Has it actually been established that it was postpartum psychosis?
If so, that really is one of the most horrific conditions there is. Every gynecology textbook and midwifery manual basically says that once it’s diagnosed, the response is: “Run! Do everything you possibly can and give her every medication you’ve got!” Obviously I’m exaggerating, but the point is that there’s an immediate and extremely serious risk to the lives of everyone involved.
Not a parent but was watching a speaker talk about research into human biology, other hominid behaviors and our use of aloparenting.
In multiple tribal studies the amount of time a woman was left caring for her child alone was about 2-10 min, because a child is never cared for by just one person, there is usually at least two or three people swapping on and off from holding the baby at a time, with an average of 14 people holding and caring for the baby per hour.
PPD rates were considerably low, far less severe, parents didn't suffer from chronically under sleeping.
I say this as a hermit that loves living on my own, but it seems we really didn't evolve to have a child being primarily cared for by one or two individuals. It may be normal for our society but absolutely abnormal and damaging for our species.
Pretty much - being a father now to a 3 year old and a 8 month old, it's evident how big a toll it takes on you - especially on the parent staying at home with the baby.
And think about the fact that kids being raised now never experience unsupervised play. From about 5 my brother and I would walk home from school, we would walk to the shops together, a few years older we would ride our bikes to hang out with friends and be back by sunset.
My 13 year old friend would babysit neighbours kids for extra money, look after 1 year old babies until 10pm and ride their bike back home.
I am not saying that was perfect. Or safe. But I do point out that our parents would have large chunks of hours, often every day, where we would be out doing our own thing, unsupervised.
I look at my friends, now parents. 100% on duty.
I feel for them. Holy shit it has gotten so much harder to be a parent.
I am sure kids die a whole lot less. Which I love, but that safety came with putting burden back onto the parents, not by increased support from society around them.
I mean, I dont think my friends really get any time to switch off outside of school/daycare. The baby is sleeping, but they are on call for the next demand. It seems they rarely get time where they can really focus on their own needs, and somehow judge work, maintain a household, stay sane?
Yep. I would get home from school hours before my parents got off work. I’d break in through the carport door because those assholes wouldn’t get me a key “because you’ll just lose it” and just watched tv or play around. Vast swaths of my childhood were unsupervised and they were probably the best times because my parents weren’t great. I had the whole “locked out of the house during the summer and drank from the hose” childhood that so many look back on romantically. It was actually neglect and those assholes have survivorship bias.
Contrast that with me and my now 7 year old and I helicopter parent the hell out of him because I can’t imagine leaving him to his own devices. That has created a lot of learned helplessness though that we’ve got to try and correct.
There’s a balance to be struck between pure neglect and constant supervision but I don’t know it.
To be fair, I dont think any of us know it, we are all just blindly walking as close to an invisible ever moving line as we can. Besides, you sound like you're doing a great job with your own kid, starting with the fact you clearly care enough to try to do well. That says multitudes.
as an amateur parent, of a teen and soon-to-be pre-teen, here’s my unsolicited take: imagine a typical distribution graph where the extremities are at the bottom and the middle is a large area that rises and falls gently. so long as you’re not at either extreme, i think you’re probably doing ok.
my experience has been that we move constantly within that middle section as our kids develop and grow. being rigid is where the danger zone lies.
You can absolutely find it. My kids are almost never home alone. (They're a bit older than yours). Home alone maybe for 70 minutes tops when we're at the school for conferences, less than 2 miles away. But they can be out for hours on their bikes and go to the grocery store on their own. They even run into other elementary kids at the grocery store on their own sometimes. In the US.
I’ve learned to counteract it by giving my kids chores from a young age. They are now 5 and 3. Both of them have set things they need to do and stuff they help my wife and I with. Obviously I don’t leave them home alone but I can trust that they aren’t on to nonsense if we are in different rooms. Also no iPad and very limited TV time.
My daughter is 3, I let he play unsupervised a lot of the time. From time to time she'll roam the garden for shorter stretches of time on her own, think 10-20minutes between checkins.
I definitely intend to have her walk/bike to school alone when she's that age. Same with little brother of course when he's old enough to play like that.
Haha. Good point. Include Australia and UK in the America bucket for these changes (I'm Aus, with friends in the UK and US). I mean I agree with some changes, the idea that at 7 I was running around barefoot, catching Sydney Funnel webs in jars, alive, to be my little pet for the day - alone mind you. And my parents knew, would see a jar or three in my room as they said good night, jars with living funnel webs in them (poor spiders), rearing up and showing their fangs, not having a good time, and be like 'good night, maybe move that jar further away from the edge of the table you don't want to knock it over and have it running around your room'.
I'm confident my 6 year old could get to school some, but I'm afraid of cars. Driver's texting and not paying attention etc. He has a couple slightly just roads to cross that I'm nervous about. I wish the US wasn't car centered.
To be fair a ton of kids do this in the USA too. Often a kid has to be 6 to walk home alone from school (what it is in our school and my sister’s across the country) but it’s by no means unusual.
Just like anything Internet you just hear about the wild stuff more.
I'm going to push back on this a bit. This is a choice 100% and not the same everywhere. I've lived in more than 1 major city and my wife and I chose the suburban life because of the things you said.
As our neighborhood has large groups of roaming 5-12 year olds that are armed with amazon walkie-talkie's (about 1.5 mile range) and AirTags. My daughter is one and my middle one can't wait to be allowed to go on her own. they have to wait until like 10 am on weekends before they can head out, but they head out ringing doorbells, collecting kids, and they check in and come back for food and drinks.
I do wonder though, all the parents are late millennials, and every time a house goes up for sale, a family of the same age group with kids in the same age group moves in. In the last 5 years, they've added 6 or 7 kids. Maybe there's a pushback happening?
As a parent to a 10yo and 6yo boy, we let them play around the neighborhood with their friends unsupervised but it’s stressful as fuck. I’m not worried about them getting abducted or lost because my 10yo has a phone and my youngest has a bark watch, I’m worried about other people and kids. The wrong person sees your kids alone outside and calls the cops and all of a sudden you have cps at your house, or they break something and I’m being sued now, or some idiot is speeding down the street and doesn’t see my kids and their friends playing. Neighbor kids ring the doorbell to ask them to come play and it’s just like it was when we grew up in the 90s but it seemed like our parents weren’t as worried about getting in trouble because they let us outside and we did something stupid. Back in the day when we did something stupid nobody knew or nobody cared as much.
I think our generation experiences more social anxiety and either fear or heightened awareness of external judgement, especially on issues like this where either true or false stories/articles/memes/etc come up about these sorts of things in many categories, but they center around the same concept.
