Ugh.

I was originally going to update about how I’ve been doing lately, and I will still do that sometime soon, but I just came across this article and felt the need to ramble on about it in certain parts. Understand, whatever I write here is just my opinion and I’m not any sort of professional or someone who has any further insight into this case than what is present in this article.

For the sake of keeping everything in one place, in case this link dies in the future, I’m going to quote the entire article here, bolding parts that I wish to highlight on. The article is extremely graphic and disturbing, as a warning to those who may wish to skip it.

SAN ANTONIO – A Texas mother accused of decapitating her 3 1/2-week-old son screamed “I didn’t mean to do it. He told me to” while her sister pleaded for an ambulance to bring help in a desperate four-minute 911 call released Wednesday.

Otty Sanchez, who police say told them the devil made her kill and mutilate her only child, screams “I love him” and says she’s stabbed herself in the heart and stomach while her sister tries calming down the 33-year-old mother.

At one point during the frantic call, Priscilla Garcia tries reassuring her sister that she is actually in the house.

“I’m not dead, Otty. I’m standing right here talking to you,” Garcia said.

After a dispatcher tells Garcia that an ambulance is on the way, the sister moans, “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.”

Sanchez is charged with capital murder in the slaying of Scott Wesley Buchholz-Sanchez, who authorities found decapitated and grossly mutilated in a bedroom of her sister’s house early Sunday. Police say Sanchez chewed off three of her infant’s toes and ate parts of the brain.

Garcia tells the dispatcher that her sister has stabbed her child and that blood is all over the bed.

“She’s gone crazy last night. She was hearing voices,” Garcia said. “She kept bringing me the baby. Finally she calmed down and I took her back the baby. And now I just woke up to hear screaming.

“The baby is dead. The baby’s dead. Please, somebody come.”

Sanchez is being held on $1 million bond. It was not immediately clear Wednesday whether she had an attorney.

Scott W. Buchholz, the infant’s father, said Sanchez suffered from postpartum depression and that she told him she was schizophrenic a week before the slaying. Buchholz, who said he is also schizophrenic, said he wants her to receive the death penalty.

A family member has said Sanchez had been undergoing psychiatric treatment and that a hospital called looking for her several months ago. Gloria Sanchez, the mother’s aunt, said her niece had been “in and out of a psychiatric ward.”

In May 2008, Otty Sanchez’s mother, Manuela Sanchez, called police after her daughter didn’t return from a trip to Austin, saying she was concerned about her daughter’s safety. Manuela Sanchez told police she suspected her daughter was into drugs and specifically told police she wasn’t suffering from any mental issues.

Source

I was surprised to see the mention of schizophrenia, and that apparently both this woman and the baby’s father might suffer from it. I was also appalled that the baby’s father seeks the death penalty for the woman in this case.

So, let me back up again.

This is clearly a truly awful situation, there’s no denying that, and I’m not a fan of excusing behavior entirely because of someone being mentally ill. But this story … Christ. First of all, whether she was schizophrenic or not, new mothers run the risk of dealing with Postpartum Psychosis (although those suffering from certain mental illnesses, or with mental illness running in their family, are more at risk). Everyone hears about Postpartum depression, and, while also a serious issue that one should seek help for, Postpartum psychosis needs to be talked about too, because … well, stories like this could possibly be prevented if it were.

From my non-expert point of view, the fact that she harmed herself, and had to be reassured by her sister that she was still alive and in the house, says to me that this wasn’t an act of cold-blooded murder, and the woman was clearly seriously ill. Whether or not this was somehow the effect of being on drugs, I don’t know, but for the sake of simplicity, I’m going to focus only on this issue assuming she was dealing with psychosis of some kind, and not going back and forth on whether it was drug induced or not, because I don’t know that information.

Anyway, as gruesome as this whole thing is, I think the baby’s father calling for a death sentence is pretty screwed up. I can understand how upset he must be, but if they are both indeed suffering from schizophrenia, I can’t see how he could be so malicious towards her overall. Again, what she did is extremely fucked up and disgusting, but it seemed to come more from someone who really needed help and wasn’t fully in reality rather than someone who somehow took joy in the murder.

Stuff like this is difficult for me to sort out in my head, because on one hand, I think the woman was clearly ill, but I also feel a bit wrong blaming mental illness or psychosis entirely for things like this, because I feel as if I’m saying being violent during an episode is something that happens to everyone dealing with any schizo disorders. That’s what most motivated me to write about this article. Most of the time when schizophrenia makes it into the headlines, it’s connected to something violent, and I fucking hate that. I’m not saying that violence from schizophrenics never happens, but I feel it’s unfair to classify everyone as such, which is what seems to happen more often than not. Not only in news articles, but films and stories as well.

I’m pretty much at a loss for words for what else to write about all of this. I just hope society doesn’t blindly crucify this woman, because I think quite a lot of things need to be considered beyond just the initial reaction of “HOW COULD A MOTHER DO THAT TO HER CHILD?!” I think she needs to receive psychiatric help instead of persecution. Her own guilt and full realization of what she’s done, wherever it lies in her brain, will be enough of a punishment to her when it finally appears, I think.