*yawn*

[kyburg]

If anyone makes use of this program successfully, let me know. It would go a long way towards my feelings on Super 8 motels.

There's been another postpartum depression-related infanticide in Plano, Texas in the news this morning. The big discussion? How do you convince a jury of the existence of mental illness -

Me, I'd just like to put the father and all the medical/social service professionals up there on the dock with the mother. How did it go? Diagnosed in January, discharged and "case closed" in August - and the murder just occurred. Uh huh.

It doesn't make me feel any better than these cases are occurring in Texas at an elevated rate. Here's the link - from joiseyguy.

It would probably catch some people off guard, but this is a situation that needs a good dose of good old fashioned feminism.

But that would be wrong - I can hear the squealing already - that would mean - *gasp* - that you think that woman shouldn't be held accountable! Feminism means the woman is always right! Feminatzis and all that - you know that shit stinks!

Ahem.

A good dose of feminism would hold all the players in this drama equally accountable. The system is responsible for protecting the public from dangerous persons, right? This is an illness only women get. Its victims, after the woman, are small children and infants. You could make the correlation to loaded guns. They don't always go off, you know. Would you leave a loaded gun in a house with small children, unsupervised?

But why feminism?

Because its bias is towards holding everyone to the same level as the women involved. NOW actually supported the husband of Andrea Yates while they were defending her in court - as long as he supported her, they supported him. (I'd bet they're pretty cheesed now that he wants a divorce. STOOPID.)

The social services people, the medical professionals and the father of the dead child are all as responsible as the mad woman who probably still doesn't realize what she did yet.

Remember - I don't want blame. I want this shit to stop. Go ahead and incarcerate the woman. Do nothing to fix the system that allowed her to continue to be too sick to leave along with small children, and then left her alone with those children (and nobody is held accountable for that crime yet, that I know of) - and it happens again.

Guess you just need someone to hate. Meanwhile, lives are lost and/or destroyed forever.

Comments

[dudemungus.livejournal.com]

I think the reality of the divorce is that wether you support your spouse or not, you now assosciate the person with the death of a loved one-- many cases of childhood deaths caused by simple accident or desease end in divorce of the parents. I know I could support my spouse if mental illness caused her to do something heinous, But I don't know if emotionally I could stick around after.

[lesliepear.livejournal.com]

You've got a point there. Something is slipping between the cracks in Texas. I just can't imagine what the mother was thinking to do this in such a horrid way.

[poetpaladin.livejournal.com]

Probably cuts in social services and education mated to crackhead religious indoctrination.

[poetpaladin.livejournal.com]

It'd be simple to say it's the frickin' religious poison they're fed all their lives.

But I think the factors include more than that.

[sidelobe.livejournal.com]

Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

We understand better now than at any time in history that some killers aren't evil, they're sick. Ill. And we're just starting to understand what makes them sick. This is progress! A great deal of progress! For the first time we can see the other people who might be responsible for a tragedy.

The system of trial by jury is still valid. The jury isn't stupid, they're ignorant, and we haven't figured out how to properly educate them. Imagine a jury of blind people judging a painting exhibition. Imagine a jury of people who use computers as appliances judging a case that involves the intracies of computer design and programming.

The lawyers are ignorant, too. They're trying to protect rights that they don't understand. Blind, non-programmers. And the experts can't fully educate them. Plus, not all experts are the same, nor can they be trusted to the same degree.

The difficulty with mental illness is that people who haven't had it and recovered from it simply can't imagine it. What we term "objectivity" isn't really all that objective. If you want a simple example, just find an argument where both people believe that they're right, and can give evidence to prove it.

Things will get better if we can ever "measure" mental illness and present it to non-specialists so that they can understand it. Ignorance can be dangerous, just ask the Goodwives of Salem, MA.

So, just as we have been working on our legal system to properly handle the new issues that come from the technology of car and air travel, we need to get the legal system wrapped around the science of psychiatry and psychology. How do we do it?

[lackofgravitas.livejournal.com]

That story was linked on the badparents community here, it made me quite sick ... but the reaction to it made me sick too. It was all 'I don't care if she had PPD, how could she do that, she should rot in hell' etc. Goes to show that when it comes down to it people DO NOT understand the nature of mental illness. Sigh. But in some ways I agree - yeah, it'd be good if she died somehow. That way she's never going to get better and realise what she did.

[lorriejharris.livejournal.com]

The social services people, the medical professionals and the father of the dead child are all as responsible as the mad woman who probably still doesn't realize what she did yet.

Yes, and no.

Yes, they are, because the Social Services -should- be trained well enough to know she was not entirely stable (yeah, sure, she acted fine, until they took her meds away, and after it had time to purge from her system, what happened?). After all, this is their job, to protect the children. But anyone with even a smidgeon of experience knows that Social Services (As a whole...Lord knows, there are still some wonderful, idealistic Social Workers out there, but they are either very rare, or they're new to the business) has a nasty habit of picking and choosing which cases they actually -work-. Look back at all the news stories you've read where children have died in squalor, or tortured, and Social Services had gotten call after call after call, and didn't do squat. Or the families that are shattered because of a false report that caused the kids to be taken away.

Yes, to the medical professionals, who are supposed to -know- what is going on, and took an oath, but are less interested in caring for someone sent to them by Social Services, because the government will only pay so much, and therefore it's not "profitable" (I can personally vouch for the differences in the level of care you get when you have insurance, and when you have a medical card).

Yes, to the husband, who was closest to her, and "should" have seen this coming. But at the same time, no. After all, sometimes you can be too close to see. And how hard is it to say that your spouse, a person you swore to love, "through sickness and in health, 'til death do us part", is a potential killer? And consider this, most people take what their doctor says at face value. We tend to accept what an "authority figure" says is fact. The Social Services thought she was fine, the Doctors thought she was fine (or rather -told- him she was fine by their actions).

Personally, I thik society, as a whole should be held accountable for this, because it is society, as a whole that let her slip through the cracks. We all can be held accountable, if we don't push for our elected officials to get Social Services reformed, and for medical reform.

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

I dunno. I'd be watching my spouse over and above what anyone else told me, when it came to the safety of children.

Mentally ill? Oh hell no. And I would expect Jim to do the same to me if I was the one seeing purple cockroaches.

No, no - anyone in the circle of rational adults who were responsible to make sure those children remained safe while this one parent was known to be less than in their right mind - you leave children in the care of a mad woman, and know it - you're responsible. Every last one of them.

Most of all, the one parent who is sane, healthy and should have been at the switch in the first place.

[ms-hecubus.livejournal.com]

Ugh, I feel terrible for that woman.