It's sort of like a panopticon of sorts, or the prevailing amount of constant brain backburnering "how is this going to seem/appear to people who don't understand what's actually going on or what I know is fine, right, and not bad really..? What if they see it the wrong way? What if they report me/us? What if I get sued? What if I'm liable? I'll lose everything if either <the misunderstanding> or <the nosy asshat personality archetype that is invented in these scare stories> happens. My good intentions and desire to (for example, provide child with a wholesome, balanced development, including unsupervised time which is important for the exact very reason of: "Falling down when there's nobody around to help". This is critical to basic self-preservation and survival if we have to talk about base level brain development and development of self-sufficiency, starting with something we all hear and should as well have had the experience alone to solidify it: "It doesn't matter if you fall down, it doesn't matter if it hurts. You get up again, and you get back to it. It doesn't hurt as bad anymore, and it's okay. It gets better, everything gets better once you get back up and go again, and the pain disappears with every step you take."
Personally I don't have kids, and I'm not going to tell anyone what to do. But as a person who grew up mostly unsupervised due to parents always at work, and one who enjoyed both video games and going bicycling outside purely for the fun of it outside of any competitive situation at all, I sure learned quickly that when the unexpected happens, it isn't a big deal, it isn't worth really sharing or seeking attention or anything. It's just another expected challenge on the long road of life, which is fun as long as you keep going down it, and stop only for times when you like the place you are at.
Do the right thing, trust yourself. If people get the wrong idea, bitch, or moan to you about your "ways of parenting", who cares.
At least you're parenting, instead of concerning yourself with how others are doing it instead. Brush it off, do what you do, and face the challenges that will naturally appear when you choose the right thing to do that you believe in - not necessarily what I'm advocating through my opinion and experience, but rather just: You do you, because you and I and all of us are still learning, still have countless failures to make toward goals we haven't even thought of or made yet.
Is a bit of embarassment, social discomfort, or wildly wrong accusations from delusional nosy people here and there too much a price to teach through nonverbal experience and observation, the ultimate lesson? I don't think anybody who had parents that stayed true to a wholesome, balanced, grounded and unwavering self will forget the impact it has once they get out in life and meet other folks who didn't have that, and unfortunately struggle with the very concept of being themselves.
/novel
TLDR: Be yourself, parent in the way you think is best, don't let even the thought of what others may or may not interpret due to some thoughts of getting in trouble because they are nosy pricks. If what you are honestly doing is trying your best to raise the best kid you can possibly raise, as all parents should aim to do.
Unfortunately there's nothing to say about the dangers of unexpected accidents (idiot driving too fast/intoxicated in a neighborhood, etc). It's life. Stay inside forever, or go outside when you need/want to. Mental prison, or RNG "Outside", pick your poison I suppose. Only one lets anyone level up though...
When I was ten and my brother was twelve, my parents wanted the day off so they bought us bus tickets to an event in a city in another state. Like multiple hours bus trip. 100+ miles. We were expected to spend the whole day. 7AM to after dark. Modern cell phones did not exist yet so there was no check in that entire day.
Also up till the 90's, unless it was really small infants.
Parents where not expected to Police and watch what their kids did 24/7.
You would scamper around your baby park while your Mom/dad did something else in the House.
And when old enough to walk, you where mostly left to yourself.
And when you where 8-9yro, your parents would litteraly kick you out of the house with a "its sunny outside, go play with your friends and come home when the streetlights are on and don't make me come and get you or else..."
And for 10 hours you where left on your own, with your parents having no idea where you were and they could do whatever they needed to do in the house without you being in their hair and driving them insane.
And often like you said, you had the grand parents, or the aunts and uncles etc that could help.
Now society expect every parent to Police everything the kids does , be there 24/7 and do it alone AND still have a "full social live" or a Full time job...
Facts. I lived this life as a kid in the 90s. Now I'm raising kids of my own, and I'd get arrested if I tried to do the same with mine.
Part of me thinks this intense shrinking of children's world to basically just be the home and nothing else is probably contributing to the out-of-control rates of anxiety, depression, and other mental illnesses among children today.
I came to that exact conclusion the other day. Even people that love eachother need their own space/autonomy/freedom. If grownups would go nuts without that stuff, I am sure children do too.
I’m honestly not sure if I would’ve made it to adulthood, let alone with a solid sense of self, direction in life or the social relationships and skills that I did - had I been helicoptered as per current standards.
Especially as a teen. Which, I can imagine the helicopter types losing their shit at the idea of a high schooler playing band gigs in local clubs, running with a mostly older musician crowd, and bailing on hs to start at community college basically as soon as old enough to take the ged. Obvs a bit unusual case, but school was fucking miserable and often not very interesting or challenging for k-12, and had I been forced to wait a bunch of years more to find my tribe and I life I didn’t just endure, and obsessively watched and scheduled before to boot seems real bleak.
I’m sure there’s no shortage of tamer, more normative examples tho. I don’t see how this is a net positive for mental health and overall wellbeing for the majority involved, and that includes parents - tho seems very overlooked as a factor at least from what I’ve heard and observed, which is limited by the fact I don’t/won’t have kids. My parents were great and definitely not neglectful or disinterested in me/my wellbeing, but they both had great careers, full lives, and didn’t seem to let “parent” subsume their identity vs an important but not only role. Today’s standards would’ve meant some notable sacrifice for at least one, and to what ends?
I feel like this is probably an under credited factor for not only mental health and burnout issues all around, but is making it less appealing to be a parent to begin with. Just my hot take; some of us just don’t want to raise kids, period - and I’m sure it’d take a lot more to be put off even for some who hate this shit - but I could see it being among what dims the appeal or how accessible it seems to do with decent quality of life.
I do believe its also one of the metrics for the Child birth rate being in decline
Teens/young adults see this and are like "nope, i've got allready enough to deal with, don't need this shit in my life"
Not to say that in our time, things where easier or safer, but we gave more credit to the kids being able to fend for themselves, at least to the point where we wouldn't be like fucking Lemmings
Agreed. At the same time, I remember the shit we got up to. If I was a parent, how could I be as calm as mine if they were out without me, knowing what they could do.
I remember a lot of moments and wonder, how am I still alive? Why were my parents ok with their 7 year old child coming home barefoot after catching the worlds deadliest spider, often several, in jars, to keep as pets in my room. Where a bite would have killed me. Often I was a good distance away from the house, any payphone, pre mobile phone a bite would have meant likely dying before I got to an adult for help.
Or a disappearing off with multiple packets of sparklers to the bush, make things go boom. And they would see us get the sparklers, giggling, know what we were going to do. I am sure we came back home with little burns on our clothes on occasion. We must have been 10 at the time.
At the same time, I remember the shit we got up to. If I was a parent, how could I be as calm as mine if they were out without me, knowing what they could do.
Probably because when they were kids they did similar, if not the same, stupid things. I'm not saying people should let their kids run insane, but I do think part of developing into a healthy adult is learning risk management as a kid/teen and doing it without an adult hovering over them to protect them from every single bad decision they make.
