Word: postpartum
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Andrea Yates, the Houston mother who allegedly killed her kids, successfully use postpartum depression as the basis for an insanity defense...
...knows. That's not the Andrea who made little coupon books, with coupons redeemable for hugs, for each child on Valentine's Day. But that is the Andrea who apparently drowned all five of their children last Wednesday. She was, Russell Yates says, a woman racked by severe postpartum depression...
Most mothers know something of the mental slipperiness that can come with a new baby. Up to three-quarters of them experience some mild form of postpartum "blues"--a sense of anxiety and defeat that usually fades in a few days. About 10% to 15% experience actual depression. But in 1 of every 1,000 births, the mother develops what is called postpartum psychosis, in which she breaks from reality, in rare cases becoming violent. Andrea told police she first thought of killing her children months before, convinced that she was a bad mother who had permanently damaged them, according...
Among the questions that linger: Why did Andrea reportedly go off antipsychotic medication weeks before the tragedy? And having already endured one harrowing postpartum episode, why did she have another child? Andrea had been prescribed Haldol, an antipsychotic, after the birth of her fourth child. "If she were indeed psychotic [then], she should not have gotten pregnant again," argues Dr. Viven Burt, a psychiatrist at UCLA. Women who have once endured postpartum depression risk a 50% chance of recurrence...
...think it's conceivable that postpartum depression drove Andrea Yates to kill her children...