The story of Otty Sanchez taps deep veins, unfolding like a Greek tragedy: A new mother breaks with her lover three weeks after giving birth to their child. Insane with grief, she hears voices telling her to kill her baby -- the fruit of their union. After murdering the infant, she begins to consume him, returning him to the body from whence he so recently came. In a moment of clarity she sees what she has done. Horrified, she tries to take her own life, stabbing herself in the heart and slitting her own throat.
This article is the first I've read of what happened. It's gruesome and hard to understand how anyone can do this - but that's coming from a woman who does not have mental illness.
Even more questions plague me. Should we not allow those who have been diagnosed with severe mental illness (i.e. those that cause delusions and severe paranoia) to become parents unless they can prove they are continuing to take their prescribed drugs? How does the zigzagging of hormones intensify mental illness and why aren't the physicians doing a better job of monitoring this?
This is a doozy of a case - one straight out of the depths of our worst nightmares - so clearly it's being heavily followed by the media. But could this be more common than we think? Could other less dramatic cases of infanticide being improperly labeled as SIDS or whatever simply because our system of dealing with mental health problems AND (pregnant) women is so flawed?
No comments:
Post a Comment