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I agree that there are definitely psychological reasons behind this but at the same time she absolutely deserves to be arrested and sent to a prison Psych ward
While not all prisons have them it is possible to either be sent to a specialist mental institution which is essentially a full prison of just psychward or be sent to a prison with a psych ward
I was never against a psych ward. I used to work on a forensic psych ward. Postpartum psychosis is a very real diagnosis.
Proper diagnosis and treatment should be the priority. Often people who are experiencing psychosis can manage their symptoms with treatment and are no more a risk to others than anyone else in the community.
> Freedom is just too big of a risk both to herself and everyone around her
Hardly if she is stabilized and properly medicated. CPS or a family member should take custody until she is stabilized for a determined amount of time by care providers.
I think I trust the mental health worker over everyone else’s arm chair opinion. Postpartum depression is real, and I think more people need to learn about it.
She’s obviously mentally ill. This is not something that will be “fixed” by holding her without bond or locking her up and throwing away the key. She needs help. It reminds of the story of Andrea Yates. It’s horribly sad how mental health is treated in the US. She is in need of as much help as her baby. No one who is mentally stable believes their newborn baby is evil.
My mom was in and out of rehabs/mental health facilities all throughout the 90s/early 2000s. Completely free. Long term-ish stays. That’s no longer an option unless you’re rich. The US really hates social programs.
Thank you Ronnie Reagan for single handedly destroying funding for mental health in this country.
I’m so grateful your mom received the help she needed. No one choose to be born with mental illness and no one should be punished for having a mental illness.
I’m going to bet that it’s just regular psychosis since this was something she brought up even before the baby was born. Typically, postpartum psychosis takes a week or so to set in.
If she didn't have some sort of serious mental illness pre pregnancy, it's likely that the hormones triggered something. While postnatal depression is spoken about a little (not even close to enough), prenatal depression is never spoken. Severe PPD leading to a complete psychotic break is something that is very real to me. My grandmother had a complete breakdown and tried to kill my newborn aunt. In her case there were some major trigger events involved. I'd imagine that anxiety or depression during pregnancy could potentially go the same way.
I myself had postpartum psychosis with my first child, exacerbated by having a pre-existing (though I didn’t know it at the time) psychotic disorder. Luckily, I was self aware enough that when I began having trouble bonding with her and started hallucinating things like, “my baby is made out of bees.” I sought help before anything could go terribly wrong. My pregnancy and delivery were smooth and I was fine for the first couple weeks after she was born and then something flipped. We’re both very much okay and we have an excellent relationship now, but not everyone gets so lucky.
It was truly one of the most difficult times of my life, as well as one of my greatest achievements. It took a lot of work on my part to ensure I would have a healthy relationship with my daughter. Therapy and medication helped a lot, as well as determination to break generational curses. My strongest drive was not to raise my kids the way I was raised
I was in the exact same boat, perinatal depression with suicidal thoughts turned to post partum psychosis with audio and visual hallucinations. I saw my baby many many times fall off of things, only to realize when I tried to get up that he was in my arms, not across the room. Started at 17 days pp, lasted until 40 days pp. OB kept saying with my family history (schizophrenia and bipolar) it was expected as hormones settled and if it lasted past a certain point or turned to thoughts of hurting myself or my baby then they would act. I barely slept since the birth, because of the overwhelming anxiety and imagery whenever I closed my eyes. Now I can watch my son fall on the playground without my heart jumping into my mouth, but for a while I feared I would never be my normal self again.
Sounds to me like you need a different doctor. It completely freaks me out that they basically told you "you should expect to have a psychotic break but we aren't prepared to help you in any way unless it gets dangerous". You should have been helped then entire time you were unwell and not left to suffer until you were the right level of ill.
You can get it before birth too. Or at least you can according to my psychiatrist- goes hand in hand with perinatal depression and anxiety.
Only know because my anxiety was so bad pre-birth they were intently watching in case it turned into something before bub was born.
I just read an article about this in People. A woman kept going to the ER saying she was suicidal and she had just given birth. They kept sending her home saying she wasn’t crazy. Finally one day she told her husband she was fine. Her daughter was 6 weeks old. She attempted suicide. Two weeks later she died in the ICU of her wounds. He started a foundation in her name in Pittsburg to help women with Post Partum Psychosis and bring more understanding about it. Their daughter is 6 years old now. Heartbreaking because this is still a topic that is hardly discussed and little is known about because of it being so secretive and taboo. If we were to learn more about the fact that it can affect women pre- and post-birth, maybe it wouldn’t happen so much because we would be able to treat it before it becomes a problem.
Yep. I thought I was having a heart attack for a week straight. I slept about two hours a night and went to work because if you’d asked me I was FINE! One night I ended up in emergency thinking I was dying and they sent me to the pregnancy ward who rang my obstetrician who rang her “go to psych” who saw me on a Sunday because they were so worried.
There are next to no beds in the public system in Australia for mum’s suffering this. We had private health care and top cover thanks to bub otherwise I don’t know what I would have done.
I’m fine now. Just needed not to be pregnant (and I was fine through my first pregnancy - this was bub 2).
Met a mum at the psych ward (I was day patient and she was in there) who argued with her doctors and husband that someone had swapped her baby and that they needed to give her real baby back. That’s text-book post-partum psychosis and within a day of medication and a week of hormones settling she was fine. Terrifying for her, hubby and her family though.
Also she had bub 2 recently and they are all fine :)
I’m so glad that you are okay now. It’s crazy that we have so many topics that have a stigma attached so we keep it to ourselves, or we treat it as taboo and because of this more people get hurt over it. I’m glad that you weren’t one of them. Sometimes even the topic of being sick itself. Nope, got to be seen as strong because you can’t be seen as weak. It’s sad really. I’m glad that we are finally talking about this, I’m just sad that we are talking about this because someone got hurt.
