Post by SoulTrainOz on Jul 3, 2006 19:57:25 GMT -5
Too many still consider it a failure of character, not a biological disorder
Even as U.S. Rep. Sue Myrick and the House Committee on Energy and Commerce were holding hearings on mental health this week, Andrea Yates was standing trial again in Texas.
Yates was convicted four years ago of drowning her children in a bathtub. Her defense attorneys argued that she was not guilty because she suffered from postpartum psychosis, a rare complication of childbirth that affects one or two women in 1,000. Yates had five children, attempted suicide twice, and was hospitalized several times in psychiatric units. She was delusional and paranoid, believing that characters on the TV could see her, that invisible cameras in the ceiling were monitoring her, and that her children were doomed to Hell because she could not raise them properly. When she was treated with anti-psychotic medications, she improved dramatically. When she stopped taking them, she killed her children.
Yet the prosecution argued for the death penalty and scoffed at the insanity plea.
"I believe in the insanity defense, in which someone can commit a crime and not be held criminally responsible. I do not see that in this case," prosecutor Kaylynn Williford said.
Public better educated?
During the trial the jury heard testimony from Yates' doctors and from her family, who had watched her deterioration over the years, but they also heard testimony from Dr. Park Dietz, a psychiatrist who said that an episode of "Law and Order," a show Yates often watched, had depicted a case where a mother drowned her children and was acquitted by reason of insanity.
Prosecutors suggested that Yates believed that she could also escape punishment after getting the idea from the show. However, no such show ever aired, and an appeals court in Houston last year overturned the conviction.
Prosecutors and defense lawyers are using the same strategies they used in the first trial. By Texas law, Yates can be found guilty if she knew that what she did was wrong, and prosecutors argue that she planned the murders and carried them out willfully. The defense hopes that in the 4 years since the original conviction, the public has become better educated about the nature of mental illness and will recognize that Andrea Yates needs treatment in a psychiatric facility, not life in prison.
After the jury convicted Yates of murder in 2002, at least three other Texas juries in similar high-profile murder cases found mothers who had killed or seriously injured their children not guilty by reason of insanity. Mental health advocates and groups such as Postpartum Support International are hopeful that the publicity generated by these cases will lead to improvements in mental health care.
Screenings, research needed
Already there is some evidence of increased interest. In April, New Jersey's governor Jon Corzine signed into law a bill requiring postpartum screenings for perinatal mood disorders, and Sens. Robert Menendez of New Jersey and thingy Durbin of Illinois recently proposed federal legislation for similar screenings.
Kay Redfield Jamison, a professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and a scheduled witness at the hearing called by Rep. Myrick, wrote this week in the Washington Post about mental health improvements needed in this country.
"Like the tens of millions of Americans who suffer from mental illness, I hope the hearings have the kind of influence that they should," Jamison, who suffers from bipolar disorder, wrote. "Scientists have made extraordinary advances in understanding the brain and its disorders. We know far more about the genetics, neurobiology, and psychology of depression and bipolar illness than we did just five years ago. But research funding needs to keep pace with the promise of the field."
I would argue that educating the public is as important as research. Too many people fail to understand that our minds are not disembodied entities but are the cognitive activity of our brains. Brains that are diseased or damaged produce minds that are dysfunctional.
Ill people blamed for symptoms
We would never take a nearsighted person's glasses away and tell him to "try harder" to see, nor would we tell someone with a broken back that he could walk if he really applied himself -- yet we hold people with mental illnesses to a different standard of conduct, blaming them for being willful or calculating when they exhibit the symptoms of their disease.
I do it despite knowing better -- which reflects badly on my own
willfulness. When my 17-year-old son recently missed three doses of the medication he takes to control his obsessive-compulsive disorder, I became alarmed with his swift descent into depression and then impatient when he couldn't just snap out of it.
As a classroom teacher, how many times have I spoken harshly to a student whose attention-deficit disorder made him appear lazy or restless? Or dismissed an anxious student with a stupid platitude?
As we expand our understanding of how the brain works -- and sometimes doesn't work -- we will treat mental illnesses the same way we treat other disorders, as defects of the body and not failures of character. Until then, we will continue to believe -- wrongly -- that mental illness is a cause for shame and punishment.