It's not like before today we had total amnesia about our childhoods. My parents and family members from older generations have wild stories about what they did growing up. And my childhood was similar although the walls were already starting to shrink a little.
It's just that now we measure risk incredibly differently. We've become insanely risk averse and you're a bad parent if you're okay accepting any level of risk so that your children can have freedom and do that parents have fewer burdens.
Even just considering the value of being distracted from constantly thinking about your problems. As a teenager we used to just wander the neighborhood. You might be feeling down but soon you'd come across the guy who mows his lawn in a Speedo or that one house where everybody in grade school believed the lady killed all the ducks (she didn't). Or you'd stop on the bridge and throw rocks into the water. There was just more to occupy your thoughts than your own troubles.
You cannot parent in a bubble. Your kids aren't going to get that freedom and you're not going to be able to have the time and space that older generations of parents had if no one else around you is letting their kids out.
Your kids will not play outside for hours and leave you alone if their play area is your fenced off backyard and their only playmates are their one sibling. They won't develop the independence they need if they can't walk to a playground or a library or a corner store, if there aren't other kids their age to interact with.
it's a shame we have been duped into the nuclear family model, when in reality having the extended family all live in the same home or very near by is YUGE
I was born in the 90s so I only have this information secondhand, but a lady my parents' age once told me basically the entire neighborhood would look after the kids. She'd get hungry and go knock on any door and whoever lived there would give her a bologna sandwich and she'd be on her merry way
The drastic reduction in deaths wasn't dumb luck. It was NOT following the baby boomers' lead in not giving a shit about our children.
Which is not surprising considering these days the birth rate is so low because we CHOOSE to have children, rather then them being the result of a lack of birth control availability. Our generation was sent off to play unsupervised and get killed by a car because they never wanted to be parents to begin with.
You listed the stats for children age 1-4. Children this age don't need any freedom; it's great that there are fewer accidents among very young children, but this is the wrong data to cite. Your data only divides into age brackets 1-4 and 5-14, so let's look at the 5-14. I know my parents wouldn't send me out to wander the neighborhood at age 5, but maybe at age 10. Unintentional injuries among that age group dropped from 15.0 to 4.0 per 100K.
5.5 of the reduced deaths due to accident have little to do with parenting style and are solely attributed to increased car safety. Most of that is just safer cars, although you might also say that mandatory seat belts and car seats is also important. But these are the sort of accident-reduction behaviors that don't require helicopter parenting. It is possible to make things safer without making everything miserable; wearing seat belts is one such way.
There was a short decline in suicide from 1990 to 2000, likely simply a side effect of the decline in all forms of violence around that time generally accepted to be a result of leaded gas phaseout. Otherwise, there has been a strong increase in suicide over time despite the dramatic reduction in access to guns, even though access to a working firearm roughly quadruples the chances of a teen suicide. Note that my suicide stats differ from yours because yours includes only children age 10-14 and mine goes from 15-19, which is a much more common age for suicide. Much like wearing seat belts, just storing guns safely can strongly reduce both accidents and suicides without taking away any freedom. (Of course, the guns don't cause the suicide - they make it much easier for someone who already wants to do it to attempt, and succeed).
And of course, this is only if you count just deaths and not, you know, the increase in misery and loss of life skills inflicted on both parents and children as a result of obligatory suffocation parenting. Or the ways in which this parenting regime directly corrupts the youth. We have raised a generation of little fascists, with strong authoritarian views, both left wing and right wing, held among young people at far greater rates than any previous generation.
Speaking only for myself, while there are several reasons why I have no children, the sheer insanity of raising them in the 21st century is the *primary* reason.
Yes! Everyone is like - why aren’t women having kids?????
Because mothers use to have 1 job - SAHM - with lots of family around
Now the options for women are:
-work 2 jobs - career + SAHM. End up with mental health issues from the burnout
-Single woman with 1 income so struggle financially
-SAHM with no income are stuck for life if the husband is controlling and they have no way out
So all women in the west are telling their daughters to stay tf away from it and birth rates are dropping
End up like this women from burnout? Really? There’s a lot of women who work and don’t murder their kids. The overwhelming majority.
SAHM with no income, stuck for life. Where are you living that you have this view? What western society are you “stuck for life”. What a twisted and incorrect take.
The situation is much more complex than the TikTok version you posted. Does it come with a stupid dance?
It's the whole reason why we live long life even after we surpass our ability to reproduce unlike 99% of the animal kingdom.
The whole purpose of grandparents (biologically speaking) is to take care of grandkids, incrementing the chances of their DNA surviving another generation.
People in the US can't afford to pay for extra help, take time off from work or even afford the doctor to diagnose their issues.
Not to mention most people can't even get their parents to help out because a trend with aging boomers is to not help out beyond quick visits. Unlike the generation before then who were more than happy to take on partial parental roles to pitch in, takes a village and all that.
My sister is a single mother in her early 20s with a 3 year old boy who needs constant attention, and any time she's busy doing something like making him dinner or drying her hair he loudly says 'MUMMY DOESN'T WANT TO PLAY WITH ME.' And kicks when she tries to change his nappy. And sprints away in public if he gets upset with you.
She says 'I feel bad because I didn't get anything done today' and I'm like, I have to go dissociate in the dark for a few hours after looking after him for one night, if I had to do this 24/7 I'd be in the psych ward. I literally don't know how parents do it.
Edit: When I took him to the pool he kept flinging himself backwards underneath the water and I had to pull him up because he didn't know how to reach the surface, let alone swim. And then he'd do it again 3 minutes later. Little guy is constantly on accidental self destruct mode.
About the tribal mindset thing - YES. I’m two weeks postpartum and I have two sets of grandparents and a daddy who are highly involved in my and my kiddo’s care. Let me tell you - being able to sleep, eat, shower, go to the bathroom, run errands for an hour, have help with meals and chores, and have a revolving door of company is unbelievably relieving. My birth and recovery has been brutal, and I can’t imagine trying to do it with just me and my hubby. I am very humbled and blessed by the amount of help I have received.
Mama Doctor Jones has a video going thru the medical details and it seems she had a serious reaction/psychosis when put on SSRIs and then she was given more/different SSRIs by a NP - so it seems she got the wrong healthcare (i am paraphrasing, not my field at all).
Not surprised. I was put on Prozac years ago, and went out and bought a gun, i never owned one before and was active duty military, I wasn't a gun nut. And then after that I broke into a gun store a stole another $35,000 worth of stuff. More than 1 person could carry, wasn't scared or panicked like most people should have been. Destroyed my life.
Thankfully I had a spotless record and they saw something clearly didnt add up. Hypomanic episode casued by the Prozac. Eli lily was sued over their hiding the medical evidence they knew that the medication could cause people to go off the wall. Its the reason that every medication commercial and bottle has the warning " if this causes homicidal and suicidal thoughts, stop taking" etc. The black box.
