I'll Just Make a Wild Prediction

Last evening, a mother tossed her three children into San Francisco Bay. The children died. Now, press accounts point to the fact that the accused was hearing voices that told her to toss the kids into the 50-degree water. When the police arrived, she was standing alongside a pier just staring vacantly.

Here's my prediction: subsequent reporting will turn up that the woman is schizophrenic, had a long and troubling history struggling with the illness, and is an example of how African-Americans don't get adequate mental health treatment in our culture (partly owing to the intense stigma attached to mental illness in African-American culture), and so on. The whole business has shades of Andrea Yates. It saddens me beyond words that children pay the price both for a mom who may be mentally ill and for an American culture that refuses to properly embrace doing something about mental illness. Sad and tragic.