I don’t want to beat anyone up. I don’t. I’m not a fan of pitchforks and torches or ripping people to shreds. I just want to get the facts straight. That’s all I’m asking. That’s all any Warrior Mom asks.
This story, originating from Disney’s BabyZone and republished on Yahoo Shine, strays from the facts. It lends credence to the idea that women with PPD are dangerous:
“Over and over, it seems that when women are involved in acts of violence, often harming their own children, PPD is the root. (The US Department of Justice reports that only 20% of violent crimes involve female offenders. That’s not to say it never happens but statistically speaking, it just doesn’t seem to be in our makeup.) PPD is the silent, scary and a very real threat lurking in family homes across the country. My point is not that any one of us could suddenly snap. My point is that too many of us do.”
I’m sure the author was trying to help, but PPD is not and never has been nor ever will be the “root cause” of women harming their children. This kind of commentary is completely misinformed, and it’s the reason why so many mothers are afraid to reach out for help when they are suffering.
Then there was NBC’s “Today Show” guest Jennifer Hartstein saying, on national TV, that “postpartum depression has led mothers to kill their children.” NOPE. SORRY.
For the record I’m employed, proudly, by Disney as a writer for Babble, but I have to call it out when someone, either on purpose or inadvertently, makes it seem as though postpartum depression means “any one of us could suddenly snap.” It’s wrong to stigmatize moms with PPD in this way. It’s true that perinatal mood and anxiety disorders can and do affect every kind of woman. It doesn’t matter if you’re a younger mom or an older one, with a high school education or a graduate degree, a mother who lives in the city or the countryside, or one with lots of money or limited funds. These illnesses can happen to anyone. Still, we’re not all lurking outside the proverbial shower curtain, ready to “snap,” a la the movie “Psycho.” The fact is that mothers with postpartum depression do not harm their children.
Some moms, a very small percentage, with a different illness called postpartum psychosis, may harm their children. It’s certainly not a guarantee that they will, and I know many, many wonderful mothers who have experienced postpartum psychosis who are great people and have never hurt a flea. It’s just that certain symptoms of postpartum psychosis — delusions and hallucinations — have the potential, if the illness is untreated, to lead a mom to believe she has to do certain things or behave in certain ways that she would never do otherwise. This is why there is a 5% rate of infanticide or suicide among mothers with postpartum psychosis. While the rate is very low, since the potential outcome is tragedy we must take every case of postpartum psychosis seriously and provide all the help and support possible to the moms who have it.
Whenever I see in the news that a mom with postpartum psychosis has carried out an act of violence it makes me angry that she wasn’t protected from her illness. What happened to Miriam Carey, the mother who was shot in DC last week, is tragic. She’s a victim of postpartum psychosis just as much as anyone else who might have been harmed by her, but most people would rather just lock her up and throw away the key than face the fact that she has fallen, needlessly, through the cracks.
We have to do better, and portraying mothers who have perinatal mood or anxiety disorders with words like “threat,” “lurking,” “violence,” and “snap” isn’t doing better. This type of rhetoric only serves to further stigmatize moms for an illness they didn’t ask for and didn’t cause. It’s got to stop.
Here, by the way, is a media outlet that got it right: Three Things To Know About Postpartum Depression. Thank you Boing Boing and Maggie Koerth-Baker. Thank you for knowing how important it is to get the facts straight.
You KNOW it makes me rage when the media gets it wrong. When they opt for sensationalism of sound, research-based reporting. RAGE.
It’s hard not to feel rage. I try to keep my cool but it’s difficult. I’m especially frustrated when it comes from media outlets that I KNOW. I know the people. They know me. They know all they have to do is call. Ugh.
I totally read the last article you mentioned by Boing Boing and hoped you had seen it. It was great. The news I regularly read (in canada) focused more on the fact that the people chasing her and shooting at her were working for no pay. Even the fact that a child was in the car was nearly buried! PPD wasn’t even mentioned.
Agree, agree and agree!!! The fact that this is the type of crap that is widely portrayed is partially why it is the TERRIFYING to find yourself with PPD. Because you immediately think that this is what is going to happen, you’re going to kill your baby. I did not have any thoughts of killing my baby but in my panicky, anxious mind, I spent a lot of time terrified that I would. Because that’s what PPD moms do, as the media would have you believe. I thank god eveyday that I found this website so that I could hear the message that I should be treated and that I’d be ok. Can we get someone big, like Dr. Phil to do a show on perinatal mood disorders to get the good info out there?
This is so frustrating. When I first went to my husband and told him something was wrong and that I needed help he didn’t know what to do. He did know of PPD and PTSD because our NICU social worker mentioned that we were at a higher risk for it since our twins had spent 3 months in the NICU but that was about all he knew. So being a good husband he went online and Google PPD to figure out our next steps as a family. Of course all the articles he read mentioned mothers killing babies. Which of course made him nervous for our family and didn’t direct us to the help we actually needed. Luckily we found, due to our NICU social worker, a good family counselor and support group. Unfortunately most people don’t have the business card of a NICU social worker on hand and do have Google hits to misinformed articles.
Katherine are you working on something for CNN or other media outlets re: Miriam Carey?
I’ve actually already done a piece for CNN. It’s here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1be_Zgn9WE&feature=youtu.be
I’ll let them know, though, that everyone wants more!
While we all want to destigmatize what a perinatal mood disorder IS, it’s important to NOT try to quantify and categorize one over the other. Yes, there are some clear distintions, but there are also and easily, overlapping ones. And yes, Katherine, women with ppd do harm their children, just as women without ppd do.
And it’s simply not a matter of psychosis, or not. With severe ppd, especially with psychotic features, and/or when there are other mental/social/ medical health issues underlying…any number of factors can contribute to a mother acting against herself and/or her children, and/or others. And what defines “harm”? Only physical abuse and/or death? You’re just NOT going to find women readily willing to share any harm they’ve commited against their children (especially) in the thrusts of severe ppd. It’s amazing how many comments (in the thousands) the Miriam Carey case has garnered in the social media outside of this community, and only nine (including this one) here. But who’d have to imagine, that it didn’t help that just a couple of weeks prior, our area experienced a masacre-like event near the Capitol (Navy Yard). In that event, mental illness plagued the man who committed it. Followed by a government shutdown…and gun control…and gun contol for the mentally ill…feelings toward those with recordedly diagnosed mental illness aren’t favorable.
It is distressing to read, hear, and see misinformative, wrong, completely ignorant presentations generated whenever there’s a case with a possible perinatal mood disorder linkage. But it’s also distressing to see similarly this categorical distinction made between ppd and ppp, as if they couldn’t overlap. And that’s not sound and right, either. We still don’t kow the full story on this case.