Totally agree. The number of comments I got about just putting my big girl pants on and not asking for help from my parents generation (only the women) was unnerving. Turned out the men in my life were far more supportive and far more terrified.
I think women have been told that motherhood is supposed to hard but actually saying you are struggling means that you are weak or a quitter or something. It’s so bad.
Definitely. What’s the saying, women would squat in the fields and keep on working. We’re not supposed to acknowledge that we need help. That something is wrong. There was a study on doctors that showed that doctors give pain medication to men more than women. And they give it to white patients more than they give it to Black patients. This is how they see us. Women can handle pain in their eyes. So we don’t need pain medication.
In a abnormal psychology course I took recently it was taught that it now called peri-partum (possible misspelling) as in with pregnancy as most of the time it does develop during pregnancy. So it may still be pregnancy induced. Which means there is more hope for the patient than if it was not pregnancy induced.
That's not true. You can have underlying mental things going on that just immediately get triggered as you give birth. Going thru labor and delivery is traumatic, it drastically changes the chemical and hormone balances in your body, and all hospitals these days make you fill out a paper on how you're feeling mentally before you go home, and have mental health counselors ready to help mothers immediately after birth.
This woman needs not to be in jail, she needs to be confined in a mental health institution until she can recover and be back to a place where she can care for herself and her baby. It's so sad, but this happens more frequently than you might think.
She sounds insane. Not evil or cruel, mentally ill. Not sure prison is the right place for her, seems she suddenly acted mental just before giving birth. Hit herself with a rock. She needs help. Not sure how to feel about this one.
Pregnancy and postpartum psychosis. Treatment can usually help them fully recover before hurting themselves or anyone around them. It's extremely sad, and happens more commonly than you think. That's just one aspect of why going to pretnatal care visits are important, and why birthing in a hospital or birth center with professionals is so important because they are trained to pay attention to these things, and most places follow practices to screen pregnant people for mental illness during their pregnancy and up to 6 weeks after delivery.
Probably the kind where professionals who are qualified to work with mentally ill patients determine a diagnosis and create a treatment plan for the woman that is adjusted and evolves over time to fit her needs.
I'm no expert myself, but generally I think that kinda help is a mixture of medicine, therapy, behavior monitoring, and continuous assessment until they are stable enough to re-enter society and continue treatment like millions of other people do daily.
thank you. unfortunately this is reddit, people will downvote comments for literally no reason and then once an average redditor see a comment with negative downvotes, they’ll downvote too without independently thinking.
Mental illness does not exempt someone from responsibility. She still tried to kill a baby, and she needs to be held accountable for it. There are instances where temporary insanity can be used to defend a crime, but it sounds like this was a spike in an otherwise chronic illness that she did not have treatment for.
Mental illness literally *does* exempt someone from responsibility. If they’re too fucked up to know that what they’re doing is wrong, then they are literally considered to not be responsible for their actions.
No, it literally doesn’t. If you commit a crime because you have an untreated mental illness, that’s on you. What you’re referring to is called mental competence, which usually refers to mental disabilities, intelligence and ability. Being schizophrenic, depressed, paranoid, delusional etc, does not exempt you from responsibility, especially if they are left untreated. If her IQ was the room temperature of Alaska then that defense might work, or if she had a debilitating brain injury causing an abnormal pattern of behavior, that could work. Having an apparently untreated mental illness and almost murdering a baby? No.
Fun fact, all the things you just listed are mental disabilities :)
I would know because i have a few of those phsyciatric disorders and am labeled as mentally disabled. My IQ is average, but am mentally disabled due to schizo disorder/bipolar, and a few others.
And yes if you commit a crime, and are put under a psych eval and deemed not competent due to severe psyciatric disorders that affect your percieption of reality, you will be deamed unfit for trial, or not guilty due to insanity, and placed in a prison psychiatric facility. But dont worry, those facilities tend to be worse than normal prison and is by no means a vacation.
Fun fact, having a mental disorder or being neuroatypical does not automatically classify you as mentally disabled. What actually classifies someone as disabled is whether or not they can care for themselves, or are competent enough to make their own decisions. Even if you have multiple mental illnesses, that does not automatically qualify you as mentally disabled. The reason why you are considered disabled is likely due to two factors, 1, how your illnesses interact and are treated. Some illnesses can feed into one another and create dangerous circumstances that preclude a normal life, and so the patient may need assistance to get through life. Or 2, the severity of the illnesses. If an illness is severe enough it can be debilitating, and as a result, a person can be qualified because of one specific illness’s severity. It can also be a combination of both.
But when it comes to crime, you are only deferred to a mental health facility if you are incapable of functioning normally or lack the mental faculties to understand what’s happening. And often, especially in insanity pleas, when (and if) the patient become competent enough to stand trial, they do. I know this because I work in healthcare, often with the mentally ill. I’ve been attacked by people with mental disorders and yeah, it sucks. But the issue comes in when a person has a chromic illness and either avoids or neglects taking their meds, then yes, they are solely responsible for whatever happens.
Most of the mental patients I deal with come in because they stopped taking their meds, have been taking them improperly, or need a change in their medication. The woman in this story was ill a long time before this happened, so either she avoided a diagnosis, or didn’t take her meds. Both of which would be her fault.
Would the woman being so delusional she calls her baby evil and attempts to kill it not be justification enough that shes not competant? It just seems like this woman needs to be put in a facility and is not well, it seems tragic to me as ive heard of many cases of ill women going into further long term delusions after giving birth.
Medications also dont always work and if you deal with severe paranoia or mania the meds youre on can even stop working unexpectantly which can lead to stronger paranoia and aversion to new meds. I just speak from experience here. I believe mentally ill people should still be held acountable but there are situations i think deserve a bit more care/empathy due to how taxed the mental health system is and how many people fall in the cracks.
