Andrea Yates murdered her five young children in 2001 and she did it while in a psychotic state of Postpartum Depression, a disorder that too few women and healthcare workers know about. This lack of information leaves a woman, her family and even her community at risk if the disorder reaches the proportion that it had in Ms. Yates' case.

Before I outline the symptoms, first let me give you some background on the case because Andrea Yates is on trial, for a second time, for the murder of these children. In the first trial, a prosecution witness, a very well-known psychiatrist, gave inaccurate testimony that could have tainted the jury decision against this woman.

Andrea Yates had five children in eight years of marriage and she turned from an outgoing, intelligent woman into someone wracked by guilt, depression and increasingly delusional behavior. She tried to commit suicide twice, was hospitalized and then began mutilating herself, stopped eating, had no interest in maintaining her personal hygiene and became convinced that her children needed to die in order to escape a worse fate. A psychiatrist had warned after, I believe, the birth of her third child, that, if she continued to have children, her Postpartum Depression would worsen with each birth.

Antipsychotic medication had been prescribed for Yates, but it was in the form of pills and she stopped taking them. No one, seemingly, was either supervising her medication or thought to provide something other than pills. In my professional experience with potentially dangerous patients, this medication would have been provided to them in an IM (intramuscular) formulation for their own protection and that of others. This was not done in this case.

Yates has admitted the crime and for the rest of her life she will suffer the guilt of those deaths, even though she wasn't truly responsible. Psychosis takes away the ability to think clearly and to control dangerous actions and that happened in Ms. Yates' case. She was the victim of her biology having gone berserk.

First, let me say that Postpartum Depression with Psychosis is rare and only affects about 1 out of 1000 births.

The symptoms of Postpartum Depression, which in its more common form, affects anywhere from 50-80% of women, include mood changes, insomnia, fear of harming your child, an overwhelming feeling of inability to cope, hopelessness and sadness, irritability and crying, fear of being alone, poor self-care, loss of interest in activities, social isolation, problems concentrating or thinking, decreased energy. For most women these will last a few days to a few weeks and, for some, as long as a year.

What to do? Talk to your doctor and understand that others are there to help and support you. This is biology, not you being a bad mother.

Related Topics: Postpartum Depression Checklist, Out of the Blue: Brooke Shields' Struggle with Postpartum Depression

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