Andrea Yates

[starfish]

Rusty should have absolutely been charged with child endangerment. This is the same as leaving your kids with a known pedophile and then acting shocked when they are sexually abused. It's a felony in TX and he should have been hauled in front of the Grand Jury and indicted. The Harris County D.A.'s office dropped the ball on it or they were cowards about it.

Rusty was presumably an intelligent professional; besides that, he had a legal duty to his children, not just a moral one.

He completely failed Andrea and the kids. His failure to protect the kids rose to the level of a criminal offense.

I've heard word from some of the staff at both mental institutions Andrea has been incarcerated (not recently, just over the years) that she has to be kept in solitary at all times due to threats from the other women inmates. I find that interesting; usually the women leave each other alone. I won't comment on Andrea's mental illness; I just can't get over the suffering of her children. Glad it wasn't my case.

[lizzy]

I'm not all that familiar with the Yates case, but can someone answer this: If Andrea was so mentally unstable, why was she not institutionalized for treatment?

[amydamy]

Cases where psychotic episodes lead to killing sprees are much more likely to make the news than cases where psychotic breaks lead to spending sprees, hiding in the house, running away from home, or being obsessively nice to people. This should be fairly self-evident.

Mind, I don't have the actual statistics to hand about what the likely result of a psychotic break will be, but I try to remember, in all discussions, that "if it bleeds, it leads". Commercial media is, by its nature, inclined to sensationalism.

Part of it is also people having a psychotic episode tend to self harm first, Andrea Yates was scratching bald spots in her head, the self harm hopefully leads to help. Andrea Yates break with reality happen well before she killed her children the problem was she didn't get the help she needed if she had none of us would know who she was.

[amydamy]

I'm not all that familiar with the Yates case, but can someone answer this: If Andrea was so mentally unstable, why was she not institutionalized for treatment?

She was a few weeks before hand and had been several times before. She was released too early. The treatment center she was in the last time did not have her full medical history and didn't know she had a history of postpartum psychosis, apparently at the time she was basically catatonic and wasn't answering questions for herself , Rusty was answering for her. The Dr was treating her for PPD and when she became less catatonic released her and told her family to not leave her alone.

I think there may have been issues with her insurance running out as well. I was hospitalized as a teenager, because I had actually attempted suicide I got to stay in longer than people. I do think it's weird when I came out I had out patient treatment everyday for a while that gradually dropped to once a month over the course of a year and a half. From what I read she did have some out patient treatment but not a lot.

[lizzy]

She was a few weeks before hand and had been several times before. She was released too early. The treatment center she was in the last time did not have her full medical history and didn't know she had a history of postpartum psychosis, apparently at the time she was basically catatonic and wasn't answering questions for herself , Rusty was answering for her. The Dr was treating her for PPD and when she became less catatonic released her and told her family to not leave her alone.

I think there may have been issues with her insurance running out as well. I was hospitalized as a teenager, because I had actually attempted suicide I got to stay in longer than people. I do think it's weird when I came out I had out patient treatment everyday for a while that gradually dropped to once a month over the course of a year and a half. From what I read she did have some out patient treatment but not a lot.

Got it...thanks.

[valsa]

Just stopping an effective and potentially life-saving medication is a little crazy in itself, and it is not something that a neurotypical person will generally do.

Do you know how many people taking medication for high blood pressure stop when they feel better or get a few low blood pressure readings (once the medication is working)? Are they all non-neurotypical? Don't conflate ignorance with mental illness.

If Andrea was suffering from mental illness when she stopped taking her meds (everything I found about people with mental illness who stop taking their meds because of said mental illness (apparently, usually because they have a condition that makes them unable to realize they are mentally ill) involved damage to the frontal lobes of their brain that I can't find in Post Partum Psychosis), it does lessen her culpability some. Granted, I haven’t seen clear proof that this was the case but I’m willing to entertain the possibility. However, even in that situation, she's still responsible (to a lesser degree) because she, at some point, chose to stay in the situation that caused her illness in the first place (married to Rusty and popping out kids) Post Partum Psychosis is a unique mental illness because you can somewhat control having it by whether or not you choose to have another child.

[amydamy]

Do you know how many people taking medication for high blood pressure stop when they feel better or get a few low blood pressure readings (once the medication is working)? Are they all non-neurotypical? Don't conflate ignorance with mental illness.

If Andrea was suffering from mental illness when she stopped taking her meds (everything I found about people with mental illness who stop taking their meds because of said mental illness (apparently, usually because they have a condition that makes them unable to realize they are mentally ill) involved damage to the frontal lobes of their brain that I can't find in Post Partum Psychosis), it does lessen her culpability some. Granted, I haven’t seen clear proof that this was the case but I’m willing to entertain the possibility. However, even in that situation, she's still responsible (to a lesser degree) because she, at some point, chose to stay in the situation that caused her illness in the first place (married to Rusty and popping out kids) Post Partum Psychosis is a unique mental illness because you can somewhat control having it by whether or not you choose to have another child.

She actually had a history of mental illness going back to her teenage years, at the time she was told to not have any more kids she was well past the point where she had the ability to leave her husband.

And people stop taking meds all the time I have done it several times in my life and only stopped after I accepted I would be on medication for the rest of my life. Some people never get there. I've never heard it reference in relation to damage to the frontal lobe. Most of the time it's attributed to the fact that the medication does it's job and people feel the no longer need it, they dislike the side effects or some people just don't want to take meds. Managing medication for mental illness is a never ending merry go round, I've never had anything work for more than three years I have trouble realizing my medication isn't working as well and I need a change. If I didn't have an excellent support system I could easily regress.

