This is such a tragic case and shows how broken healthcare is in America. She was a midwife, labor and delivery nurse, loved her children, her husband and her work. This is a clear example of the obscenely broken healthcare system not caring for patients.
PPP is multi factorial, and bipolar is a risk factor. With sleep deprivation, hormonal fluctuation, and other perfect storm factors, the brain 🧠 starts to dysfunction to the point that hallucinations become real.
She was floridly psychotic.
Mammals under stress will eat their young. These murders could Have been prevented and are the fault of her physicians and a system that cares nothing about human beings. She was legally insane, like Andrea Yates, who killed all five Of her children.
This case has nothing to do with Susan Smith, a family annihilator. She murdered her boys to get with a guy.
from the literature:
Postpartum psychosis is the severest form of mental illness characterized by extreme confusion, loss of touch with reality, paranoia, delusions, disorganized thought process, and hallucinations.
[3] It affects around one to two per one thousand females of childbearing age and usually happens immediately within days to the first six weeks after birth. Although rare, it is considered a psychiatric emergency that warrants immediate medical and psychiatric attention and hospitalization if the risk of suicide or filicide exists.
Sleep loss triggering episodes of mania was considered to be an essential marker to determine predisposition to developing postpartum psychosis. The conclusion was that women who reported sleep deprivation leading to manic episodes were twice as likely to have experienced an episode of postpartum psychosis at some point in their lives.
[8]
This is an unthinkable tragedy. She was floridly psychotic and should have been hospitalized. Blame this on her doctors and the ridiculously awful US healthcare system, but Not her. It was NOT her fault. That does not make this any less horrible, but she was not guilty of murder by reason of insanity, and will spend time in a hospital for the criminally insane if she is lucky enough to stay out of prison.
My mother was also a labor and delivery nurse, like her. I grew up around these cases. 😢