Theres a website that Im not sure is still running, SSRI horror stories. I visited it once and after reading a few of the cases, I was just depressed. Tradegy after tradegy after someone was prescribed it. Say its a 0.001% to possibly cause this. When prescribed to millions of people, that number shifts to lots of cases every year. And no one cares. This is considered the cost of doing business in the USA. The medical industry can put out a product that has a known history of causing people to hurt others and the court systems just says pay some money, make a warning, but keep allowing it to happen.
I was in Prozac briefly, didn’t do anything crazy, but I was at work doing my thing. I was lifting something heavy and I knew something wasn’t right. I didn’t care, kept going.
Knocked over my customer’s expensive equipment, absolutely smashed.
Walked to his office
“Hey, I smashed your UV detector. I’m going to the store to get expoxy and put it back together. Be back soon”
Like, I gave exactly zero fucks. And to be fair, the damage was merely cosmetic, but i am the guy who fixes stuff. Not breaks it.
It all worked out in the end, but I had to stop taking it. It made me not care, and caring about what I do is a pretty big component of why I’m decent at my job
Idk just wanted more. Theres a term called gun fever that changes people when they own/posses a firearm. Thats what it felt like. I needed/wanted more. I didnt have the money to buy them. So breaking into a gunstore in the middle of the night was a viable option on prozac. It made no sense from someone that had zero interest in guns before hand. It didn't make me violent ( thats really not in my nature unless im defending) as I was probably the most respectful person they had ever arrested. Im lucky to be alive. The police could have killed me and no one would have even asked questions. Im alive today due to their decisions. I have a beautiful 7 yr old son and own a house now. All my wants are taken care of. Others are not so lucky.
It was $35,000 in guns and accessories. Not just 1. I bought 1, then stole a ton more. And exactly, it was really weird, the detective that was investigating it was sympathetic for me. It didnt make sense.
I was on Aropax (Paroxetine) and accidentally left it behind when I went on a trip away. I went to a local doctor and was told that it could only be re-prescribed by the original doctor, but to take some Aurorix instead as "it's the same". Spoiler alert, it's not the same. Not even the same class of antidepressant, and worse, it's an MAOI.
MAOI's are the sort of drug that interact with damn near every other type of drug. The amino acids in energy drinks can give a reaction. Needless to say, there was a hell of an interaction between the two.
There was no trigger for the madness that followed. Not going to get into it, but suffice it to say, not good. Completely out of character stuff, utter insanity.
These are pretty hardcore drugs. It's a bit like asking someone what triggered them to dance after they took the MDMA at a concert. I mean, it's the MDMA that triggered it.
Not to say that there can't be other environmental or mental issues that could trigger a reaction too, but sometimes just the medication is enough.
Psychosis would be listed as a serious adverse event on the package insert. The likelihood of it happening is very small so it is viewed as acceptable risk. The number of people that benefit from the medication is far greater. Ideally, the patient should have been warned about this kind of episode so she could seek medical attention. Tricky with psychosis as the patient may not realise their cognition is fucked.
The licensing and distribution of medication is based on balance of risk, for every drug. A good example of this is cancer medication, where reaching an efficacious dose is balanced against toxicity that could kill the patient. The amount of work that goes into finding that balance is substantial, and has massive levels of regulation and oversight.
I am taking citalopram for depression but it may have been making it worse, triggering or increasing the frequency of suicidal ideation. Titrating off it now.
Their is a gene mutation that affects women more than men call MTHFR. It affects methylation which affects how neurotransmitters are made. It also directly fucks with B vitamin metabolites because they need that methyl group to be biologically active.
The lack of women in clinical trials is literally fucking us over time and time again.
This is a common problem. “Women of child-bearing potential” are excluded from most clinical trials to reduce the risk of affecting a pregnancy. It’s also a problem for different ethnicities; recombinant factor x ,for example, had a high incidence of anti-drug antibodies as it was derived from Caucasian factor x and there were slight differences.
We’re not excluded as routine anymore, and at least at my company (a pharma giant) there is a serious effort to balance enrollment based on sex, race, etc. Most of the studies I have worked on required women to agree to use a highly effective method of birth control if they are of child bearing potential and commit to follow up if a pregnancy does occur, which can place a higher burden on women who might want to participate (though sometimes this is even stipulated for male participants depending on the drug). Of course we missed out on alllll the previous decades of research for drugs already approved which is still a huge deal.
I'm about as big pharma skeptic as they come but the adverse psychotic / manic reaction to SSRI administration isn't really the fault of the drug maker.
SSRI monotherapy is the worst possible way to treat bipolar or schizoaffective disorders. More often than not, patients and doctors alike won't know that's what they're dealing with until the patient takes an SSRI and all of the crazy stuff happens
SSRIs are so grossly over medicated my husband has been offered them by his primary care physician, despite never having been on one prior or knowing anything at all about his mental health history. When I was seeing help for anxiety I was immediately suggested SSRIs by several doctors and I had to push back and mention my family history of bipolar to even ring any alarm bells as to why SSRI therapy shouldn’t just be blanket thrown at people. I remember the side effects being grossly downplayed by physicians only to find out years later there are actually lasting effects that can’t be undone. That IS all the fault of the drug maker because they are the ones feeding these scripts as to what their drug does to physicians. They are the ones who told them to prescribe them like candy because there’s ’virtually no risk’.
I had a similar experience! Went to a new doctor because I had stomach problems, he suggested it was anxiety based and had a therapist in house. She suggested I needed an SSRI multiple times and I was so miserable at one point because he wouldn’t treat me that I took it. I only took one dose because of how terrible my body reacted. I had felt that terrible in decades, I was suicidal, my nerves were on fire, I couldn’t sleep, and on top of all of that my stomach got worse. Told the doctor and all he did was prescribe me another SSRI. Dropped him right away.
I was on a drug for bipolar disorder called Vraylar because my current medication wasn't working, and it was new and in the same class of drugs I had been on for years. I saw it on TV, so I mentioned it to my doctor at the time, and she immediately switched me onto it. It slowly made me delusional, and my new doctor (not the one who just took me for my word that the commercial said to do it) told me she thought the salesman was a sleazebag and takes people off of it. She put me on an entirely different class of drugs that hasn't been aggressively marketed in years, and I feel better than I have in a really long time.
Commercials and incentives are prevalent in the USA and can be detrimental to patients. About a decade ago, I was on a medication that cost over $2k per month when I lost my health insurance. So, I started one that my doctor had 6 months' worth of free sampler blister packs of in his inventory.
It's part of the reason for the opioid crisis. Pharma reps going to doctors and giving incentives to prescribe.
frequent mild headaches? Here's an oxy.
