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News

Legal, medical experts shed light on Andrea Yates case

by Gabrielle Lyons
The Daily Cougar

Andrea Yates’ defense attorney and a psychiatrist who was a key expert in her trial spoke Saturday at the University Hilton about women’s mental health and Texas’ definition of insanity.

Criminal defense attorney George Parnham and psychiatrist Lucy Puryear participated in Beyond Andrea Yates Verdict: Women’s Mental Health and Law Saturday at the University Hilton.

"One of my good friends, one of the prosecutors, Mr. Joe Owmby in closing statements (of the first trial) said ‘there is no such thing as women’s mental health,'" Puryear said. "There is such thing as women’s mental health. You all are a testament to the fact that we are getting the word out that women’s mental health is a priority issue."

Puryear told those in attendance about the role postpartum depression and psychosis played in Yates’ trial.

Postpartum is a period of extreme vulnerability for women, especially if they have a history of mental illness, and statistics show an increase of mental health and psychosis admissions into psychiatric hospitals around the period of childbirth, she said.

Postpartum depression, which can happen at any time within the first year after a child is born, affects women for an extended amount of time. Some people associate postpartum depression with the baby blues, which only lasts a few days, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said.

"Women with postpartum depression were ignored because we sort of lumped everything together with baby blues," Puryear said. 

Baby blues affects about 80 percent of women after delivery, Puryear said. Symptoms develop around three days after delivery and should go away in about two weeks.

Symptoms of postpartum depression, which can last for months, include loss of interest or pleasure in life, loss of appetite, less energy and motivation and may include thoughts of hurting one’s child, the American Academy of Family Physicians said. "It occurs in about one in every 10 women, and that’s probably an under-estimate," Puryear said. "If you speak to obstetricians or other people that deliver babies, they’ll say they don’t see that much of it, and that’s because it’s one of the most under-recognized and undiagnosed and under-treated illnesses."

While postpartum depression frequently affects new mothers, postpartum psychosis occurs in one or two out of every 1,000 births, the DHHS said. Symptoms of postpartum psychosis include hallucinations and rapid moodswings.

"Postpartum psychosis is a psychiatric emergency," Puryear said. "Fortunately, postpartum psychosis is very rare."

Some of the distinguishing symptoms of postpartum psychosis are auditory or visual hallucinations, delusions that revolve around the baby, usually featuring Satan or God and disorganized thinking or behavior, she said. 

Yates was reported to have suffered two previous episodes of postpartum depression. 

"After two previous episodes, she was more than likely going to be psychotic again after the birth of Mary, her fifth child," Puryear said. "In fact, Dr. Eileen Starbranch, one of her psychiatrists, told her and Rusty (Yates’ husband) not to have any more children.

"She already had documented psychiatric illness and was at a huge risk of being ill again, and unfortunately, after every episode, the symptoms become more severe," Puryear said.

A lot of attention was given to delusions Yates’ suffered in her altered mental state. 

"A delusion is a fixed, false belief that despite evidence to the contrary, you still believe. It’s not part of your social, cultural norm," Puryear said. "You can also define someone as being psychotic if they have disorganized thoughts or behaviors."

Joining Puryear in her discussion about Yates’ mental health was Yates’ defense attorney. 

From a legal perspective, Parnham said the two Yates’ trials offer proof that Texas’ insanity standard needs to be changed through legislative action.

The archaic nature of Texas’ definition of insanity hindered experts’ ability to look at the circumstances surrounding the Yates’ children’s deaths, Parnham said.

"The purpose is to take the example of Andrea Yates as a lay person … and to try to incorporate that knowledge about those circumstances and attempt to understand as a lay person five years ago, what happened, what caused Andrea Yates to do the absolute unthinkable," he said. "And once we were able to understand that, if we could, it was our job to try and persuade a jury that Andrea Yates, despite the fact she was severely mentally ill, did not know that what she was doing was wrong." 

To claim insanity in Texas, law requires the defendant to prove he or she did not know that his or her actions were a crime at the time they were committed, George E. Dix, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin, wrote in the Austin-American Statesman. 

Texas insanity standards mention severe mental disease, which is good, Parnham said. That keeps psychiatric medicine in the courtroom equation.

"What we don’t have in the state of Texas is a definition of what the word ‘know’ means," Parnham said. "Does the word ‘know’ mean the same thing (to a normal person) as it does to a person living in a psychotic delusion and has a mindset that is totally unreal?"

One of the reasons why the jury in the original case ruled against Yates had to do with the application of normal reasoning to the irrational actions of Yates, Parnham said. However, after the first trial, questions were being asked which allowed the dispersion of information of women’s mental health issues to reach potential jurors in the second trial.

"It was not a celebratory verdict; it was a sobering verdict because the right thing was done," Parnham said.

The event was co-sponsored by the UH Graduate College of Social Work and the Mental Health Association of Greater Houston.

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