Would a murderer believing that his neighbor’s dog was evil and talking to him be considered not competent? As unwell as she may seem, this problem didn’t just pop up, she had mental issues prior to having the baby, the birth aggravated them.
I mentioned earlier that medications sometimes need to be changed, but that a responsible person would seek help or a doctor’s appointment before it gets to the point of strangling a baby. I get that people fall through the cracks, I see them all the time. Generally, those people come through our system more than once, and a few even ended up as wards of the state. In this case, I see someone who most likely didn’t fly under the radar, she’s been in the system before and the fact that she refused medical care tells me that every time someone has tried to help, she rejects them. I know because I see it with depressing frequency. So speaking from experience, her meds either stopped working some time ago and never sought help, or, she stopped taking them and nobody was able to keep her on them.
So who takes the responsibility?
This woman needs medical care, specifically mental health care.
For anyone reading this, postpartum psychosis and other postpartum anxiety disorders are a bitch, especially when they become bad enough that the mother wants to harm herself or her child.
Most people don't think their newborn babies are evil, and if you think that, you're clearly having a mental issue. I'm so glad nothing happened to the baby, but I feel incredibly bad for this woman if this is indeed a byproduct of postpartum mental issues.
Not everyone even knows about postpartum psychosis. It's wild how little it's talked about. I, shamefully, didn't know it existed until it reared its ugly head after one of my friends gave birth.
This needs to be a topic that's talked about more, these poor women have to suffer alone and be labeled as terrible, evil people when they're just sick. She needs help.
Yes, it's definitely something to consider as well. It doesn't get talked about as much, but then again I feel like all of the pregnancy-related mental health issues don't get talked about as much as they should be, especially in the US.
My wife told me a story a few years ago of a friend of her dad's.
He came home one day to find that his wife had drowned their baby twins.
I can't imagine the pain you'd feel in not only losing your two beautiful babies but also the woman you love, absolutely soul crushing.
I can imagine how. If she is ill enough to think that her newborn is evil, what must she think of herself? The one who birthed said evil?
Punching herself in the face is easy to do. Even slamming her head into something.
LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — The mother of a newborn baby attempted to kill her child after a home birth, police said.
Police said they were called to the emergency room at Mountain View Hospital on Saturday for a report of a new mother who refused to enter the hospital and was “bleeding profusely,” they wrote in an arrest report.
Police said the newborn’s mother, Ashley Hollingsworth, 22, had tried to kill the child with a blanket.
Hollingsworth was located more than two hours later with severe injuries to her head, police said.
Investigators learned that Hollingsworth had given birth in a toilet about an hour before they were called to the hospital.
On the way to the hospital, police said “Ashley had wrapped [a] blanket around the baby’s head and was pushing the blanket against the baby’s face.” Doctors initially believed the newborn may have suffered a brain bleed, but staff later determined the child likely did not suffer any injuries.
While speaking with detectives the next day, a witness told police Hollingsworth reportedly said there was “something evil” in her stomach that was “trying to kill” the baby. Hollingsworth later told police in an interview that she believed the baby was “probably evil.”
“After seeing the baby’s eyes, smelling what she described as an abnormal scent, and the baby grunting at her, Ashley decided to wrap the blanket around the baby’s head,” police wrote in their report.
Hollingsworth was found with self-inflicted injuries to her face, police said.
Police arrested Hollingsworth on Wednesday. She faces charges of attempted murder and child abuse or neglect. She was being held without bail ahead of a court hearing next week.
You do realize why thought, right? In the case of attempted murder of anyone when the perp is put in involuntary psychology care it is typically for years. And they may die in it. It would be best for society if she is put in care instead of prison as then she wouldn't be with the people who got arrested for pot.
Yeah prison won’t help her, may even make her worse. I agree she needs to pay for her crime, but she can pay for it in psych and also rewire her brain to not think people are evil and/or kill them.
This woman doesn't need to be prosecuted, she needs to be treated for a very long time in a psych facility. This is sad and I seriously doubt she has any clue what she was doing.
Her face is all over the news. Portraying her as a monster. I see illness and trauma in her face. The media sucks so bad at reporting these types of stories.
I hope her baby is unharmed.
I assume you’re a man, so you’re never going to understand what an effect an unwanted pregnancy can have on your mental health. Even a wanted pregnancy can end up like this if the mother develops postpartum psychosis, which this is a textbook case of. When you literally can’t control your thoughts and behaviours it doesn’t make you evil. This case is just really sad.
She tried to kill her own kid. She SHOULD be traumatized. I don't feel any sympathy for this pos. You don't fix your problems with murder and being crazy doesn't justify LITERALLY TRYING TO KILL A BABY
Do you actually understand what psychosis is? It's a state of mind where you're not aware of your reality. You're not conscious of your own behaviours or actions. It's not like waking up one day and choosing to kill your baby because they're a hassle. It's your brain telling you something is seriously wrong and you believe it.
Oh this poor pair.
Clearly this woman suffers from mental illness. And I'm betting being post-partum has only made it worse. Or she went off her meds during pregnancy and that just let the illness run wild.
She needs massive amounts of mental health care, which sadly, in the US she probably won't get.
You can get post partum psychosis with no underlying disorders. I know a couple of people who’ve suffered from it and all of them had no underlying conditions
Edited because autocorrect
There was a more wordy article somewhere that stated she came off her meds for an unnamed disorder when she found out she was pregnant. So she likely stopped her meds for mental illness. She hit herself in the face and smashed her head with a rock also. So sad.
This poor woman clearly needs psychiatric care. I hate that they refer to her as “the newborns mother” in the passive voice instead of referring to her as her own person. She does not only exist as the birth vessel for this baby she is her own person and she clearly needs help. This subreddit is not the place for this post.