Kay McSpadden
(source: Charlotte Observer -- Observer columnist Kay McSpadden is a high school English teacher in York, S.C.)
Even as U.S. Rep. Sue Myrick and the House Committee on Energy and Commerce were holding hearings on mental health this week, Andrea Yates was standing trial again in Texas.
Yates was convicted four years ago of drowning her children in a bathtub. Her defense attorneys argued that she was not guilty because she suffered from postpartum psychosis, a rare complication of childbirth that affects one or two women in 1,000. Yates had five children, attempted suicide twice, and was hospitalized several times in psychiatric units. She was delusional and paranoid, believing that characters on the TV could see her, that invisible cameras in the ceiling were monitoring her, and that her children were doomed to Hell because she could not raise them properly. When she was treated with anti-psychotic medications, she improved dramatically. When she stopped taking them, she killed her children.
Yet the prosecution argued for the death penalty and scoffed at the insanity plea.
"I believe in the insanity defense, in which someone can commit a crime and not be held criminally responsible. I do not see that in this case," prosecutor Kaylynn Williford said.
Public better educated?
During the trial the jury heard testimony from Yates' doctors and from her family, who had watched her deterioration over the years, but they also heard testimony from Dr. Park Dietz, a psychiatrist who said that an episode of "Law and Order," a show Yates often watched, had depicted a case where a mother drowned her children and was acquitted by reason of insanity.
Prosecutors suggested that Yates believed that she could also escape punishment after getting the idea from the show. However, no such show ever aired, and an appeals court in Houston last year overturned the conviction.
Prosecutors and defense lawyers are using the same strategies they used in the first trial. By Texas law, Yates can be found guilty if she knew that what she did was wrong, and prosecutors argue that she planned the murders and carried them out willfully. The defense hopes that in the 4 years since the original conviction, the public has become better educated about the nature of mental illness and will recognize that Andrea Yates needs treatment in a psychiatric facility, not life in prison.
After the jury convicted Yates of murder in 2002, at least three other Texas juries in similar high-profile murder cases found mothers who had killed or seriously injured their children not guilty by reason of insanity. Mental health advocates and groups such as Postpartum Support International are hopeful that the publicity generated by these cases will lead to improvements in mental health care.
Screenings, research needed
Already there is some evidence of increased interest. In April, New Jersey's governor Jon Corzine signed into law a bill requiring postpartum screenings for perinatal mood disorders, and Sens. Robert Menendez of New Jersey and thingy Durbin of Illinois recently proposed federal legislation for similar screenings.
Kay Redfield Jamison, a professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and a scheduled witness at the hearing called by Rep. Myrick, wrote this week in the Washington Post about mental health improvements needed in this country.
"Like the tens of millions of Americans who suffer from mental illness, I hope the hearings have the kind of influence that they should," Jamison, who suffers from bipolar disorder, wrote. "Scientists have made extraordinary advances in understanding the brain and its disorders. We know far more about the genetics, neurobiology, and psychology of depression and bipolar illness than we did just five years ago. But research funding needs to keep pace with the promise of the field."
I would argue that educating the public is as important as research. Too many people fail to understand that our minds are not disembodied entities but are the cognitive activity of our brains. Brains that are diseased or damaged produce minds that are dysfunctional.
Ill people blamed for symptoms
We would never take a nearsighted person's glasses away and tell him to "try harder" to see, nor would we tell someone with a broken back that he could walk if he really applied himself -- yet we hold people with mental illnesses to a different standard of conduct, blaming them for being willful or calculating when they exhibit the symptoms of their disease.
I do it despite knowing better -- which reflects badly on my own
willfulness. When my 17-year-old son recently missed three doses of the medication he takes to control his obsessive-compulsive disorder, I became alarmed with his swift descent into depression and then impatient when he couldn't just snap out of it.
As a classroom teacher, how many times have I spoken harshly to a student whose attention-deficit disorder made him appear lazy or restless? Or dismissed an anxious student with a stupid platitude?
As we expand our understanding of how the brain works -- and sometimes doesn't work -- we will treat mental illnesses the same way we treat other disorders, as defects of the body and not failures of character. Until then, we will continue to believe -- wrongly -- that mental illness is a cause for shame and punishment.
Kay McSpadden
(source: Charlotte Observer -- Observer columnist Kay McSpadden is a high school English teacher in York, S.C.)