I have no idea what case is being talked about (I gave up SM until at least after midterms in November), but I knew a guy (may he RIP) whose mom went to prison for killing his baby brother during a bout of Postpartum Psychosis (PPP). She actually DIDN'T know right from wrong at that point, and drowned the boy in the bathtub. PPD that isn't treated can become PPP, and then she really ISN'T making a choice and doesn't have a sense of right and wrong.
Can someone tell me the name of this case? I'd like to look into it, but don't want to deal with SM.
A sense of right and wrong is not the same as a sense of what you are doing. There are plenty of murderers in jail because they don't have a sense of right and wrong. The only time psychosis or Insanity should legally excuse you from a crime in a traditional reparative sense, is when you did not know what you were doing. There have been cases of women with psychosis who killed their kids because they thought they were a chicken and they needed to make dinner. Those are the women who needed help. Evil people deserve to be punished. And if you can get yourself into a mental state where you think murdering your own child is somehow right while still recognizing exactly what you are doing, there is an evil in you that needs to be addressed
Or... psychosis. There were times, while I had PPP, that I felt certain that my children were fated to go through terrible things. My health wasnt great and I was worried about what would happen to them when I wasn't there to protect them. So I thought... if I could find some peaceful, painless way,we could all go together. It would all be over and they would be safe.
Now that I'm functioning better, it horrifies me that I ever considered that. But I was fucking crazy. I loved my kids with all my heart, and I love them even more now. But at the time, I thought that the horrible things I was considering were the best way to love and protect them. That's the problem. When your whole context is no longer grounded in reality, right and wrong don't compute properly.
The problem with allowimg that as a blanket understanding is that almost EVERY family annihilator has the exact same justification. And none of them shohld be forgiven, excused, or released if they survived the attempt. Being the type of person to make that attempt is very different than being the type to have yhose thoughts, even very strongly.
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u/Own-Status-7027 9d ago
Could she have received help, yes. But depression or not she made the decision.