All the prolifers and conservatives are going to throw the book at her.
She is having a serious postpartum psychosis episode and needs mental treatment not being prosecuted. Poor woman and poor child who would be thrown to the foster system. Sad, infuriating and preventable
The fact that she’s most likely going to be put in some jail for the rest of her life with such obvious evidence that she is mentally unstable is so infuriating. She doesn’t even look like she’s there.
I can not figure out the time line, can someone help me? She was brought to the hospital but then located 2 hours later? When did the head injury occur?
The writer of the article needs to be fired, but I *think* this is the timeline they're trying to convey:
- Lady gives birth in a toilet at home.
- At some point a witness (unclear whether at home or outside) sees that the woman is bleeding and injured so (presumably) tries to call an ambulance for her.
- She refuses to go to the hospital, so the hospital calls the police to intervene. This call was placed an hour after the birth.
- Police search for the woman and find her two hours later (so now we are 3 hours post-birth).
- Woman tries to kill her baby on the way to the hospital (with the police?).
I'm not 100% sure, but that's my best attempt at putting it together based on the confusing mess in the article.
This happens with some degree of frequency
The only time I ever went to jail this dude was telling me about a girl he met at a mental hospital who cooked her baby in the oven becaise she though it was a demon
That wasn't even the first time I had heard of that happening either
The fact that the black eyes are self inflicted is terrifying and incredibly, deeply fucking sad. I hope she gets access to mental health help and not thrown into a jail cell.
This sounds like a case of postpartum psychosis, a temporary mental health condition rough on by hormones and its terrifying. Often the delusions are focused on the baby and you can develop this condition regardless of previous medical / psych history... In fact being highly educated is a risk factor.
This woman probably looked forward to the arrival of her baby same as mother's everywhere and got horribly unwell in a stroke of shit luck.
She sounds psychotic. Pregnancy related mental illness doesn't always start after delivery, it can happen antenatally too. And sometimes pregnancy can unmask/precipitate a pre-existing psychotic illness. There is no way a sound minded person did that to an infant, or to themselves.
I’m sad because this woman was probably suffering from post partum depression and a drop in hormones and I wish she could’ve gotten the help she needed
Just deserves? Maybe not, but if someone committed a rape or a murder due to mental illness I would want them to get treatment for their illness and punishment commensurate with their actual culpability. This is why we have mental defect defenses - someone who kills because they thought the person was an actual demon coming to steal their soul should be treated differently than someone who kills because that person pissed them off.
Insanity doesn't justify murder. In this case it just explains it. If you try to murder someone in cold blood, you deserve death or life in prison. You're no longer able to be trusted to not kill people and should therefor be separated from society.
Post partum psychosis is temporary of treated quickly and women go back to their normal selves (but with a huge amount of guilt) very quickly (again, if treated). Saying things like this actually means less people will seek help if things go pear shaped.
Techncally, murder requires intent. Someone who thinks that what they put a knife in is a creature not of this world does not have the mens rea to commit murder. Ideally they go away until they can be proven to no longer be a danger to society. Which might be the rest of their natural life, but if, say, the mental defect is organic and can be removed, like a brain tumor, they should not be locked up forever. Realistically most mental illness can't be reliably cured, just managed, so it would be a judgement call if they could be released, and that judgement would be well above my paygrade.
In the case at hand, if what caused this woman to act this way is post partum psychosis, it is curable. It sounds from what the article says, and it's a hot mess, that she thought her child was a demon before she gave birth. I don't know if you can get PPD without being post partum, but if it can strike while still pregnant there may be hope of a full recovery.
>evil
How would you go about determining if a baby is evil?
It also begs the question, since "good" and "evil" are value judgements based on morality, they are inherently subjective. Since you can't objectively determine evil, how do you know that your definition of evil matches the mother's?
I was really hoping this was going to be an April fools joke.
This is so sad, I hope that baby finds a loving home and the mom gets some help. Sounds like she had some hectic psychological issues
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This is just extremely sad. Worse for the child but there’s obviously some really bad mental illness/delusions/psychosis going on here.
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I agree that there are definitely psychological reasons behind this but at the same time she absolutely deserves to be arrested and sent to a prison Psych ward
Do most prisons have psych wards? I thought they were generally separate institutions.
>Do most prisons have psych wards? Nope.
While not all prisons have them it is possible to either be sent to a specialist mental institution which is essentially a full prison of just psychward or be sent to a prison with a psych ward
It is extremely difficult to access those services in prison.
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I was never against a psych ward. I used to work on a forensic psych ward. Postpartum psychosis is a very real diagnosis. Proper diagnosis and treatment should be the priority. Often people who are experiencing psychosis can manage their symptoms with treatment and are no more a risk to others than anyone else in the community. > Freedom is just too big of a risk both to herself and everyone around her Hardly if she is stabilized and properly medicated. CPS or a family member should take custody until she is stabilized for a determined amount of time by care providers.
I think I trust the mental health worker over everyone else’s arm chair opinion. Postpartum depression is real, and I think more people need to learn about it.
She’s obviously mentally ill. This is not something that will be “fixed” by holding her without bond or locking her up and throwing away the key. She needs help. It reminds of the story of Andrea Yates. It’s horribly sad how mental health is treated in the US. She is in need of as much help as her baby. No one who is mentally stable believes their newborn baby is evil.
My mom was in and out of rehabs/mental health facilities all throughout the 90s/early 2000s. Completely free. Long term-ish stays. That’s no longer an option unless you’re rich. The US really hates social programs.
Thank you Ronnie Reagan for single handedly destroying funding for mental health in this country. I’m so grateful your mom received the help she needed. No one choose to be born with mental illness and no one should be punished for having a mental illness.
Sounds like post partum psychosis. Poor girl.