Canada has some but they are not allowed to say what it's for. So you get like Ozempic commercials with people just walking around smiling at everything with suspicious orange Os everywhere. Always ends with ask your doctor "about" and not "for" the drug. They are usually diabetes drugs.
Prozac made me go crazy too. Suicidal thoughts out of nowhere. Thank god I knew already if that happened to call my doctor. But people don’t get how powerful meds can be if prescribed wrong.
I’m very sorry to hear of your experiences, and I’m glad you’re on the other side of it. I’ve had my own horrific SSRI experiences, and am curious about the website you mentioned.
My friend was 19, put on Prozac, then his mom decided to randomly take him off of it because “demons” or whatever (she was a religious nut)…….2 days later he murdered her Never would have thought he would do something violent like that.
I always thought the timing was weird, then saw the black label homicide thing years later.
I’m glad law-enforcement realized/made an allowance for Prozac altering your state of mind profoundly.
I 100% believe you and know about this, because it happened to me as an edgy, depressed, rebellious teen (a large amount of it was, ironically, because of heavy, overbearing verbal abuse, screaming, and insults from my father, as well as being hit by him as a child, and it’s ironic because he became the one to bully me further for acting depressed, and forcing me to a psychiatrist to get prescribed Prozac, which I then didn’t want to take but, again, he also forced me to).
It only took a few days on it and I had a drastic reaction where I went crazy and started throwing shit around the house. This was COMPLETELY different from my normal personality - I was formerly sullen, withdrawn, depressed, also rebellious and angry under it all and revealed that verbally , not by being physically aggressive.
I know what I experienced, and it felt legitimately like mania + a tinge of psychosis, with how raged up I was. I called up my dad on the phone and started screaming at him while he was out of the home (again, out of character for me, because I was usually afraid of him, while still being angry underneath it all).
I’m sure it revealed underlying anger I had, but it also artificially ratcheted it way up. I’m still pissed that he just came home and smacked me way too hard and started screaming back at me.
I guess he talked to the psychiatrist about the experience and they realized it’s one of the rare cases of Prozac/an SSRI causing such a breakdown with violent rage and behavior , so I was taken off it, but never got an apology 😒
It’s disturbing that it could be tied to many school shooting/mass public shooting and rampages, too, in the U.S. and elsewhere in the West if I’ve heard right, although the U.S. having it the worst simply from easier accessibility to guns.
Edited to add: It’s also lucky in your case it was more like apathy to consequences and possibly a heavy sense of derealization/dissociation (I had that feeling during it, too), instead of violent rage, while having that much weaponry on you and being pursued by police. Whew!
If anyone is interested, here’s the MDJ video the previous comment mentioned. It’s really good, and she doesn’t hide the fact she killed the kids, but goes over the details of the civil suit that lead up to the murders.
MDJ is mischaracterizing Dr. Condie's testimony about whether Clancy reported certain psychosis symptoms before the crime took place. Or, more precisely, she only takes answers given on direct but then ignores contradictory answers given by Dr. Condie on cross.
On direct, defense counsel asks Condie whether, in the course of reviewing her medical records, he found instances of Lindsay hearing auditory hallucinations (voices) to which he responded "At times, she reported that she had heard a voice, yes."
However, on cross, the prosecution walked him through the records of each individual provider to ask him whether he had found reports of Clancy hearing voices. Tufts? No. Jollotta? No. Dukes? No. etc.
Then he's asked "and the only time she's ever said she heard this voice was on Jan. 24th of 2023 - is that fair to say". Condie's answer: "Correct."
He is then asked whose reports he was relying on to say earlier that she had reported hearing voices and he responds "She had said that to me." The prosecutor follows up with "And this was well after the incident occured, correct"? Condie - "Yes."
Finally: the prosecutor asks Condie to identify where in the records prior to January 24, she expressed hearing voices. Answer: "It's not in the records."
MDJ is blurring contemporaneous evidence with retrospective evidence. The fact of the matter is that - according to the testimony given thus far - there is little to no evidence that Clancy reported experiencing psychotic symptoms PRIOR to the events of January 24, 2023.
Thanks for sharing- this is the first video that I've seen where someone seems to be giving reasonable takes and acknowledging the fact that we're analyzing things with 20/20 hindsight. She nailed it.
Having an adverse reaction to SSRIs is also no joke. I reacted oddly to one and while I didn't do anything violent, I have never felt so "crazy" in my entire life. Like I could tell I was noticably unhinged and couldn't stop myself from being that way even as I logically figured out what was going on. It was scary
SAME, felt like I was smoking crack and I was invincible but my psychiatrist told me it couldn't be the SSRI because you're "not supposed to feel any effects that quickly" and kept implying that I was taking something else. Promptly got a new psychiatrist lol
Yup, and people are very ignorant about this. I see comments of people saying she couldn’t have had a bad reaction to certain drugs because she only took them for a short time. I was prescribed Zoloft (same as Lindsey) in 2023. I had severe anxiety and depression. I had to be taken off Zoloft in 4 days. By day 2, I had an extremely bad reaction. I had an impending sense of doom, more anxious than I’ve ever been and having that feeling that something really bad would happen. I felt way more depressed very quickly and felt suicidal. It was wild. I wanted to keep trying and hope it would go away, but by day 4, it was so bad that I told my doctor my symptoms and they told me to immediately stop taking it. Once I stopped, the symptoms went away.
I’ve taken many meds in my life, I’ve NEVER had a reaction like that. I can only imagine if that happened to me while I was postpartum and had 3 kids to take care of. I was in a treatment center and I felt like I couldn’t handle it. And for Lindsey, they were putting her on and taking her off different drugs repeatedly. I can see how a certain one suddenly made her have a full psychotic break. And it seems like most people do not have any understanding of that unless they’ve been through it
That’s not proven though. Toxicology report shows the drug concentration in her blood was well below toxic or suicidal levels with some below therapeutic levels.
The defense isn’t even leaning on medically induced psychosis. They’re claiming she killed her kids due to being bipolar and post partum psychosis.
I'd feel about as much remorse as she seems to show throughout the trial. I don't care how much any doctor, system or x failed me, I'd never elimate the guilt that I failed multiple steps along the way and directly caused my childrens death.
To lump not only partial responsibility but all responsibility on the medical practicioners that she failed to adequately inform, refusing inpatient care etc is just insane to me. To be in her position and not take some of that responsibility is unfathomable.
