How could a mother allegedly kill her children? Experts say mental health can distort thinking.
A makeshift memorial grew with stuffed animals and flowers throughout the day Tuesday at the home in Duxbury. John Tlumacki/Globe Staff
By Felice J. Freyer, The Boston Globe
It seems beyond comprehension: A Duxbury woman has been charged with
murdering two of her children, ages 3 and 5, and her third, a7-month-old, has been hospitalized with traumatic injuries.
Neighbors said theynever noticed anything unusual about the
home with weathered shingles and a swing set in the backyard. And indeed
little is known about what preceded the horrible occurrences of Tuesday
evening. Authorities said the mother, Lindsay Clancy, jumped out of a
second-story window in what may have been a suicide attempt, and remains
hospitalized.
What would prompt a mother to do such a thing?
Paradoxically, experts say, the culprit in such deaths is often a
loving mother in the throes of mental illness, motivated by love and
attachment to her children.
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Cheryl L. Meyer, a psychology professor at Wright State University
who studies mothers who kill their children, recalled interviewing one
such woman who had also tried to kill herself. The mother told her that
killing her kids felt logical because they were an extension of herself,as if they were a limb.
”She couldn’t die without taking her arm. She couldn’t die without taking the kids,” Meyer said Wednesday.
As mother of an 7-month-old, Clancy was still in the year-long
postpartum period, and she had revealed on social media that she had
suffered from postpartum depression in the past.
In rare cases — about 1 or 2 out every 1,000 postpartum women – this
depression can progress to psychosis, in which a woman’s brain is
“hijacked by a really, really serious illness that distorts reality” and
prompts actions they would never take if healthy, said Dr. Nancy Byatt,
professor of psychiatry, obstetrics & gynecology and population
& quantitative health sciences at UMass Chan Medical School.
Dr. Susan Hatters Friedman, a professor of forensic psychiatry at
Case Western Reserve University who has researched parents who kill
their children, said the motives fall into five categories: a young
person with an unwanted pregnancy kills a newborn; years of abuse or
neglect lead to a child’s death; a partner seeks revenge, often in the
case of a relationship breakup; and two types of mental illness —
“altruistic” and “acutely psychotic.”
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The first category is not relevant to the Duxbury deaths, and there
is no evidence so far for the second or third. And it is unknown whether
Clancy had psychiatric problems.
But the prospect that a mental health condition underlays the Duxbury killings raises troubling questions.
In some cases, Hatters Friedman said, the parent’s motive is
altruistic — “murder out of love,” however strange that may sound. A
parent may have delusions that the child faces a fate worse than death,
such as being kidnapped and murdered, and believes killing them gently
is preferable. Parents who are planning suicide may not want to leave
their child in a world they perceive as too horrible to live in.
In the acutely psychotic cases, a parent may think God is commanding
them to kill their child or that their child is evil, she said.
People are often stunned by such killings because often the mothers
were known as perfect and loving, said Meyer, who wrote two books on the
subject. “These mothers are often described as just being
quintessential moms. They’re the definition of a good mom,” she said.
“And so that’s why it’s really shocking when you hear that they do these
things.”
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Such women are not secretly evil. Instead, mental illness of some
kind gets a grip on them. When their identities are so enmeshed with
that of their children, they take steps that in their distorted thinking
seems best for their children.
“Why would a woman who loved her children kill them?” Meyer said.
“She killed them because she loved them. That’s a hard thing to
understand.”
The defining factor for women who killed their children was a lack of
social support, Meyer said. She recalled meeting a woman who confessed
that, during a major life crisis, she had prepared to kill her children
and herself by poisoning their ice cream. Just before she served it, her
pastor called to see how she was doing. By the time the conversation
ended, the ice cream had melted and the plans for murder dissipated.
Cases like the Duxbury killings are rare but unforgettable. Everyone
remembers Susan Smith, who drove her two young children into a lake in
1994, and Andrea Yates, who drowned her five children in a bathtub in
2001. Yates was a devoted mother who home-schooled her children, but
killed her children while suffering from postpartum psychosis.
In Canada and the United Kingdom, a woman cannot be convicted of
first-degree murder if she kills her child during the postpartum period,
Meyer said.
In the United States, mothers often get harsh sentences for killing
their children. “It’s more horrific in our minds if a mother does this,”
she said.
Byatt, of UMass, finds it “concerning” that the Duxbury mother was
charged with murder. If she had postpartum psychosis, she had no control
over what she was doing, Byatt said.
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Postpartum depression, which is triggered by hormonal changes after
pregnancy, is more common than postpartum psychosis, but both can be
averted with treatment if doctors watch for the warning signs throughout
pregnancy and after birth, said Dr. Judith E. Robinson, a Tufts Medical
Center psychiatrist.
People who already suffer from a mental illness such as bipolar
disorder, or who have had postpartum depression in the past, are at
greater risk.
“It’s a very serious condition,” Robinson said. “It’s more than just being sad or crying from time to time.”
Symptoms of depression include persistent sadness, barely getting out
of bed, crying all the time, and difficulty with eating, sleeping, and
concentration. Psychosis involves delusional or disordered thinking and
hallucinations.
“It’s a life crisis to have a baby under a year old and to have some
other children,” Robinson said. “You are really at high risk of burning
out. And if you have your own psychiatric disorder and you don’t have
help — your kids could be difficult, just normal difficult. . . . It can
drive you to the point of becoming psychotic.”
If you or someone you know have had thoughts of suicide, call 988 or visit 988lifeline.org to chat online.
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