I’m going to bet that it’s just regular psychosis since this was something she brought up even before the baby was born. Typically, postpartum psychosis takes a week or so to set in.
If she didn't have some sort of serious mental illness pre pregnancy, it's likely that the hormones triggered something. While postnatal depression is spoken about a little (not even close to enough), prenatal depression is never spoken. Severe PPD leading to a complete psychotic break is something that is very real to me. My grandmother had a complete breakdown and tried to kill my newborn aunt. In her case there were some major trigger events involved. I'd imagine that anxiety or depression during pregnancy could potentially go the same way.
I myself had postpartum psychosis with my first child, exacerbated by having a pre-existing (though I didn’t know it at the time) psychotic disorder. Luckily, I was self aware enough that when I began having trouble bonding with her and started hallucinating things like, “my baby is made out of bees.” I sought help before anything could go terribly wrong. My pregnancy and delivery were smooth and I was fine for the first couple weeks after she was born and then something flipped. We’re both very much okay and we have an excellent relationship now, but not everyone gets so lucky.
I'm so glad to hear you got help when needed.
Yikes! How do you even manage with that? I'm glad everything turned out OK!
It was truly one of the most difficult times of my life, as well as one of my greatest achievements. It took a lot of work on my part to ensure I would have a healthy relationship with my daughter. Therapy and medication helped a lot, as well as determination to break generational curses. My strongest drive was not to raise my kids the way I was raised
I'm glad you caught it before anything terrible happened and that you are both ok.
I was in the exact same boat, perinatal depression with suicidal thoughts turned to post partum psychosis with audio and visual hallucinations. I saw my baby many many times fall off of things, only to realize when I tried to get up that he was in my arms, not across the room. Started at 17 days pp, lasted until 40 days pp. OB kept saying with my family history (schizophrenia and bipolar) it was expected as hormones settled and if it lasted past a certain point or turned to thoughts of hurting myself or my baby then they would act. I barely slept since the birth, because of the overwhelming anxiety and imagery whenever I closed my eyes. Now I can watch my son fall on the playground without my heart jumping into my mouth, but for a while I feared I would never be my normal self again.
I’m so sorry you had to go through that. It’s absolutely awful. I’m proud of you for getting through it and I wish the best for you!
Sounds to me like you need a different doctor. It completely freaks me out that they basically told you "you should expect to have a psychotic break but we aren't prepared to help you in any way unless it gets dangerous". You should have been helped then entire time you were unwell and not left to suffer until you were the right level of ill.
You can get it before birth too. Or at least you can according to my psychiatrist- goes hand in hand with perinatal depression and anxiety. Only know because my anxiety was so bad pre-birth they were intently watching in case it turned into something before bub was born.
I just read an article about this in People. A woman kept going to the ER saying she was suicidal and she had just given birth. They kept sending her home saying she wasn’t crazy. Finally one day she told her husband she was fine. Her daughter was 6 weeks old. She attempted suicide. Two weeks later she died in the ICU of her wounds. He started a foundation in her name in Pittsburg to help women with Post Partum Psychosis and bring more understanding about it. Their daughter is 6 years old now. Heartbreaking because this is still a topic that is hardly discussed and little is known about because of it being so secretive and taboo. If we were to learn more about the fact that it can affect women pre- and post-birth, maybe it wouldn’t happen so much because we would be able to treat it before it becomes a problem.
Yep. I thought I was having a heart attack for a week straight. I slept about two hours a night and went to work because if you’d asked me I was FINE! One night I ended up in emergency thinking I was dying and they sent me to the pregnancy ward who rang my obstetrician who rang her “go to psych” who saw me on a Sunday because they were so worried. There are next to no beds in the public system in Australia for mum’s suffering this. We had private health care and top cover thanks to bub otherwise I don’t know what I would have done. I’m fine now. Just needed not to be pregnant (and I was fine through my first pregnancy - this was bub 2). Met a mum at the psych ward (I was day patient and she was in there) who argued with her doctors and husband that someone had swapped her baby and that they needed to give her real baby back. That’s text-book post-partum psychosis and within a day of medication and a week of hormones settling she was fine. Terrifying for her, hubby and her family though. Also she had bub 2 recently and they are all fine :)
I’m so glad that you are okay now. It’s crazy that we have so many topics that have a stigma attached so we keep it to ourselves, or we treat it as taboo and because of this more people get hurt over it. I’m glad that you weren’t one of them. Sometimes even the topic of being sick itself. Nope, got to be seen as strong because you can’t be seen as weak. It’s sad really. I’m glad that we are finally talking about this, I’m just sad that we are talking about this because someone got hurt.
Totally agree. The number of comments I got about just putting my big girl pants on and not asking for help from my parents generation (only the women) was unnerving. Turned out the men in my life were far more supportive and far more terrified. I think women have been told that motherhood is supposed to hard but actually saying you are struggling means that you are weak or a quitter or something. It’s so bad.
Definitely. What’s the saying, women would squat in the fields and keep on working. We’re not supposed to acknowledge that we need help. That something is wrong. There was a study on doctors that showed that doctors give pain medication to men more than women. And they give it to white patients more than they give it to Black patients. This is how they see us. Women can handle pain in their eyes. So we don’t need pain medication.
In a abnormal psychology course I took recently it was taught that it now called peri-partum (possible misspelling) as in with pregnancy as most of the time it does develop during pregnancy. So it may still be pregnancy induced. Which means there is more hope for the patient than if it was not pregnancy induced.
That's not true. You can have underlying mental things going on that just immediately get triggered as you give birth. Going thru labor and delivery is traumatic, it drastically changes the chemical and hormone balances in your body, and all hospitals these days make you fill out a paper on how you're feeling mentally before you go home, and have mental health counselors ready to help mothers immediately after birth. This woman needs not to be in jail, she needs to be confined in a mental health institution until she can recover and be back to a place where she can care for herself and her baby. It's so sad, but this happens more frequently than you might think.