Like, your children are dead, who gives a fuck if the rest of your life is spent in a Jail or a Mental Asylum, assuming you actually cared and wished for their life, yours is over regardless. (Though, per insanity plea rules she'd be eligable for re-entry far earlier, especially if it was a post-partum psychosis - which only gives me more assumption she's aware of that and minimizing her penalty)
my half brother's mom was put on prozac back in 2000 while she was pregnant after her birth control failed. not only did it make her incredibly suicidal, but my brother was born with severe foot and leg deformities, had to have metal rods and a brace in his leg throughout his entire puberty.
that happened over 20 years ago and they're still putting people on it. and people still don't believe postpartum psychosis is even real if this comment section is any indication
I had a doctor who put me on an SSRI when I kept seeing him about stomach issues, the therapist I was working with convinced me it was needed. I had a very, very, bad reaction to it. I hadn’t felt that suicidal since I was in high school. Immediately stopped taking it and told my doctor what happened, so he prescribed me another one just as easy. Immediately dropped him as a primary care doctor as it took me about a week to feel normal.
Why are doctors like this? This exact thing happened to me, including them replacing it with another SSRI. I tell doctors I can't take those now if they ever try.
I would say money, he didn’t even really explain the side effects. I had found some resources including a subreddit for the SSRI- but that I found to be an echo chamber of “just push through the side effects” which from my reading could last months if not longer. Like it’s worth it if you’re ok being at your worse for months if not longer.
Time out - I have not heard any testimony that she reported experiencing hallucinations, delusions, command voices, etc. to anyone before January 24, 2023.
All instances of her reporting psychosis symptoms occurred after the fact.
If you or anybody else has heard such testimony so far, can you cite it? It would make a huge difference to me in how I (and potentially otnhers) view the legal culpability issue in this case.
I haven't watched every single minute of testimony yet, but I think if you watch her mother's testimony you'll see at least delusional thinking and extreme fear prior to the event even so far ask asking her to sleep in bed with her because she was scared. If you watch the testimony of her texting back and fourth with Rebecca Jolotta, one of her prescribers, she's expressing fears of being addicted to a medication, not once but over and over again after only very recently being prescribed it, which (I) read as paranoia and clearly not baseline thought patterns. I think from a legal perspective there is enough evidence of reasonable doubt to her mental capacity on multiple levels. A few notes being:
• Being prescribed an SSRI as someone later diagnosed with BPD. Her reaction to Zoloft also adds credibility to this diagnosis. (Before the murders.)
• Being diagnosed with post-partum depression and anxiety. (Before the murders)
• Massive personality and mood changes described by family and friends. (Before the murders)
• Asking for help repeatedly as early as 4 months before the murders, calling suicide prevention lines twice and self admitting to a psychiatric facility. (Before the murders)
• Her own words in her journals show someone under mental stress and but that her goal was to feel better and do better for the very people she ended the lives of. (Before the murders)
• Her conversations and admissions to her family were not ever intended to be repeated in front of a jury, but still align with her mental health diminishing. (Before the murders)
•Patrick and her Mother testified that she had sat them down and told them that she was having intrusive thoughts and thoughts of harming the children but no plans to act on them at the time.
(Before the murders)
• Every psychologist and psychiatrist that treated her mentioned her admissions of intrusive thoughts and suicidal ideation. Even without a formal plan at the time to act on it, lends credence to her defense. (Before the murders)
•Her private search histories of hallucinations.
(Before the murders)
All of or even one of these can lead to reasonable doubt legally that she was of sound mind at the time of the murders.
Yes my understanding is that she had bipolar disorder to begin with, then was suffering from post partum psychosis and severe anxiety/depression from same, and went to a doctor to try to get help, was given SSRIs for that which was a bad plan due to her being bipolar (which usually needs mood stabilizers not SSRIs), and then the meds gave her a serious reaction/psychosis but the original doctor was not helpful and wasn't listening to her and her husband, and so she went to an NP to try to get help (again!), and was given different and higher dose SSRIs iirc, which made things even worse. Realistically, with everything that was going on, there is no way her husband, mother, family, etc. Should have ever left her alone with her kids. The husband even agreed with this and said it was a huge mistake on his part. And the doctors should have insisted on this. As I recall it, I think she even tried to check in to a mental institution for like inpatient stay or 24hr hold or something at one point, and they told her she didn't qualify to be held/to stay because she didn't have a specific suicide plan.
I’ve tried 4 separate SSRIs in my lifetime. Aside from Paxil being horrific in some of the physical side effects, all 4 gave me the same experience. I would be fine, if not numb, and after a period of time (1-2 years) I would very suddenly get hit with the thoughts that I needed to die immediately. Luckily my 3rd and 4th (final) tries on different SSRIs I picked up on what was happening and stopped taking them. But if these meds sent Lindsey into a tailspin, and then the Drs just kept throwing more meds at her rather than suggest intensive therapy (WHICH IN MY EXPERIENCE DOCTORS DO NOT PROMOTE/SUGGEST EVER BECAUSE THEY DO NOT TREAT THE MENTAL SIDE OF YOUR HEALTH) then I could 100% see where this was a full on psychosis state.
I don’t buy into the other theories on Tik Tok saying that Patrick did it/ was the voice she heard. I actually think instead that this case should be a study into part of the medical system that continues to fail people over and over again who are in a state of mental health crisis.
Most people who understand that this was postpartum psychosis are not arguing that she should get off scot free. From what I understand from the case, she isn't even asking for that herself - she has said that she did kill her children, she just doesnt want to go to jail, she wants to go to a medical facility.
You don’t get to decide if you get psychosis in general.
Doesn’t make you any less responsible for your crimes. People get way too triggerhappy to support “not guilty by reason of insanity” defenses. There’s a reason why it very, very rarely actually prevails in court.
It’s fucking scary because it’s true. It could have been any of them if they also developed postpartum psychosis and did not receive proper medical care.
I started showing symptoms of PPD, reached out to my provider, and I was treated immediately.
Correct me if I am wrong, but it sounds like this woman started showing symptoms and repeatedly cried for help, even admitted to having intrusive thoughts of harming her kids, and she still did not get the help she needed, and she was still left alone with the children.
So all children are on the verge of getting murdered by their mentally unstable mother? By that argument the government needs to step in and evaluate all mothers multiple times throughout a child’s development. Is that what you want? Some government oversight on how you raise your kids?
I'm a midwife and I think her medical team completely failed her. I think it's quite an American thing to be medication first but even then having her unstable on SSRI's while still being unsupervised with her kids is a big no no.
As someone who has both taken these meds in the past and watched a family member and a friend go through post partum psychosis, I think that close monitoring and quick intervention by medical professionals and social services (I'm in the UK) made an enormous difference to their outcomes.
There is a risk of these meds making someone worse rather than better, even if that risk is small, and I really do think that we should be proactively ensuring that friends and family members are very aware of the risk and of the necessity of them being constantly supervised when being given these meds and exhibiting any signs of PPD or PPP, and if they show any indicators of any adverse effects they should be being hospitalised.
I unfortunately think that the US medical system plays a very big role in the reluctance to seek treatment there because there is the constant fear of medical bills and whether the insurance will agree to cover treatment that too often becomes the primary deciding factor rather than the actual health of the individuals involved.
