Some two weeks since the one-month-old died in a jacuzzi in the Miami Hotel in Ashdod, the court-ordered psychiatric review is complete and the mother has been ruled mentally incompetent, and she will not stand trial.
The death of the baby from a Jerusalem chareidi couple led to protests as police insisted on an autopsy. Despite ZAKA efforts to prevent one, the matter came before the High Court of Justice, which backed a lower court ruling to permit an autopsy.
Both the mom and dad were taken into custody and they have since been released to house arrest.
(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)
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6 Responses
If she is insane to the point of murdering her own infant, what is she doing at home under house arrest???
Why is the husband not responsible for failing to intervene and getting his wife the treatment she needed???
Is the husband also insane?Something is wrong here.
Baruch HaShem for the autopsy in THIS particular case. My condolences to the baby, as sadly and unfortunately the parents don’t appear physicologically fit for a BD’E.
So, so sad. There are documented cases of post-partum depression, so severe that the mom harms either herself or her child.
And, FYI, the husbands really don’t comprehend the depth of their depression.
So, so sad.
It is very common in the Hareidi community (and in many other communities, including non-Jewish ones) for families to avoid seeking help for mentally ill members. In many cases a spouse or parent will attempt to care for the ill person themselves, with sometimes tragic results. We also have this problem in the US. It results partly from a fear of stigma and partly from a lack of information about mental health. B”H we now have some organizations like Amudim and Nefesh who are helping.
If the woman is schizophrenic r”l she can probably be helped with medication. It sounds as if she may have had delusions or hallucinations about the baby and was trying to exorcise a dybbuk or something similar.
What is needed is not condemnation but greater efforts to reach those in our community who have such problems with information and professional help, so they get the medical help they need before tragedy can happen.
One of the side effects of PPD is NOT murder/suicide
BUT
one of the side effects (listed on the box in a “black box” warning mandated by the FDA) is “can cause homicidal/suicidal ideation.”
If this is indeed what happened – and the details of the case are still sealed by court-imposed gag order – then this is a drug-induced “crime” and the “mental incompetence” is really “drug-induced psychosis.” Google this and you fill find countless examples of tragedies, including school shootings – especially linked to SSRIs (anti-depressants). Why does the FDA mandate the black-box warning, and why did Big Pharma not succeed in having it withdrawn? Because there are so many cases that they had no other option. But how many doctors tell you that before starting on the drugs? Try asking your doctor and see what he/she replies.
Tzibbur, wake up before the next tragedy….
This is possibly a similar case to that of the French lady who killed her children and herself in an apartment fire in I think Talpiyot. The woman was supposedly “suffering from PPD.” Whoever heard of women, capable mothers of children, however depressed, doing such things in the “old days” before psychiatric medicine?
Yet people will swear that “the drugs saved my life” or whatever other expression. The truth is that if the drugs “work” then they do so by blunting emotions, which might be good temporarily and is certainly not good in long run. (However, bear in mind that blunted emotions also means blunted positive emotions.) The truth is also that for a substantial minority of people, “anti-depressants” cause suicide and/or homicide in people who never in their wildest dreams would have done such a thing without being on these drugs.
Google “David Carmichael” for a horrifying story of a caring father who killed his son when under the influence of a SSRI-induced psychosis.