Postpartum Psychosis Andrea Yates

Acquaintances of Andrea said that she became withdrawn and antisocial following the birth of her children, which led her to homeschool her children. After the birth of her fourth son, Andrea became depressed. A suspected cause of her depression was the influence of extreme sermons by Michael Peter Woroniecki. Through “sermons, videos and personal telephone calls, the Woroniecki’s condemned the Yates' for their hypocritical Christian lifestyle, saying their children were doomed to hell because of their parents sins…the Woroniecki’s also preached that married couples should have as many children as possible” (Andrea Yates). On June 16, 1999, Rusty found Andrea in a state of anxiety. The next day, she attempted to commit suicide by overdosing on pills. She was admitted to the hospital, and prescribed antidepressants. After she was released from the hospital she again contemplated

My patient’s name is Nicole Glover. She is a young adult in college, and had shown no previous signs of illness. Nicole’s symptoms make it very clear what our diagnosis should be: Schizophrenia. By speaking to her parents, Lynn and Dave Glover, we were able to determine that Dave had an aunt that was mentally ill. His aunt is the likely source of the disorder because it is a disease that is usually passed through genetics.

Last June in 2001, a 37-year-old lady by the name of Andrea Yates, was arrested for killing her five children. Most people like me would agree that she was sane, and the death penalty would have been the right punishment for Mrs. Andrea Yates.

While at home, Andrea’s mental state did not appear to improve. She stays in bed all day, begins self mutilating, scratching bald spots on her head, and scraping her legs and arms. She discloses to her husband, Rusty, that she having hallucinations. For their own reasons, the Yates couple does not discuss the hallucinations with Andrea’s doctors during outpatient or inpatient treatments. Andrea was also experiencing other symptoms of schizophrenia. These symptoms include her belief that that there are cameras in her home watching her and that television cartoon characters are communicating with directly to her. She became anti social with an array of other symptoms that included flat affect, poverty of speech and loss of directedness.

She didn't realize how much mental illness there was in her own family, from depression to bipolar disorder—which can contribute to postpartum psychosis. In her initial stages, she remained undiagnosed and untreated. She kept her secrets from everyone.” (Ramsland, 2008) In June of 1999 Andrea was started to feel the affects of her major depressive order. She called her husband and told him to come home as soon as possible. When Rusty Yates arrived at their residence he found he wife shaking with no control over it and chewing violently on her fingers. This is when she was first hosiptalized for trying to attempt suicide by overdosing on pills. “The medical staff described Andrea as evasive in discussing her problems. However, on June 24 she was prescribed an antidepressant and released.” (Montaldo, n/a)

After Andrea's first pregnancy, in 1994, she started experiencing postpartum depression. She experienced hallucinations and a striking vision of a knife and her stabbing someone. She never revealed this to anyone until after her arrest, when she told her husband, Rusty. As research shows, postpartum depressed or psychotic women often feel ashamed or

Throughout In Cold Blood, Truman Capote writes on the events directly before, during, and the happenings after the brutal murdering of the Clutter family in the quaint town of Holcomb, Kansas. The actions Dick Hickock and Perry Smith attracted Capote and led him to ultimately report on the entire ordeal. Throughout Capote’s masterpiece, In Cold Blood, Hickock and Smith’s deranged and psychotic actions directly correlate to a deep psychosis they both suffered for multiple years.

“The Yellow Wallpaper,” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, tells the story of a woman’s descent into madness as a result of postpartum psychosis. Postpartum psychosis is a condition that affects between one and two of every thousand live births. The condition of postpartum psychosis usually begins within two weeks of giving birth and sometimes within a matter of days. (“Depression”, 2009)

Andrea Yates was a mother of five who lived in a Houston suburb. Andrea suffered from serve postpartum depression and psychosis which unfortunately lead her to drown all five of children in a bath tub one afternoon. Andrea was charged with capital murder and was given life in prison with the possibility of parole after 40 years. However, she filed an appeal, and her original sentence was overturned, and she was found in innocent in 2006 on reason of insanity. I’m going to explain her upbringing and her mental health influenced her to murdering her children.

“Postpartum psychosis is a severe psychotic syndrome that is estimated to occur after 1.1 to 4 of every 1000 deliveries. More than half of the affected women meet diagnostic criteria for major depression” (Weissman and Olfson 800). Postpartum depression is a further common mental illness than postpartum psychosis, however Margery Kempe displays serious symptoms. Several readers believe that Margery Kempe was a woman who devoted her life to God, however, after her first child was born Margery Kempe was recognizably sick due to the feelings that she should not live. In The Book of Margery Kempe, the first autobiography in the English Language, Margery Kempe displays the symptoms of hallucinations, crying episodes, and depression to show that she has postpartum psychosis.

In 2001, Andrea Yates, a Texas mother, was accused of drowning her five children, (aged seven, five, three, two, and six months) in her bathtub. The idea of a mother drowning all of her children puzzled the nation. Her attorney argued that it was Andrea Yates' untreated postpartum depression, which evolved into postpartum psychosis that caused her horrific actions (1) . He also argued that Andrea Yates suffered from postpartum depression after the birth of her fourth child, and that she attempted suicide twice for this very disorder ((1)). What is postpartum depression, and how can it cause a mother to harm her very own children, altering her behavior towards her children in a negative way? One in ten women

Continuing, Stephen states that manic-depression is hand it down in families (heredity). Through some of the patients at the Cardiff Research, Stephen comprehends how families worried about passing the illness to their children. Some researchers found out that mother’s with the illness that become pregnant, are at a higher risk of having states during pregnancy that can affect the baby. The worst states of mania have been seen in post-natal mothers with hallucinations and delusions.

Therapy for psychosis often works best when combined with medication, although this is not always

Perinatal mental illness is a collective term used to describe mental illnesses experienced by at least 10% of women during pregnancy and up until a year after birth (Hogg, 2014). Mental health is with paramount importance to the role of the midwife (National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), 2014) as mental illness is a significant threat to the lives of mothers and can have a huge effect for their babies and families (Knight et al., 2015). Between 2009 and 2013 there were 161 maternal deaths related to mental health problems, one of the leading causes of maternal mortality in the United Kingdom (UK) (Knight et al., 2015). The main types of mental health disorders, signs and symptoms along with possible treatments

People have many different opinions on what psychosis really is. Many define it as crazy or not normal, but really, the illnesses vary. It could be schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, hallucinations and delusions, anxiety, even Alzheimer’s and Dementia. It is characterized in all of these illnesses. Psychosis is usually genetic and passed down through different family members. It is an illness that distorts the brain, making thinking unclear. The main question is what really causes someone to be psychotic? What really defines psychosis?