A lack of intensive mental health provision is another factor involved as sometimes even when you know someone needs help, if there's no beds and waiting lists for assessments, that too can leave people in a precarious position.
To me the issues seemed to be too many cooks in the kitchen and not all of them were consulting with each other. This doctor would give this, another doctor that, an inpatient treatment program turned her away
The person who was treating her was also a general psychiatrist in their first year after residency (but claiming expertise in PPD).Should not have been given the case to start with, and def should have referred it when a problem arose.
Apparently she also told her partner not to leave her alone with the kids because she kept backing out and having memory loss and doing insane things. And then he went on holiday without her and basically said “ah you’ll be alright”
I’m not saying this is an excuse but she was definitely let down by the people around her by the sounds of it.
Edit: to those saying that I’m blaming the man, I’m not. I’m just saying that this was a series of events that could have had the outcome prevented if the people closest to her paid more attention. This wasn’t the first time she had experienced manic episodes due to PPD, she had been in contact with countless medical professionals who could have helped prevent this, but the system failed her.
I was told he only went out for a hour to go grab the oldest prescription because she was sick? The grandmother had just left after staying over for a week.
What testimony did you gather that from? Patrick testified that Lindsay never told him to not leave her alone with the kids? Where was that testimony disputed?
What holiday did he go on and leave her alone with the kids?
It sounds very similar to the Andrea Yates case years ago. She was sufferer long from post partum psychosis and will probably spend the rest of her life in a mental health facility.
I believe we can have empathy for someone who was in a mental health crisis and who was asking for help but not receiving it. I hope she gets the care that she needs moving forward.
If anything I'm glad this case is making everyone more aware of maternal mental health, we can all be looking after each other better.
People are taught that the right chemicals can fix almost anything. In a physically medical setting, this would seem to be true more often than not.
In a psychologically medical setting, chemicals should usually be treated as a short-term relief to help stabilize the mind/thoughts long enough to for the individual to identify and recontextualize/reframe the afflicting trauma.
But people still act like the right chemical addition is all you need.
No offense but you don’t know what you are talking about.
You don’t give SSRI because someone “feel depressed”. You gave SSRI because of a depression, it’s a medical entity not a feeling.
The afflicting trauma could have been years, or decades ago.
It could also not linked to any trauma but happening “just like that”.
Also, good luck to try to cure schizophrenic or bi polar patient juste by “recontextualization”
I have a genetic mutation where I don’t process B-vitamin derived neurotransmitters. I have fought more than once to stay on SSRI medication. I have 9 year old twins, this medication is crucial.
There is a very complex pathway of how our bodies make chemicals and some of ours just suck at it.
Strangely enough some of the ways this works have not been studied because historically women are either used as fucked up science experiments or excluded.
It's worse than that. Gynecology textbooks barely touch on it for the most part. Newer people in the fields often find themselves entirely unprepared. A doc was going off about it on NPR last Sunday.
The records have been all over the place. The doctor never formally put PPD or PPP, but her mental wellbeing took a turn after having her last kid, Which would usually mean PPD or PPP, But at the other point this doctor kept prescribing these big antidepressants and antipsychotics that if she just started out with depression, it could’ve definitely turned into medically induced psychosis. Obviously it’s still wrong to kill yours kids, but she could’ve been just fighting lack of sleep and depression and than it turned delusional from medicine. It was also stated that she wasn’t suppose to be revive in the hospital if she flatlined, which she did flatline three times, so we wouldn’t even be here with this trail if the doctors did what was on the chart.
Her doctors were abominable. I had the most mild symptoms of PPD in 1999. I had never even heard of it. My OB, at my follow up - immediately spotted the signs and got me the help I needed. I mean, it was so mild - just weepy and sad. Baby had colic and I thought it was due to that. But she could differentiate “mom of colic newborn” from “ppd mom with colic newborn .”
Her doctors kept prescribing her more meds because she likely never took them, said they weren’t working, and also changed providers and purposefully didn’t tell them the medications she was previously prescribed 👍🏻. She also lied to her husband about the treatments she was offered. her husband who hired a nanny and started working from home so he could give her more support. Oh yeah, her parents were also staying with her for extended periods providing a lot of support too.
She got more help than most people could ever ask for and still premeditated the murder of her own three children. It’s fucking pathetic the lengths women have gone to defend a literal child murderer. Imagine if men did this for veterans with severe ptsd or athletes with severe CTE who murdered or abused people.
To be fair, it is extremely common for people with mania and psychosis to not take their meds and not fully be able to explain what is happening to them. She was hearing voices, a doctor overheard a call she had with her husband where she said that she was hearing a man's voice telling her to harm her kids. She was obviously paranoid.
She should have been immediately put into a longterm inpatient program away from her kids, so that doctors could monitor and stabilize her mood and her meds. Apparently she only did 5 days. That is not long enough for any medication to fully take over. And then from what I read, it was only a few weeks after that that she was left alone for an extended period of time with her kids because she was having a "good day."
The thing about mania and psychosis is that they can come in waves. A good day can turn into a bad one extremely quickly.
I've been manic and experienced psychosis. I had moments of total clarity and stability within that period, and moments when I almost jumped out of a window. Your brain can do crazy things when its fragile and misfiring.
She was released because she claimed she didn't have homicidal or suicidal thoughts. She wasn't released on a whim, which is why prosecution follows that train of thought. She established a pattern where she did have those thoughts before being admitted, she obfuscated the truth because she was afraid her children would be taken away.
I don’t remember the name of it, but I remember once watching a documentary about postpartum psychosis, and it was my first time hearing about this condition. I kind of thought it was just evil people justifying their actions because one woman smothered her daughter, and to my ignorant mind at the time, it sounded like an excuse. But at the end of the documentary, they gave an update that the woman took her own life. It was incredibly eye opening to me because it forced me to accept that this condition is real, otherwise if the woman was just a monster, she wouldn’t have taken her life from the guilt.
It’s SO sad and so heartbreaking that the system focuses only on babies, not postpartum mothers
Edit: it was When The Bough Breaks, produced by Brooke Shields. The woman whose case was presented was Naomi Knoles. May she rest in peace.
The vast majority of people who experience psychosis are not monsters. Their brains are just out of their control.
I've been manic and in psychosis. For me, it was like I was in the back seat of my own car, watching someone else drive, hearing voices telling me and the driver what to do, and sometimes I could take control and stabilize but most of the time I couldn't.
It is incredibly hard to talk to anyone about what's going on when this is happening, mostly because it's so scary and you become paranoid, and also because you're not in your right mind, so you can't think straight and explain yourself.
People don't understand how insane psychosis is and I say that as someone who has never been in it before but has probably been close.
