It is so impossible to imagine this entire scene, we all must continue to be diligent in the quest for answers. Women's hormones are often overlooked when they see a psychiatrist.Many times there is an imbalance of hormones that is critical to understand: it happened to my daughter when she reached 10X's the normal amount of one hormone.The specialist said it could cause aggression, and all I can say is this man and woman have a story no one wants to read or claim as their own. There needs to be an emphasis made on women and mental illness, and I would like to see research take this on aggressively, like breast cancer. It's time to address women in the mental health world.

While it is true that womens' hormones are often overlooked by doctors, it is also true that the new atypical antipsychotics can be very dangerous for anyone with a diagnosis of 'bipolar' disorder since the atypical antipsychotics are half antipsychotic and half antidepressant.

When I was first studying this issue 7 or 8 years ago, I went into the "Groups" and read horrible accounts of people going "manic" on the new antipsychotic Respirdal. After further study, it became evident to me that Respirdal was far more likely to cause mania than Zyprexa although Zyprexa and other atypicals have been known to induce mania and even the new mood stabilizer Lamictal has this potential.

At www.ssristories.com there are listed 27 cases of mothers diagnosed with postpartum depression who killed their children while on SSRIs. There are also 112 additional stories of mothers who killed their children while on SSRIs where it did not state that they were suffering from postpartum depression but in some of these cases they probably were, i.e. Soccaro Caro [wife of a physician] who killed her three children while on Prozac could be considered a postpartum case as the baby was only several months old. Mrs. Caro was on Prozac. She received the death penalty.

Tragically, Andrea Yates became the Poster Mom for postpartum depression yet Andrea Y. was taking 425 mg. of Effexor which is above the recommended maximum dose in the PDR. In fact, on page 36 of the insert Online for Effexor, "homicidal ideation" is listed as an adverse reaction.

I believe new moms deserve a lot of respect and help. Help is the key word here. In fact in Brooke Shields autobiography, Brooke began her recovery immediately after the nanny showed up on the scene. Brooke was finally able to relax and care for her own body and achieve enough rest to begin to recover from the hormonal maelstrom of delivery.

We don't need Oprah telling the American people that 'bipolars' are violent people and killers to boot. We need to place the cause of these types of killings right where they belong - on the excess of serotonin in the brain which is being delivered to these pospartum women via the new antidepressants and new atypical antipsychotics.

I think it is time for some serious studies and some serious discussions on this issue.

As tragic as it is, this has been going on for centuries, it is hardly a new or growing phenomenon. Instead of looking to more psychiatry, we might do better to look at countries where new mothers get regular visits from home nurses and get help caring for their new baby paid for by the state. In other societies, women are not left alone with a new baby, they have a community or extended family right there to support and help them. Women in this country are expected to handle a newborn all by themselves during the day except for the rarer stay at home dad. It is an unreasonable expectation in my opinion, and not what existed in even fairly recent history.

This reminds me of the Rebecca Riley story in that it turns out Riley and her siblings were acting the way they were acting becasue they were abused, probably by parents who abused them because they were abused, and the psychiatrist, hearing and passing on the word bipolar missed that.

Accidental drowning of baby stories are unfortunately pretty common and subsequent panic and shock also, as baby deaths go. If this woman hadn't been labeled bipolar I wonder if this wouldn't be investigated as such. Also, it seems like the woman began complaining after being medicated with risperal, possibliy because she found the drug so physically debilitating that she feared she couldn't care for her children. Apparently if you take your eyes off of a baby for the slightest amount of time when it's in a tub it can drown, but because of the bipolar label, we think Andrea Yates.

I predict that this story won't get much mention because the woman was taking her meds and the media so far just likes to vilify people labeled bipolar who don't take them.

Given the above comments on Risperdal, would it be possible to change the Title of this post to "Bipolar Mom on Risperdal Drowns Her Baby"?

Right, Susan, I couldn't agree more. In fact why don't we just say "Risperdal Patient Drowns Baby" and leave the "bipolar" out completely? That's what really tells the story.

... I predict that this story won't get much mention because the woman was taking her meds and the media so far just likes to vilify people labeled bipolar who don't take them ....

You got that right, Sally. "Unmedicated bipolar goes shopping and then walks her dogs" is rarely seen in the headlines. Yet, if functioning without the help of Big Pharma is as rare as the psychiatric establishment makes it out to be, perhaps such items are newsworthy.