Severe postpartum psychosis is a rare but serious mental health condition that can affect some women after childbirth.
It typically involves symptoms such as hallucinations, delusions, extreme mood swings, and confusion.
In severe cases, it can lead to behaviors that are harmful to oneself or others, such as in the tragic case of Andrea Yates, who drowned her children during a psychotic episode.
She is currently staying in a mental hospital.
However, she doesn't want to be released from there, ever.
The Fateful Day, June 20, 2001
On June 20, 2001, Yates drowned her five young children in the bathtub of their suburban Houston home.
According to court documents, she waited for her husband to go to work.
When he was gone, she began to drown her children — Noah, 7, John, 5, Paul, 3, Luke, 2, and Mary, 6 months — one by one.
After she drowned the children, she called 911 repeatedly.
She reported the children’s deaths, then called her husband, and told him to come home from work.
Yates was charged with five counts of capital murder.
The prosecution described the crime as "horrible" and pushed for the death penalty.
However, the defense argued that Yates was severely depressed and experiencing psychosis because of her recent childbirth, which led her to harm her children.
They requested extensive mental health care instead of sending her to prison.
She was initially found guilty of capital murder and given a life sentence.
Even while in prison, she shared delusional thoughts.
She told authorities that she had thought about killing her children for two years to protect them from eternal punishment.
“My children weren’t righteous,” she told her jail psychiatrist, according to court documents.
“They stumbled because I was evil. The way I was raising them, they could never be saved. They were doomed to perish in the fires of hell.”
Because of her mental condition, Yates' lawyers appealed the case and a new trial was approved.
In 2006, she was declared not guilty due to insanity.
A judge then sent her to a Mental hospital.
While Yates can have a hearing to determine her mental stability, she is not allowed to seek release.
The courts say she can stay in the facility for the rest of her life.
The Post has found out that Yates, who is 60 years old, lives quietly in Kerrville State Hospital.
This hospital is meant for people who have been found not guilty of a crime due to mental health reasons and have been ordered by a court to receive treatment there.
She spends her days creating greeting cards and other crafts, often with designs of rainbows and butterflies.
She sells these crafts at art shows and festivals, and the money raised goes to the Yates Children’s Memorial Fund.
This fund supports individuals dealing with postpartum depression.
Yates has access to the internet and often spends time on the family website launched by her husband, where she can look at photos of the children she killed.
She talks to her husband monthly, even though they divorced and he has remarried.
Her defense lawyer, George Parnham, has consistently said that Yates is okay and doing well at Kerrville, where she has lived for the past 17 years.
“She’s in the place she desires to be. The place she needs to be,” Parnham told ABC News in 2021.
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