Question:
I'm just curious about her now over a year after her retrial. Does anybody have any information about how her mental status is now that she has been confined to a hospital where she is getting the medication that she needs? I know I will probably get bashed over the head by others for saying this, BUT I really feel that most of the blame for the murders of her 5 children should be placed on the doctor she had at the time, the hospital she was in beforehand, and somewhat on her ex-husband Rusty. Even though he didn't know what she was thinking at the time, he would have had to have seen the horrible decline of her mental health. She had previously attemped suicide--twice, picked at her bleeding scalp attempting to scratch off the 666 she thought was on the crown of her head, stared into space for hours at a time, thought the cartoons on TV were talking to her, didn't eat, didn't sleep, didn't talk...is that somebody that you would leave your child alone with, even for one minute?
Answers:
Blaming physicians for illness is not the answer. Physicians are not mind readers, nor can they predict the future, nor can they control patient compliance once they have left the hospital. It is always tempting to try to find someone to blame when an illnes such as Ms. Yates' ends in such horrific tragedy. The bottom line, though, is that psychotic breaks (particularly violent ones - when the patient has not demonstrated any violent tendencies previously) are not predictable.
Might her spouse have been in error in leaving her to deal with the children? Perhaps. My guess, though, is that he was a man under a lot of pressure, who was dealing as best he could. Hindsight is 20/20. I'm sure Mr. Yates probably wrestles with this every day of his life.
Andrea Yates needed treatment before she killed her children. Instead, she kept on having children as her husband worked at NASA to support them. With her husband out of the picture, she'll wind up like John Hinckley - having increased privileges until she's too old to be a danger to herself or to others.
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