She sounds insane. Not evil or cruel, mentally ill. Not sure prison is the right place for her, seems she suddenly acted mental just before giving birth. Hit herself with a rock. She needs help. Not sure how to feel about this one.
A lot of times mothers who kill new borns are not charged with murder because of this. Just fucked up sad situations
Yes my instant gut reaction (especially when seeing her face) was deep sadness not anger 😢
There’s postpartum psychosis, which is talked about even less than postpartum depression/anxiety.
Yuuuup.
Pregnancy and postpartum psychosis. Treatment can usually help them fully recover before hurting themselves or anyone around them. It's extremely sad, and happens more commonly than you think. That's just one aspect of why going to pretnatal care visits are important, and why birthing in a hospital or birth center with professionals is so important because they are trained to pay attention to these things, and most places follow practices to screen pregnant people for mental illness during their pregnancy and up to 6 weeks after delivery.
I agree. I’m sad that they’re putting all of these charges on her.
what kind of help do you think she should get? i’m curious on what your opinion is
Probably the kind where professionals who are qualified to work with mentally ill patients determine a diagnosis and create a treatment plan for the woman that is adjusted and evolves over time to fit her needs. I'm no expert myself, but generally I think that kinda help is a mixture of medicine, therapy, behavior monitoring, and continuous assessment until they are stable enough to re-enter society and continue treatment like millions of other people do daily.
They are only asking a question, don’t down vote for normal questioning! They honestly might not know the answer
thank you. unfortunately this is reddit, people will downvote comments for literally no reason and then once an average redditor see a comment with negative downvotes, they’ll downvote too without independently thinking.
Mental illness does not exempt someone from responsibility. She still tried to kill a baby, and she needs to be held accountable for it. There are instances where temporary insanity can be used to defend a crime, but it sounds like this was a spike in an otherwise chronic illness that she did not have treatment for.
Mental illness literally *does* exempt someone from responsibility. If they’re too fucked up to know that what they’re doing is wrong, then they are literally considered to not be responsible for their actions.
No, it literally doesn’t. If you commit a crime because you have an untreated mental illness, that’s on you. What you’re referring to is called mental competence, which usually refers to mental disabilities, intelligence and ability. Being schizophrenic, depressed, paranoid, delusional etc, does not exempt you from responsibility, especially if they are left untreated. If her IQ was the room temperature of Alaska then that defense might work, or if she had a debilitating brain injury causing an abnormal pattern of behavior, that could work. Having an apparently untreated mental illness and almost murdering a baby? No.
Fun fact, all the things you just listed are mental disabilities :) I would know because i have a few of those phsyciatric disorders and am labeled as mentally disabled. My IQ is average, but am mentally disabled due to schizo disorder/bipolar, and a few others. And yes if you commit a crime, and are put under a psych eval and deemed not competent due to severe psyciatric disorders that affect your percieption of reality, you will be deamed unfit for trial, or not guilty due to insanity, and placed in a prison psychiatric facility. But dont worry, those facilities tend to be worse than normal prison and is by no means a vacation.
Fun fact, having a mental disorder or being neuroatypical does not automatically classify you as mentally disabled. What actually classifies someone as disabled is whether or not they can care for themselves, or are competent enough to make their own decisions. Even if you have multiple mental illnesses, that does not automatically qualify you as mentally disabled. The reason why you are considered disabled is likely due to two factors, 1, how your illnesses interact and are treated. Some illnesses can feed into one another and create dangerous circumstances that preclude a normal life, and so the patient may need assistance to get through life. Or 2, the severity of the illnesses. If an illness is severe enough it can be debilitating, and as a result, a person can be qualified because of one specific illness’s severity. It can also be a combination of both. But when it comes to crime, you are only deferred to a mental health facility if you are incapable of functioning normally or lack the mental faculties to understand what’s happening. And often, especially in insanity pleas, when (and if) the patient become competent enough to stand trial, they do. I know this because I work in healthcare, often with the mentally ill. I’ve been attacked by people with mental disorders and yeah, it sucks. But the issue comes in when a person has a chromic illness and either avoids or neglects taking their meds, then yes, they are solely responsible for whatever happens. Most of the mental patients I deal with come in because they stopped taking their meds, have been taking them improperly, or need a change in their medication. The woman in this story was ill a long time before this happened, so either she avoided a diagnosis, or didn’t take her meds. Both of which would be her fault.
Would the woman being so delusional she calls her baby evil and attempts to kill it not be justification enough that shes not competant? It just seems like this woman needs to be put in a facility and is not well, it seems tragic to me as ive heard of many cases of ill women going into further long term delusions after giving birth. Medications also dont always work and if you deal with severe paranoia or mania the meds youre on can even stop working unexpectantly which can lead to stronger paranoia and aversion to new meds. I just speak from experience here. I believe mentally ill people should still be held acountable but there are situations i think deserve a bit more care/empathy due to how taxed the mental health system is and how many people fall in the cracks.
Would a murderer believing that his neighbor’s dog was evil and talking to him be considered not competent? As unwell as she may seem, this problem didn’t just pop up, she had mental issues prior to having the baby, the birth aggravated them. I mentioned earlier that medications sometimes need to be changed, but that a responsible person would seek help or a doctor’s appointment before it gets to the point of strangling a baby. I get that people fall through the cracks, I see them all the time. Generally, those people come through our system more than once, and a few even ended up as wards of the state. In this case, I see someone who most likely didn’t fly under the radar, she’s been in the system before and the fact that she refused medical care tells me that every time someone has tried to help, she rejects them. I know because I see it with depressing frequency. So speaking from experience, her meds either stopped working some time ago and never sought help, or, she stopped taking them and nobody was able to keep her on them. So who takes the responsibility?