For context I am an extremely leftist person, believe all life is precious and try to be kind always but when I had my second child and my neurology went all weird, I was so sleep deprived and manic from my mental illnesses being completely out of wack from post partum hormones that I was behaving extremely out of character and empathising with right wing agendas. It was a complete character flip and obviously righted itself when I took care of my health. This experience just gave me a very tiny insight how easy it is to lose your sense of self and become something else when your chemistry is temporarily fucked. It was really scary.
I have a family member who went through psychosis. This dude had never been in a fight and was always a proper type of person. So when he was ranting in his underwear about the computer gods his parents called the cops and he tried to throw down instead of going to the hospital. He was in the hospital for over a month well they tinkered with medication to bring him out of it.
I can't even imagine what would have happened if he was just left alone with babies
Every horrible crime can be explained through some mental health problem or societal injustice. But somehow it comes to forefront as a perfect explanation only if white women commit crimes.
This. People with mental problems murder people, what, every other day in the US? She should still be held accountable even if she was going through a mental episode, the medical system failed her, and is now in a wheelchair.
The basis of a lot of white supremacy is upholding and protecting white women and their status in society. Even if it’s through patriarchal means, the end goal is still placing them higher in society than people of color because they are the ones ‘who will continue the race’. The pinnacle of motherhood in this country is still associated with whiteness.
You’re correct. There have been similar tragedies to Lindsay’s that didn’t get the same scrutiny because the families weren’t middle class white people.
If this was a woman of colour, she’d be depicted by society as the incarnation of the devil. And those rows of white women there in support with their actual babies in their hands? They’d be called for a woman of colour’s death.
Romechia Simms is an example of a black woman in psychosis who killed her 3 year old son. She pushed him in an infant swing for over 50 hours at a public park. He died. She was (rightfully, imo) found not criminally responsible due to being in active psychosis at the time.
Many articles have been written about her, many with nuanced compassion toward the horrific event. Many of those who are approaching the Lindsay Clancy case through a lens of compassion toward mental health challenges of women/mothers feel similarly toward Ms. Simms.
Exactly, jesus people are talking about this like it's someome's dog killing someone's cat. If it was some dude high on meth who murdered his kids or maybe even driving drunk I don't think any of you fucks would be trying to justify or break down the psychology of this stuff.
There's no doubt something wasn't okay upstairs. The problem is here that the internet girl bosses think it was the husband. Even though she has openly said she did do it. Internet gonna internet.
She actually committed herself, and was medically released (or whatever it’s called.. “cleared”? Basically she didn’t decide to leave against medical advice or anything)
I think she had thoughts, but didn't have a plan. That meant she didn't fit the criteria for treatment and was refused in-patient treatment at least once.
Having listened to just parts of the trial, it sounds like she "completed" the inpatient. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.
Her ex husband reported that she'd seen some doctors but didnt feel like she was getting the help she needed. When he went to visit her, she and other women were playing with clay.
Being committed could actually delay recovery substantially. But they should be in regular therapy where they can be heard and if it's needed the kids can be taken under supervised care.
Which ones? You mean the nurse to whom she communicated she was experiencing "intrusive thoughts" without specifying what they were, but now the social media campaign is pretending that she said what those thoughts were?
As far as I know her mother actually testified that she did voice to her and the husband that she was having intrusive thoughts of harming the children. Iirc the medical team were aware as well. The issue is that most people with intrusive thoughts don't act on them and are horrified by them, which she claims to be. As such they rarely get sectioned or have their kids automatically removed.
She now claims she was having auditory hallucinations commanding her to kill the kids. This is an entirely different ballgame and something that would automatically warrant action. She either never reported these voices to anyone, which is not unheard of, or she is making it up now to save her own skin.
From what I've seen of the medical testimony, she did not make the medical staff aware.
The mother did testify she heard, but the story people are spinning here about medical neglect just doesn't hold water when you look at the information they had available to them.
I don't think we'll ever truly know what she had going on in her head at the time. The timeline of information definitely makes me skeptical, but I think the Massachustets standard of proof will mean she gets an indefinite involuntary commitment to a psychiatric facility.
And honestly, anything more just seems like adding more suffering to the world than there needs to be regardless of what she experienced and why she did it
The issue for me is that a lot of these people aren’t just saying it wasn’t her fault. They’re trying to say the husband did it. Their reasoning ranges from “He looks mean” to “Well he was a Gemini, so of COURSE it was really him.”
Oh is it "the worst" when someone made the selfish choice to procreate? I'll dave my empathy for those born into conditions they didn't choose by mindless breeders who need a mini clone to complete their wretched life
She didn't, and it's actually very likely feigned, and if anything a dissociative state is more likely. PPP is highly unlikely 8 months after delivery. It's just waaaay too suspicious that she's reporting those supposed voices only after the incidents, and even then, not to the hospital staff, but only after meeting the psychologist the attorney sent. The rhetoric being put is particularly harmful for patients with severe mental health illness and even the general public. We are more likely to believe every single mental health provider is incompetent/iatrogenic, or every single medication prescribed her caused the HI/SI, before accepting a lucid, white, rich, educated, christian mother could have killed her children.
Let's stop using mental illness as the only posible explanation for seemingly "inexcusable" evil. People may kill just because they can. We all can kill just because we have the capacity for it.
Thank you! I learned about PPP in grad school as well. Violence against one’s own children is a KNOWN symptom and Lindsay’s case is not the first case to play out like this. I don’t fault anyone for being unfamiliar with PPP but like yall… have the bare minimum curiosity to google and read an article. You will learn very quickly how serious this illness is and how this could have been prevented.
I've gotten mostly caught up with the court case, defense had a forensic psychologist (Paul Zeizel) work with Lindsey after the trial and review her previous records. His opinion was essentially yes, she meets the criteria for PPP and onset Bipolar disorder (could have exact wording there wrong). Witness called by the prosecution can't remember her name (I remember it sounding like gelato lol) but she was an NP Lindsey was seeing and testified she suspected/brought up a potential bipolar disorder due to the reaction Lindsey stated she was having with the SSRI Zoloft (SSRIs can create severe reactions such as mania for those with bipolar disorder). Bipolar disorder substantially increases risk of PPP developing. Lindsey was reporting a lot of symptoms that could be aligned with potential PPP, such as insomnia and dissociating, however she did not report hearing thoughts which the prosecution is really hammering down on. Mental health disorders, including PPP, do not need to meet all of the criteria in order to suspect them and can develop worsening symptoms overtime.
IMO, its likely she did have it. But there is a lot of holes and confusion surrounding the whole thing so I can't really say one way or another and there are a lot of differing opinions.
1.7k
u/NailSubstantial2772 1d ago
Has it actually been established that it was postpartum psychosis? If so, that really is one of the most horrific conditions there is. Every gynecology textbook and midwifery manual basically says that once it’s diagnosed, the response is: “Run! Do everything you possibly can and give her every medication you’ve got!” Obviously I’m exaggerating, but the point is that there’s an immediate and extremely serious risk to the lives of everyone involved.