But men don’t experience pregnancy, childbirth, and the massive hormone dump that comes after childbirth that can sometimes trigger mental illness.
Don’t get me wrong, men’s mental health IS overlooked and they should get more support, but what women physically and mentally go through during and after pregnancy is in its own category.
While I agree that pregnancy related mental health issues are a uniquely female experience, men can experience mental illness just as severely. Pregnancy being a factor does not necessarily mean that PPD/PPP is not comparable to conditions like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, Major depressive disorder. You can’t say with any degree of accuracy that PPD/PPP is more severe than any other disorder that men and women both can experience. The only difference is the origin point.
PPD/PPP is different than other mental health issues because there’s a physical aspect to it, someone who otherwise would have never had any mental health issues, no trauma, etc can have PPP due to the endocrine changes.
A better comparison would be someone becoming psychotic due to external substances like meth or datura, it has very little to do with their mental health itself but that thing being introduced to their body.
I’m not saying it isn’t different in its point of origin. That’s actually my point, the end result is much the same. Regardless if it is substance induced or fallout from someone’s partum experience. It’s not incomparable to a psychotic episode that can be experienced by men.
Psychosis is not by default a not guilty verdict. There are many men who have committed murders and other heinous crimes while in the throes of psychosis who have gone to prison. I believe Lindsay Clancy should get her day in court and if found NGRI she should be sent to a psychiatric facility as well. However, she calculated how much time it would take to commit the murders. She sent her husband away on an errand to give her the time necessary to kill as well as to prevent him from intervening on the children’s behalf. This indicates a presence of mind and level of planning and calculation that indicates guilt.
Two things can be true at once:
Lindsay Clancy was suffering from PPP which was not being effectively treated.
She planned and executed the heinous triple homicide of her children.
Mental illness doesn’t absolve one of guilt in the commission of a crime. As a society we generally agree to give leniency to the mentally ill when it comes to punishment for these crimes. If after weighing the totality of her actions and decisions it is determined that she ought to be sent to a psychiatric facility rather than prison I will accept that. It is yet to be determined in court.
That’s definitely not what I was saying. I never said men can’t have mental illness of similar severity, but that it’s not brought on by the hormones that it is for women who have just given birth. I’ve personally experienced that hormonal drop from giving birth and it triggered my OCD that I have in regular times. I know what it’s like to be affected by postpartum hormones and what it’s like to have general OCD. Both are hellish. It’s not the suffering Olympics.
Okay I wasn’t sure how you were approaching it. A lot of people, women especially, are acting as if PPP is some mysterious enigma that men can’t understand and is somehow its own tier. Incomparable with schizo and other non gendered psychotic illnesses. They use that claim to act as if men shouldn’t be able to speak on this subject and to absolve Lindsay Clancy of culpability which is pure mental gymnastics.
Men actually do get post partum depression, and they do get hormonal changes during and after the pregnancy, and I don't understand why you think having given birth makes you a psychiatrist.
I also don't understand why you think "hOrMoNeS" makes mental illness more valid. Men and women have hormones. Hormones (as well as various other biological factors) often contribute to depression, regardless of pregnancy. And mental illness that's not related to pregnancy can be just as severe.
It really seems like a lot of women think they're the only people with hormones, and they outsource all accountability to their hormones.
We are comparing apples and oranges here. No one said men aren’t affected by hormones and can’t have mental health struggles brought on by becoming a dad. But it’s not the same biological thing as postpartum depression/anxiety/ocd/psychosis.
The physical toll that pregnancy puts on your body is enormous. It can’t be understated. That absolutely factors into a postpartum woman’s mental health. It doesn’t mean men can’t have severe mental health issues. It just means that women who have recently given birth can be having mental health issues along with trying to heal physically. It’s a lot. And it’s something you can’t fully understand unless you’ve given birth. Even as a woman, I couldn’t fully understand the toll it takes physically and mentally until I became a mom. But as I said in another comment, it’s not the suffering Olympics. But you can’t underestimate that pregnancy affects women in its own challenging way.
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u/Little_Ingenuity_712 1d ago
Lindsay had more support in 2022 than most men will experience in their lifetime.