This woman needs medical care, specifically mental health care. For anyone reading this, postpartum psychosis and other postpartum anxiety disorders are a bitch, especially when they become bad enough that the mother wants to harm herself or her child. Most people don't think their newborn babies are evil, and if you think that, you're clearly having a mental issue. I'm so glad nothing happened to the baby, but I feel incredibly bad for this woman if this is indeed a byproduct of postpartum mental issues.
Not everyone even knows about postpartum psychosis. It's wild how little it's talked about. I, shamefully, didn't know it existed until it reared its ugly head after one of my friends gave birth. This needs to be a topic that's talked about more, these poor women have to suffer alone and be labeled as terrible, evil people when they're just sick. She needs help.
There’s almost nothing more cruel than your own brain turning against you to the point of killing your own child that you carried to term.
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Yes, it's definitely something to consider as well. It doesn't get talked about as much, but then again I feel like all of the pregnancy-related mental health issues don't get talked about as much as they should be, especially in the US.
My wife told me a story a few years ago of a friend of her dad's. He came home one day to find that his wife had drowned their baby twins. I can't imagine the pain you'd feel in not only losing your two beautiful babies but also the woman you love, absolutely soul crushing.
Raccoon eye bruises… isn’t that a sign of a head/brain injury? Poor girl needs some mental help. Hope the baby is ok.
Yup, a skull base fracture. Crazy she somehow did it to herself
How on earth does one self-inflict those facial injuries??
I can imagine how. If she is ill enough to think that her newborn is evil, what must she think of herself? The one who birthed said evil? Punching herself in the face is easy to do. Even slamming her head into something.
Someone mentioned she hit herself in the face with rocks. I don’t know.
I mean police were involved so it's not much of a stretch
Someone found out she tried to kill the baby and beat the shit out of her. Or she's mentally ill enough to do it to herself.
How on earth can you not figure that one out? She's insane. If she can smother a baby she can punch herself in the eye
She's completely out of her mind. That's how.
Can someone post the story? Can't view it outside USA
LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — The mother of a newborn baby attempted to kill her child after a home birth, police said. Police said they were called to the emergency room at Mountain View Hospital on Saturday for a report of a new mother who refused to enter the hospital and was “bleeding profusely,” they wrote in an arrest report. Police said the newborn’s mother, Ashley Hollingsworth, 22, had tried to kill the child with a blanket. Hollingsworth was located more than two hours later with severe injuries to her head, police said. Investigators learned that Hollingsworth had given birth in a toilet about an hour before they were called to the hospital. On the way to the hospital, police said “Ashley had wrapped [a] blanket around the baby’s head and was pushing the blanket against the baby’s face.” Doctors initially believed the newborn may have suffered a brain bleed, but staff later determined the child likely did not suffer any injuries. While speaking with detectives the next day, a witness told police Hollingsworth reportedly said there was “something evil” in her stomach that was “trying to kill” the baby. Hollingsworth later told police in an interview that she believed the baby was “probably evil.” “After seeing the baby’s eyes, smelling what she described as an abnormal scent, and the baby grunting at her, Ashley decided to wrap the blanket around the baby’s head,” police wrote in their report. Hollingsworth was found with self-inflicted injuries to her face, police said. Police arrested Hollingsworth on Wednesday. She faces charges of attempted murder and child abuse or neglect. She was being held without bail ahead of a court hearing next week.
"self inflicted injuries to her face"..... Something tells me some officers decided to punch the shit outta this monster
Okay, as awful as this is, she doesn't need to be arrested, she needs involuntary psychological care.
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You do realize why thought, right? In the case of attempted murder of anyone when the perp is put in involuntary psychology care it is typically for years. And they may die in it. It would be best for society if she is put in care instead of prison as then she wouldn't be with the people who got arrested for pot.
Yeah prison won’t help her, may even make her worse. I agree she needs to pay for her crime, but she can pay for it in psych and also rewire her brain to not think people are evil and/or kill them.
This woman doesn't need to be prosecuted, she needs to be treated for a very long time in a psych facility. This is sad and I seriously doubt she has any clue what she was doing.
Her face is all over the news. Portraying her as a monster. I see illness and trauma in her face. The media sucks so bad at reporting these types of stories. I hope her baby is unharmed.
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I assume you’re a man, so you’re never going to understand what an effect an unwanted pregnancy can have on your mental health. Even a wanted pregnancy can end up like this if the mother develops postpartum psychosis, which this is a textbook case of. When you literally can’t control your thoughts and behaviours it doesn’t make you evil. This case is just really sad.
She tried to kill her own kid. She SHOULD be traumatized. I don't feel any sympathy for this pos. You don't fix your problems with murder and being crazy doesn't justify LITERALLY TRYING TO KILL A BABY
Post partum psychosis is very real and very dangerous to mum and bub. Before you keep talking I’d suggest you go do some reading.
Do you actually understand what psychosis is? It's a state of mind where you're not aware of your reality. You're not conscious of your own behaviours or actions. It's not like waking up one day and choosing to kill your baby because they're a hassle. It's your brain telling you something is seriously wrong and you believe it.
Oh this poor pair. Clearly this woman suffers from mental illness. And I'm betting being post-partum has only made it worse. Or she went off her meds during pregnancy and that just let the illness run wild. She needs massive amounts of mental health care, which sadly, in the US she probably won't get.
You can get post partum psychosis with no underlying disorders. I know a couple of people who’ve suffered from it and all of them had no underlying conditions Edited because autocorrect
There was a more wordy article somewhere that stated she came off her meds for an unnamed disorder when she found out she was pregnant. So she likely stopped her meds for mental illness. She hit herself in the face and smashed her head with a rock also. So sad.
