Does Mary Winkler have postpartum psychosis?

[CTyankee]

Her defense attorney was on GMA today hinting at that. They said a grand jury was convening.

I had a friend who had postpartum psychosis. She said she heard a voice in her head telling her to kill her baby. She took herself to the psych ward at Yale-New Haven Hospital. She has recovered, thank god.

Mary has a 1 year old baby. Some people think Andrea Yates had severe postpartum psychosis. Does this diagnosis constitute a temporary insanity plea?

[MadMaddie]

1. It is an interesting quandry....I am wondering if her

husband prevented her from taking birth control...the religion they are in is pretty strict on that...
I wonder if her doctors warned her husband that having more childran (like Andrea Yates) would result in some serious problems?

Was she homeschooling her children?

[Atman]

2. Do we care?

Seriously. Sorry to dis your thread, but this is exactly the type of non-news story the media wants us to focus on. A hundred of these cases happen every day. If you don't believe it, look at the nation's daily murder stats. There are 300,000,000 in this country, and they do horrible things to each other every day. But you can only name Winkler, Yates, Holloway, and the small handful of human beings who some news director 2000 miles away says are newsworthy.

Our country is being dismantled. Our government has been taken over by criminals. I don't give a flying fig about Mary Winkler.

[Clark2008]

3. Well, as a Tennessean, I care

However, I do agree it should be relegated to a local story and not a national one.

[CTyankee]

6. We damn sure should care!

This is mental health issue that this country is ignoring. Women who could get the care they need -- like my friend -- would not be murdering children and husbands if the signs of postpartum psychosis were better known to the general public. My friend happened to live and go to grad school here in New Haven, a very liberal city with a highly knowledgeable medical and academic community. The care she received restored her to normal life.

Andrea Yates being tried for murder was a travesty of justice. She was very sick and yet those who could have helped her and prevented those children's deaths did not.

I think this issue should be discussed wide and far in this country. Yes, the media focus on distressed white women, to the detriment of women of color. That doesn't diminish the severity of the issue.

Ignorance is sickening and dangerous.

[Katherine Brengle]

10. Very tense subject...

but I agree that it goes back to the point that every single American woman, child, and man should have access to comprehensive, affordable healthcare so that illnesses like post-partum psychosis and PPD and all of these other sicknesses do not go unseen and untreated.

I don't know if Winkler is sick like this, but as a rule, I agree.

[adriennui]

7. ditto, this is another diversion

from real news.

i quite frankly don't give a damn why she killed her husband , the pastor.

[alcibiades_mystery]

4. I also know someone who went through postpartum psychosis

It happened very quickly after birth, like the day they took the baby home. She was brought to the hospital and immediately admitted into a locked psych-ward, where she stayed for almost two weeks until they could adjust the drugs. She was not allowed to be alone with the baby for something like 4 months thereafter. She also recovered.

I saw her when she was in the psych ward. She was most certainly incapable of functioning, and was a danger to herself and others. Without question. She jabbered endlessly about absolute nonsense, had forgotten how to read, and became fascinated with minor details of magazine pictures until she started crying at "how beautiful" it was. I mean, gone.

Many people here mistake postpartum blues, postpartum depression, and postpartum psychosis. These are three different things entirely. Postpartum blues is fairly mild and common. Postpartum depression is much less common, and much more severe. Postpartum psychosis is extremely uncommon and it constitutes a psychotic break, as profound as those experienced by the most severe schizophrenics.

That said, it would be extremely rare for someone to have postpartum psychosis a year after giving birth. Most postpartum psychotic breaks occur a week to five weeks after birth.

[Avalux]

5. Doesn't really fit the profile.

Usually, with postpartum psychosis, homicidal acts are carried out towards the child/children. There's a phenomenon known as psychotic merging, where the woman can no longer differentiate her own identity from that of her child/children and it's thought killing is a way to save the self. That could be what happened to Yates.

I tend to lean more towards abuse in this case. Either she, the children, or all of them may have been abused by the husband. I've been thinking about it, and with him being a "man of God", who would have believed her if she had sought help? His public image was immaculate.

[Vinnie From Indy]

8. It could be that she is just a schemin', lyin', GOP voting,

holier than thou, faux Christian that popped a cap in her lyin', cheatin', GOP voting, faux Christian husband. While the goings on in Possum Trot, TN are undoubtedly the talk of county, the story is merely another distraction for the weak minded. A shiny new bauble if you will.

[Horse with no Name]

9. Let me correct you on something

Andrea Yates DID have diagnosed postpartum psychosis and was institutionalized for it AFTER the birth of BOTH her 4th and 5th children.

[SmokingJacket]

11. Of course, this is all idle speculation, but...

seems to me that a lawyer saw a way to get her off. A year later is indeed late for PPS, especially if she's been functioning okay to that point (but who knows, maybe she hasn't).

My guess is she believed she had a reason to shoot him, either abuse of some kind, or he was having an affair (though the police have denied this possibility).

(About those who think that any kind of media attention to these lurid crimes is a waste of our time: I really do think crime reveals a lot about human nature, and is worth examining.)

[CTyankee]

12. Yeah, I get it that it was a year from the birth of her 3rd child

But here was a sedate, compliant woman with no record of any strange behavior, and she shoots her husband in the back?

You know, I didn't make a diagnosis. I asked a question. I don't know the answer. Collectively, it looks like none of us do.

But she killed her husband. Committing murder after a life of compliance with law at every level would suggest a mental problem. I was simply conjecturing a pregnancy induced psychosis that stayed with her for a bit longer.

Someplace, there is a screw rattling around loose in this woman's psyche. I think.

[CTyankee]

13. It's interesting. My neighbor shot her husband

Of course, they were older, on the second marriages. She had inherited a sh*tload of money from her first husband (this was in Texas) and the new husband had "cottoned on" to her real fast. He played around and she shot him in their driveway. Blam.
She was no Mary Winkler. This was a hard drinking, hard living, live cussin' female. Tough as nails. She got sent up but developed a "heart problem" and spent her time in the prison infirmary. Gov. Shivers granted her a pardon when he left office, after she had certainly crossed his palm with mucho silver.

I used to laugh about this, but when she was our neighbor I was scared to death of this woman. Talk about a man-eater!