Andrea Yates: Jury Believed the Myths of Mental Illness

Yates jury believes the myths of mental illness

By Deborah Peel

President, National Coalition of Mental Health Professionals and Consumers

Friday, March 15, 2002

People are saddened and outraged that Andrea Yates was found guilty of capital murder. How could anyone who saw and heard evidence about Yates' postpartum psychosis come to that conclusion? How could a jury decide that she knew right from wrong?

The Yates jury apparently believed the five biggest myths about mental illness:

* If you can plan a murder, you are sane.

* If you know murder is wrong, you are sane.

* Delusional thoughts can be turned off at will.

* Minds can just "snap" and people go crazy.

* No treatment exists for mental illness.

The jury believed that Yates was sane because she planned to drown her children despite struggling against those thoughts for years, waited until her husband left for work but before her mother-in-law arrived, drowned her kids one by one, called 911 and then spoke calmly to police.

Planning and calmness are not proof of sanity. The ability to plan and execute the tasks of daily living, projects at work or other activities that require thought is rarely stopped by mental illness. Most people with depressions and even psychoses can still plan and execute jobs as well as the rest of us can, including murder. Only very serious brain impairments, such as comas or bad head injuries, prevent people from being able to plan. Yes, Yates planned to drown her kids. Is that planning evidence of her sanity? No.

Yates told the doctors and police that she knew murder was wrong. But then she said she was such a bad mother that her children were irreparably harmed and the only way to save them was to kill them and send them to Heaven. She knew murder was wrong, but she did not know her delusional belief about being a bad mother was wrong or that her other delusional belief that her children were permanently damaged also was wrong. These wrong ideas were the core of her mental illness, but to her they were true.

Andrea did know one important right from wrong -- that murder is wrong, but she did not know the most crucial right from wrong: that her delusional thinking was in error. Even more horrifying, she used the knowledge that murder was wrong as the means to ensure she would be punished and executed for being a bad mother.

The third myth is that people can turn off delusional thoughts. According to this myth, Yates should have been able to disregard her crazy ideas. She should have been able to turn off her delusional thoughts like a light switch. But no one can suddenly stop believing ideas that seem completely true, and not just true but that have become more and more compelling and dominating as the years pass.

Fourth, the prosecution's psychiatrist, Park Dietz, told the jury that Yates didn't become psychotic until after she saw her children were dead, letting them conclude that seeing the dead children triggered her psychosis. He exploited the myth that Andrea suddenly "snapped" at the terrible sight and became insane. Nobody snaps and becomes mentally ill, as appealing as that myth seems to be. The myth simply absolves those who knew the person who "snapped" from any responsibility for recognizing their illness or helping them.

Yates' medical records showed she began to have psychotic thoughts after the birth of her first child. She never snapped. She gradually slid further and further into depression and psychosis through the years as she had children, got off her medications, had more babies, got more depleted, had less sleep, experienced other powerful losses (such as her father's death), had no help at home and received poor and ineffective treatment, despite having health insurance.

Finally, the jury may well have thought that no effective care exists for Yates, because the two years of treatment did not prevent five deaths. They may have thought a guilty verdict was the only way to protect Yates and society from more deaths. But Yates actually has a treatable illness; she just hasn't received the specialized treatment she needed.

Finding Andrea Yates guilty of murder shows how deeply we hold onto myths about mental illness. But sanity requires far more than knowing murder is wrong and the ability to plan. Sanity means being free of delusions that you are a bad mother who has killed her children and deserves to die.

Peel lives in Austin.

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