ipl-logo

Andrea Yates Research Paper

3686 Words15 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Andrea yates essay

Andrea Yates:
A Look into Postpartum Psychosis
Emily Hughes
Missouri Valley College

If you ask most mothers if they have ever thought of hurting their children, most all would answer with a stern no. Most people do not think it is possible to harm their children. It was a midmorning on June 20st 2001 in Houston when an eerily calm woman phoned 911 to come to her home. No one was prepared for the horror that was behind the doors to this modest brick home. Andrea Yates mother of five young children had drown her children one by one in the family bathtub. Andrea’s past is extremely important to the story of what happened in that Houston home on that fateful day. Many seemingly insignificant events made a huge impact on …show more content…

Postpartum psychosis is a specifier for a current major depressive episode like in Andrea’s case. Postpartum psychosis is mental illness that has an onset shortly after childbirth. The symptoms of postpartum depression tend to develop very quickly, typically in the first few weeks after delivery, normally between 1 and four weeks. Postpartum depression is the most severe of the postpartum disorders and is also the rarest, only about 1 or 2 cases of every 1,000 births. Sometimes, at first, the mother might just feel excited and unable to sleep before the more serious side effects take hold. . The illness is characterized by extreme mood disturbances. Many times these can manifest as dangerous mood swings and hallucinations. It is important to note that not all cases of postpartum psychosis symptoms are the same in every case. However, usually symptoms include hearing voices, feeling disconnected from reality and even manic type behavior. Typically postpartum psychosis is considered an extension on a manic depressive …show more content…

These delusions, in contrast to schizophrenia, develop very quickly and are usually centered on the child. Research on mothers with postpartum psychosis done by P.S Chandra (2006) has shown that delusions that the baby is evil increase the risk of harm towards the child (Chandra, Bhargavaraman, Raghunandan & Shaligram 2006) In Andrea’s case her delusions were that her children were becoming evil because of her and stumbling from god’s path. Andrea’s particular type of delusion may have increased the chances that harm was going to come to her children by her own hand. Similar research also found that when delusions are related to the child the infants had higher rates of abusive and mothers were considered unsafe to look after their children when alone. The type of delusions Andrea was having are very important. Many studies, like the P.S. Chandra study previously stated, found the type of delusion is directly related to the type of interaction mothers have with their children. There are certain delusions that are significantly related to infant abuse or harm. All this research helps show how detrimental postpartum psychosis can be when the delusions are directly related to the

Show More
Related
908 Words | 4 Pages

Andrea Yates, born Andrea Pia Kennedy, was the wife of Russell Yates and mother to 5 children, Noah, John, Paul, Luke, and Mary. Andrea was a stay-at-home mother to their five children, while Russell held a full-time job as a NASA engineer. Andrea and Russell were devoutly religious, with Andrea being raised Roman Catholic and Russell, the son of a preacher, raised as a Methodist. This is pertinent information, as it is the basis of the hallucinations and subsequent suicidal and homicidal urges Andrea faced leading to the murder of her 5 children. According to an article by The Lancet, “Andrea Yates began to show signs of mental illness shortly after the birth of the couple’s first child, when she had an hallucination that involved a stabbing.”

Read More
1246 Words | 5 Pages

Although the defences expert testimony agreed that Yates was psychotic, the law in Texas is that to be able to be considered insane you must have not known your actions were wrong which was hard to prove for Andrea since she was very capable of separating right from wrong and since she was very aware of what she had done. When asked about the murders Andrea asked very calm, she had no remorse and genuinely believed what she was going was the right thing to do. Andrea was very heavily influenced by her religion and truly thought that she was saving her children from growing up and becoming sinners to avoid hell. Since Andrea admitted to waiting for her husband to leave for work to kill her children to Dr. Michael Welner, the Prosecutors were easily able to prove this was a thought-out murder which very possibly qualifies this murder as a very possible first degree murder. Testimony from Dr. Dietz also very heavily impact the jury’s decision.

Read More
782 Words | 4 Pages

After her trial, Yates was found not guilty by reason of insanity and is currently institutionalized. Her case is famous for showcasing the effects that post-partum psychosis can have on a woman. While I believe that Yates’s children were simply victims of their mother’s mental illness, Yates claimed that she killed her children because they claimed that she was a bad mother and she believed that they were not developing properly as Christians (Christian and Teachy 2002). This delusion, however, was likely just a part of Yates’s psychosis. Yates suffered from depression and bulimia nervosa as a teen, although her depression seems to have gone into remission for several years (O’Malley 2005 p. 20).