[brigid]

That is just horrific. The lack of imagination and compassion shown by those who only condemn this woman boggles my mind.

[valsa]

She actually had a history of mental illness going back to her teenage years, at the time she was told to not have any more kids she was well past the point where she had the ability to leave her husband.

I think that's a bit simplistic. Technically, I have a history of mental illness going back to childhood but it's not something that prevents me from being able to make decisions or leave a bad relationship. I think we have to consider very carefully before we try to take someone's agency completely away from them and decide, for them, what they just aren't capable of doing.

And people stop taking meds all the time I have done it several times in my life and only stopped after I accepted I would be on medication for the rest of my life. Some people never get there. I've never heard it reference in relation to damage to the frontal lobe. Most of the time it's attributed to the fact that the medication does it's job and people feel the no longer need it, they dislike the side effects or some people just don't want to take meds. Managing medication for mental illness is a never ending merry go round, I've never had anything work for more than three years I have trouble realizing my medication isn't working as well and I need a change. If I didn't have an excellent support system I could easily regress.

I'm not quite sure what this paragraph is in reference to, so I'll recap a bit. Much earlier in the thread, we were discussing whether someone who is mentally ill is responsible if they go off their meds, relapse, and hurt someone. I believe that if someone is sane at the time they choose to go off their meds, they're responsible even if they were insane at the time they committed the crime. Some people here disagreed with me because they feel that not taking medication is a symptom, in itself, of the mental illness and thus something people with some mental illnesses cannot control. It turns out all of us are correct, to some degree. Many people who are mentally ill stop taking medication because they feel better or because the side effects are too severe. I would consider those people responsible if they stop the meds, relapse, and hurt someone. However, there are some mentally ill people who have a condition (associated with frontal lobe damage) that makes them unable to realize they are sick and so do not take the medication because, well, why would you ?take medication you thought you didn't need? I would not consider those people responsible if they stopped taking their meds. However, I cannot see any evidence that Andrea had the frontal lobe damage associated with these mental illnesses or that she, prior to actually being psychotic, didn’t think she was sick.

As I said before, you can't have it both ways. Either mentally ill people (ones who are not acutely psychotic) are competent and capable of making decisions, and thus capable of being held responsible for those decisions (in which case they should be treated like everyone else and not have their agency taken away like children), or they are not (and they should probably all be at some facility being looked after) I personally prefer the former to the latter.

[Arielkay]

It's not just that she was mentally ill, but she was a mentally ill person living in a fundie household. The hold that a strict authoritarian church can have on people is staggering. So you've already got someone who's not well, who has had many children in fast succession with little support, and whose own husband doesn't believe she needs meds. That's a big thing in many churches - you don't need meds. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps, etc. And as far as the "Oh she could have left anytime, she chose to stay, she chose to get off her meds" - oh really? If you really, truly believed that you would burn in hellfire eternally if you divorced your husband or failed to obey his commands - would you do it? Really?

It's just a sad case all around. But I hate it when people so lightly dismiss mental illness or the hold these religious nuts have over other people. It's frightening. You want just one example, check out the website for the ex-church of christ. There are hundreds of traumatized people there, and this is not the most extreme of the fundie churches! I think a lot of these so-called churches should be investigated. Yeah, I realize it is an ethical and legal slippery slope, but these cults ruin lives. I firmly believe those children would still be alive, or would never have been born, if she'd gotten help - which she was not going to get while in that church. Those people that teach spiritual abuse - they are criminals too, in my mind. Free Jinger! And free all women from the fundies!

So sad.

[valsa]

If you really, truly believed that you would burn in hellfire eternally if you divorced your husband or failed to obey his commands - would you do it? Really?

Impossible to answer because it would be impossible for me to believe something like that.

Also, I know fundies who are 100% positive (just as positive as Andrea was about needing to obey her husband) that homosexuals are violent, evil, and molest kids. So does that mean I should excuse one of them if they were to, say, kidnap a little girl from her two daddies in order to protect her? The excuse of fervent belief is no excuse at all.

[Patsy]

THis is an inherently sexist society the way it lets men off. If this had been the other way around- that the Dad was severly mentally ill and the mother was the supervising sane parent- you can bet she would have served time. What Rusty did is called "failure to protect" and it's one of the most common reason women lose their kids to foster care. They fail to protect the children from a boyfriend who is a known child abuser or sex offender.

That is a really good point. I hadn't thought of the connection to that much more common scenario - mum allows skeevy boyfriend continued access to kid.

I came across the front cover of Michael Woroniecki's tract "The Witch and the Whimp" years ago (about proper subservience, and how yes, Andrea, you should move away from all society and allow your husband to keep you entirely isolated and helpless, and don't you dare disagree with me). Unfortunately, I think it may have been taken down from wherever it was. At least my google-fu can't turn it up. Can anyone remember if it was ever partially posted at No Longer Qivering? I read most of the posts there years ago, and since then it's been revamped and a lot of things have been taken down, which makes me think that may have been the place...

[apple1]

I'm not quite sure what this paragraph is in reference to, so I'll recap a bit...

Actually, we got what you think the first time in this thread (and previously on FJ). It's all her fault. We got it.