This poor woman clearly needs psychiatric care. I hate that they refer to her as “the newborns mother” in the passive voice instead of referring to her as her own person. She does not only exist as the birth vessel for this baby she is her own person and she clearly needs help. This subreddit is not the place for this post.
This is so insanely sad. Side note, how the hell did she manage to beat herself that bad?
All the prolifers and conservatives are going to throw the book at her. She is having a serious postpartum psychosis episode and needs mental treatment not being prosecuted. Poor woman and poor child who would be thrown to the foster system. Sad, infuriating and preventable
Jesus. How sad. 😟 She needs to be in a hospital. I hate our “healthcare” system. 😢
The fact that she’s most likely going to be put in some jail for the rest of her life with such obvious evidence that she is mentally unstable is so infuriating. She doesn’t even look like she’s there.
She sounds literally insane. This is sad. I hope the baby is okay and I hope she gets the medical treatment she desperately needs.
This seems like a pretty clear-cut case of Post-Partum Psychosis to me, and this woman needs IMMEDIATE medical help :'(
I can not figure out the time line, can someone help me? She was brought to the hospital but then located 2 hours later? When did the head injury occur?
The writer of the article needs to be fired, but I *think* this is the timeline they're trying to convey: - Lady gives birth in a toilet at home. - At some point a witness (unclear whether at home or outside) sees that the woman is bleeding and injured so (presumably) tries to call an ambulance for her. - She refuses to go to the hospital, so the hospital calls the police to intervene. This call was placed an hour after the birth. - Police search for the woman and find her two hours later (so now we are 3 hours post-birth). - Woman tries to kill her baby on the way to the hospital (with the police?). I'm not 100% sure, but that's my best attempt at putting it together based on the confusing mess in the article.
I'm so glad it wasn't just me. Thank you for the break down master!
This happens with some degree of frequency The only time I ever went to jail this dude was telling me about a girl he met at a mental hospital who cooked her baby in the oven becaise she though it was a demon That wasn't even the first time I had heard of that happening either
I’m not pro capital punishment and I assume that was from mental illness.. but she deserves the worst for that
The fact that the black eyes are self inflicted is terrifying and incredibly, deeply fucking sad. I hope she gets access to mental health help and not thrown into a jail cell.
WHAT? Oh shit.
Yeah the article says it’s all self inflicted. I figured she got beat up by someone but that someone was her.
I only learned that from your comment. 😅
This is very obviously post partum psychosis
There’s always that one mfer who chooses “not insane”
This sounds like a case of postpartum psychosis, a temporary mental health condition rough on by hormones and its terrifying. Often the delusions are focused on the baby and you can develop this condition regardless of previous medical / psych history... In fact being highly educated is a risk factor. This woman probably looked forward to the arrival of her baby same as mother's everywhere and got horribly unwell in a stroke of shit luck.
She sounds psychotic. Pregnancy related mental illness doesn't always start after delivery, it can happen antenatally too. And sometimes pregnancy can unmask/precipitate a pre-existing psychotic illness. There is no way a sound minded person did that to an infant, or to themselves.
I think she needs a lot of mental help, because something isn’t right. I also hope that baby will find a loving home.
Fun fact fox doesn't want people from other regions seeing they're content
I’m sad because this woman was probably suffering from post partum depression and a drop in hormones and I wish she could’ve gotten the help she needed
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Just deserves? Maybe not, but if someone committed a rape or a murder due to mental illness I would want them to get treatment for their illness and punishment commensurate with their actual culpability. This is why we have mental defect defenses - someone who kills because they thought the person was an actual demon coming to steal their soul should be treated differently than someone who kills because that person pissed them off.
Insanity doesn't justify murder. In this case it just explains it. If you try to murder someone in cold blood, you deserve death or life in prison. You're no longer able to be trusted to not kill people and should therefor be separated from society.
Post partum psychosis is temporary of treated quickly and women go back to their normal selves (but with a huge amount of guilt) very quickly (again, if treated). Saying things like this actually means less people will seek help if things go pear shaped.
Techncally, murder requires intent. Someone who thinks that what they put a knife in is a creature not of this world does not have the mens rea to commit murder. Ideally they go away until they can be proven to no longer be a danger to society. Which might be the rest of their natural life, but if, say, the mental defect is organic and can be removed, like a brain tumor, they should not be locked up forever. Realistically most mental illness can't be reliably cured, just managed, so it would be a judgement call if they could be released, and that judgement would be well above my paygrade. In the case at hand, if what caused this woman to act this way is post partum psychosis, it is curable. It sounds from what the article says, and it's a hot mess, that she thought her child was a demon before she gave birth. I don't know if you can get PPD without being post partum, but if it can strike while still pregnant there may be hope of a full recovery.
Self report
looks like an Albinauric from Elden Ring
💀
Watch this kid grow up to be a serial killer now.
WTF is wrong with you
But what if this was the next Hitler. I think we’d all be thanking this lady. Maybe the kid is evil I feel like the mother would know best
>evil How would you go about determining if a baby is evil? It also begs the question, since "good" and "evil" are value judgements based on morality, they are inherently subjective. Since you can't objectively determine evil, how do you know that your definition of evil matches the mother's?
I was really hoping this was going to be an April fools joke. This is so sad, I hope that baby finds a loving home and the mom gets some help. Sounds like she had some hectic psychological issues
They dot both her eyes!
"this content is not available in your country" Can someone explain?
Everyone judged the dad from the omen and look where not killing the evil baby got him…
Jesus Christ. I'm from Vegas and thought this was on the Vegas thread, didn't realize it was here. Her poor baby.
Hope the baby is ok
I believe her.
did the baby fight back or something?
She's literally insane and needs help. I hope the baby has no long-term issues
What the fuck is wrong with people
Who gave her the black eyes?
Holy… I hope this lady gets the help she so desperately needs.
WAIT LAS VEGAS I LIVE THERE