Andrea Yates methodically drowned her 5 children in a bathtub in her Clear Lake City, Houston, Texas house on June 20, 2001. Her mental health began to deteriorate with the birth of each of her children, combined with other external stressors. She attempted suicide twice and was hospitalized twice in a psychiatric facility in 1999 after delivering her fourth child. Yates was warned against having any more children, but conceived approximately 7 weeks later. 3 months after the birth of her fifth child and shortly after the death of her father, she began to rapidly degenerate. She was hospitalized twice more, and eventually released with orders that she should not be left alone. During an hour when her husband had left for work and her mother-in-law was scheduled to arrive, she killed all five of her children. She was consequently committed to a high-security psychiatric hospital. Her case attracted a great deal of media attention, particularly to the concept of serious mental illness following (and also caused by) childbirth.
i don't think it's about her children's condition per se. it may just be one of the reasons that triggered it. childbirth, for some women, brings an awful lot of changes in hormone levels and the stress it brings may be too much for some people to handle.
my bad, the correct term is postpartum psychosis. one other similar case is andrea yates. copying from this wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postpartum_psychosis
Andrea Yates methodically drowned her 5 children in a bathtub in her Clear Lake City, Houston, Texas house on June 20, 2001. Her mental health began to deteriorate with the birth of each of her children, combined with other external stressors. She attempted suicide twice and was hospitalized twice in a psychiatric facility in 1999 after delivering her fourth child. Yates was warned against having any more children, but conceived approximately 7 weeks later. 3 months after the birth of her fifth child and shortly after the death of her father, she began to rapidly degenerate. She was hospitalized twice more, and eventually released with orders that she should not be left alone. During an hour when her husband had left for work and her mother-in-law was scheduled to arrive, she killed all five of her children. She was consequently committed to a high-security psychiatric hospital. Her case attracted a great deal of media attention, particularly to the concept of serious mental illness following (and also caused by) childbirth.
i don't think it's about her children's condition per se. it may just be one of the reasons that triggered it. childbirth, for some women, brings an awful lot of changes in hormone levels and the stress it brings may be too much for some people to handle.