accountable.
However, in reality, it is often a clinical social worker or psychiatric clinician who makes the decision.
Whoever, any and all who individually or corporately made the decision to let the woman go should be held accountable, yes.

After the woman regains her sanity, in the vast majority of cases,
she will not relapse at all.
She may relapse if she has another child,
in which case she needs to be hospitalized again for a year.

Yes, let her go after she is sane and after she has completed intensive therapy for what she has done.
She was not responsible in this instance, and
normally I am the type of person who insists people take personal responsibility.
However, in this case the responsibility was with whoever knew of the diagnosis
and choose not to hospitalize her until she regained sanity.

All physicians, clinical social workers, and psychiatric clinicians
know that a woman with postpartum psychosis has an extremely high probability
of being a danger to herself and/or to others until the psychotic episode is over.
With really bad cases of postpartum psychosis that is normally a year
until the danger to oneself and/or others is over,
and the people who treated her had to know all of that.
We know that the child welfare social workers knew the danger,
they were informed by someone.






P.S. I'm sorry for insulting you earlier, I thought you were saying the Mother needed to be jailed regardless of the circumstances surrounding the issue.

Horrible

Yes the mother should have been hospitalised for much longer, she had been ordered no contact by the court with the baby before she was allowed to move in with the babies Aunt (whether that court order was lifted?), its terrible and many people dropped the ball.

No doubt the Drs involved with releasing her too early will come under scrutiny.

originally posted by: grandmakdw

After the woman regains her sanity, in the vast majority of cases,
she will not relapse at all.
She may relapse if she has another child,
in which case she needs to be hospitalized again for a year.

In New York, a woman named Ann Green, killed her first two children, one in 1980 and the other in 1982. She attempted to kill her third child, but was caught before she could suffocate the child. She was found Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity in all cases. My quandary is how many chances should one get? Is there no end to one's ability to use this as a defense? Should sterilization be an option?

Source

In Texas, we had the case of Andrea Yates. She drowned her five children, and was found guilty of Capital Murder. This was later overturned and she was found NGRI. She is in a mental facility, and will most likely never be released. She was 36 when this happened, so she is roughly 50 years old now. Is she no longer a threat to society, or is the prominence of her case the reason she is still in a mental facility?

Yes, let her go after she is sane and after she has completed intensive therapy for what she has done.
She was not responsible in this instance, and
normally I am the type of person who insists people take personal responsibility.
However, in this case the responsibility was with whoever knew of the diagnosis
and choose not to hospitalize her until she regained sanity.

The disparity in cases is what drives me crazy. Me personally, each case should be looked at individually, not all treated and dealt with as a group. And of course "regaining ones sanity" is hard to define. One Dr. says yes, another Dr. says no.
ARRRGGGGHHHHHH!

I can guarantee that at some point before she killed her child a cost analysis was done either by the facilities or her insurance company and that did affect the level of care she received.

At some point, this country needs to have the conversation about if a for-profit medical system is really in the people's best interest. I doubt this one case will spur that, but it is one that should be brought up when it happens.

Here's a link to the coroner's interview. Has pictures of the baby. This is really disturbing to me. I wish someone would've made sure this baby was safe, because it's quite clear she was anything but.

Link

a reply to: retiredTxn

To look at each case individually is how one has to do it.

The two you mentioned were different than this one.

I was shocked when my sister's sister-in-law continued to have children even though she was hospitalized for a year after each birth (3 total).

This woman now knows what happened to her body and mind after giving birth, as do her friends and family. If she should give birth again, she should be closely monitored and hospitalized at the very first sign it is reoccurring.

Perhaps a sentence of tubal ligation is in order because obviously there is no one where she lives that is willing to protect her or her future children from this happening again, if they let it happen this time.
But courts normally won't do this because we have made a woman's reproductive rights so sacred with abortion, that sterilization has become taboo because it infringes on a woman's right to control her own body. So there is almost no judge that would give that sentence.

Yes, true insanity is a defense, and the punishment should be long term hospitalization in a state mental facility. That is not exactly a resort or even mildly as nice as a county hospital in the bad area of town for a long term stay. I'd rather stay in a medicare/medicaid nursing home or live in the worst section 8 housing, even many jails would be much more pleasant, than have to live in a state mental facility.

Postpartum psychosis is not something the mother has control over.

After giving birth a woman's hormones fluctuate so wildly, one could compare it to going through puberty or menopause within a few hours, add to that the extreme stress hormones produced in labor, and the extreme pain of labor, plus normally women don't sleep well at the end of pregnancy and are sleep deprived, it is a wonder far more women don't go into a sleep deprivation/stress/pain/hormonal induced psychosis.

What she did was awful, horrific, terrible.

But it was the professionals who let her roam free with psychosis who are to blame. They knew full well the danger she put herself and others in by letting her go. Because she was diagnosed before this happened, the people who neglected to protect the child from her are the ones to blame. The woman needs treatment and to be removed from society to be treated until it is safe to return her into society.

You question the ability of the mental hospital to tell if she is well.
But if she were jailed, she gets no treatment, is let out after a defined period of time even if she is wildly mentally unstable, because the law would require it of a jailed inmate. Mental hospitals have much more say over whether or not a patient is released than jail does.

I am normally quite conservative and I do think people should take personal responsibility for their actions.
However, when one is unable to control ones actions and becomes dangerous to themselves and others, and are unable to resist the psychosis, and professionals know this is happening - the professionals who ignore it by letting a known danger to society roam free, then become culpable for the actions committed by a hallucinating person who is probably also hearing voices.

It was the Aunt that gave access despite the court order.

Watkins was ordered to stay away from her daughter, but an aunt who received custody allowed Watkins to live with her, said Deters.
www.perthnow.com.au...

Oh geez and the last comment on that page..

The disturbing crime comes just days after a Chicago grandmother was arrested for killing her seven-month-old granddaughter and then cutting the child’s throat with a power saw.

That one can`t be blamed on puerperal psychosis.

a reply to: gps777

The grandmother should go to jail for life in the case you mentioned.

The Aunt most likely did not know what even the word postpartum psychosis meant. Many people here on this thread had a misunderstanding of the severity and consequences of postpartum psychosis, and I can tell some never even heard the word before let alone what it meant. A woman with postpartum psychosis is a danger to both herself and to the community at large and should be hospitalized, not just given an order to stay away from the baby.

This case is quite different - the mother did not have puerperal (infection and fever caused by childbirth) psychosis;
she had postpartum psychosis. A horrific psychosis that Doctors, social workers, and psychiatric clinicians know can lead to the person with it committing suicide or more likely than suicide, murder of the child, or occasionally murder in general.
www.psychologytoday.com...
murderpedia.org...
www.suicide.org...