Read More
106 Words | 1 Pages

There have been many documented cases pertaining to mothers who have killed their own children due to the invasion of the involuntary hormonal imbalance of postpartum depression. “Women like, Claire Briggs who beat and tortured her second child to death, he was two-month-old. Briggs had her first child removed by social services due to her severe addiction. Lindsey Lowe age 25 killed her twins, Stacie Marie Parsons bashed in the head of her 4-year-old daughter because she was jealous of her, and Andrea Yates has become known nationwide for her incomprehensible crime (Citation Information =Article Title= Andrea Yates Biography =

Read More
222 Words | 1 Pages

Andrea Yates case is very confusing when trying to determine if she was insane or sane. Someone who is insane has no regulation of themselves, they do not know right from wrong, and they aren’t able to feel emotions for others. Andrea Yates case involves her killing her fives kids by drowning them in the bathtub when her husband was away. Andrea Yates was prescribed strong anti-psychotic medications and was diagnosed with depressive disorder a year before she killed her kids. Andrea Yates admitted that she has been thinking of taking her kids life away for years because she was trying to protect them from demons

Read More
564 Words | 3 Pages

Her bizarre and hyperactive behavior were signs of her psychotic episode. Another sign that she was experiencing hallucinations during this psychotic episode is where her body was

Read More
711 Words | 3 Pages

Relation In the book Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls, it was never said in the writing that the mother had a type of mental illness. Though throughout this book it was never said in writing that she has mental illness like depression, but it was hinted at. She was showing symptoms of depression throughout the story, as her own and her family's life and way living got worse she seemed to care less and spend more time in bed, not wanting to get out as if she was physically . Her kids all said this was her mother just being selfish and lazy.

Read More
878 Words | 4 Pages

Andrea believed children were not accountable for their actions until they were ten years old, which is why she believed her children could escape hell if she killed them. Clearly, Andrea was influenced by demonic people which caused her to doubt herself and believe she was an awful mother and

Read More
1464 Words | 6 Pages

It took about a month for Rusty to start noticing Andrea was falling back into her old depressive ways. She was caught talking about suicide again and once held a knife to her neck and begged Rusty to just let her die. July 1999, Yates suffered from a nervous breakdown and tried again to commit suicide and was hospitalized. The doctors determined she suffered from postpartum psychosis. Postpartum psychosis is a rare psychiatric emergency in which symptoms of high mood and racing thoughts (mania), depression, severe confusion, loss of inhibition, paranoia, hallucinations and delusions set in, beginning suddenly in the first two weeks after delivery.

Read More
1239 Words | 5 Pages

Weeks before she killed her children Andrea Yates was taken off her medication. Andrea Yates clearly still needed to be on her medicine because when she was on them she knew right from wrong. Andrea Yates experience hallucinations that she believe were real, which caused her to behave and communicate in an inappropriate and incoherent fashion (Medical-Dictionary). This why she wasn’t able to understand what she was doing was wrong until her psychotic episode

Read More
1067 Words | 5 Pages

The Yellow Wallpaper and Postpartum Depression What is postpartum depression one would ask from the 1800’s? It wasn’t until the late 1850s when medical professionals first recognized postpartum depression as a disorder. “Postpartum depression isn't a character flaw or a weakness. Sometimes it's simply a complication of giving birth” ("Postpartum Depression - Mayo Clinic").

Read More
1130 Words | 5 Pages

Postpartum depression occurs after birth when the hormones of women are changing which causes many symptoms such as irritability, hot flashes, and sadness. In the short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper” the narrator suffers from postpartum depression and is put into a mental hospital by her husband only to find out in the end he was not who she thought he was and the place she was living was not what she had

Read More
598 Words | 3 Pages

This is one of the bigger issues because postpartum depression is not represented in the media very often. Because of this many people many mothers don’t understand what is going on with them, and they may even think that it is a normal thing. But now there are many mothers coming forward with their experience with PPD such as Chrissy Teigen, Courtney Cox, Brooke Shields, and many more. Brooke Shields even published a book on her PPD journey, this book is called “Down Came The

Read More
1092 Words | 5 Pages

The relationship between madness and truth is a topic greatly misinterpreted. The connection between the various states of the mind, and imagination reveals how the mind functions. True in madness is how someone’s thoughts is indifferent to what is actually happening in reality. Many people throughout time have been studied by their struggles of what is considered mad by psychotherapists. Through Sigmund Freud and Josef Breuer’s case study of Anna O and Hitchcock’s A Shadow of Doubt, the human mind is explored through the truth behind the madness of what others have not seen and experienced, by opening paths to adventure into the unconscious.

Read More
959 Words | 4 Pages

She suffers from a number of unreasonable fears, which may take longer. According to the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy or CBT, there are a number of techniques that can be sued for the treatment of patients exhibiting such disorder characteristics. The concepts of cognitive model indicate that the most common cause of mental disorders is thinking in a dysfunctional way. This means that people tend to have irrational beliefs that influence their subsequent reactions as indicated by Ellis (1977). It can be seen in the case of Sally where she thinks that she is a bad mother based on the two previous miscarriages, she is convinced that her son is sick and does not accept professional medical opinions or the attempts to convince her by her husband.

Read More

More about Andrea Yates Research Paper

Related Topics

Open Document