By reason of insanity

[BobcatJH]

I'll just come out and say it: I'm an atheist. And, while I'm at it, I'll make a second admission. I haven't been following the Andrea Yates trial as closely as many others have. But something has been bugging me ever since yesterday, when I saw that Yates had been found not guilty by reason of insanity in a second murder trial. Yates, if you'll remember, claimed she drowned her children - five in all - because she thought she was saving them from Satan. Further, she believed that she was possessed by the devil, also believing that the media had bugged her house to keep track of her parenting. With Wednesday's decision, Yates will now be committed to a state mental hospital, as opposed to a life in prison. The saga is now complete, and what a sad one it was.

Something has been puzzling me, something I'll get to in a moment. Until then, consider that we're living in a society in which a religious fringe has hijacked the debate and has forced itself upon the rest of us. Now, what once passed for out-and-out nuttiness is instead run-of-the-mill, taken-for-granted beliefs. Yesterday's craziness is today's old news. With that in mind, what follows are only a few examples of what a "religious" person can get away with in the name of God and not be considered, by society, insane. You can wish an elected leader dead. You can threaten entire towns - twice. You can excommunicate members of your congregation for being - gasp - Democrats. You can seek to eliminate children's programming that teaches tolerance. You can physically assault those who disagree with your beliefs. You can blame September 11 on "the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way ..." And that's just scratching the surface.

Here's what's been puzzling me since last night. What makes those involved in the previous examples any less insane than Yates, whose horrific crimes I'm most certainly neither excusing nor making light of? They believe in Jesus and the legend created around him. I'm assuming they also believe in the devil. Sort of comes with the territory, doesn't it? The End Timers running our country can't just believe in the bright, shiny aspects of their faith. Because, after all, their rhetoric certainly would indicate otherwise. Knowing that, I find it confusing that the faithful would consider Yates insane while at the same time giving a clean bill of mental health to the Pat Robertsons and Jerry Falwells of the word. Of course, Yates did a terrible thing, and that's something we mustn't forget. But I just don't see how the religious extremists dominating America can have it both ways.

Now, before my inbox explodes with religious right hate mail, I'm just saying we should have a real discussion about the reasons people do things and how people can crack under societal pressures just as easily as they can be labelled "insane". Clearly, Yates suffered from mental illness. But what was behind her illness? Yates, it was reported, had a history of mental problems. She had been hospitalized several times and had attempted to commit suicide on at least two occasions. Further, as the cited article said, "she believed she was failing to properly home-school her children in the Houston suburb of Clear Lake and was haunted by visions that one of her sons would become a gay prostitute." Sounds to me like she was under a tremendous amount of pressure, especially to be a good exemplar of her faith. And if we're going to declare her insane for her actions, I think we should spend equal time examining the faith-based factors behind her actions. I have a feeling there's a lot more insanity out there than we're comfortable admitting.

[riverwalker]

1. you got it

One need to only read the morning paper to realize the thin or non-existant line between madness and extreme religion.

[and-justice-for-all]

30. Here, Here BobCat!!

Insanity is just a pslam or verse away; Religion is a dinosaure and completly worthless in this day and age. It misleads, lies, delusionises people with false information just to keep the tax-exempt collection plate full...

If one was to focus as hard as some do on their "religion" on say...doing something about Global Warming issues or alternative fuel solutions; we wouldnt have these problems. Instead of going to church on Sunday or anyother day of the week, get a neighborhood recycling system going.

Religion has no practical purposes anymore.

[alcibiades_mystery]

2. What makes them any less insane? Science.

Post partum psychosis is a very real chemical imbalance. The religious stuff was just what she latched on to in the midst of the psychotic break. I know a woman who had to be hospitalized with post partum psychosis shortly after the birth of her first child. She is an atheist and mathematician, and she glommed on to complexity theory in the midst of the break. Is complexity theory also insane? No, of course not. Her version of it certainly strayed from reality, or applied theory in a way that made her non-functional and a danger to herself and the child. But it is the actual imbalance of substances in the body and brain that is at issue, not which interpretive and cultural systems the subject deploys to cobble together a whole after the psychotic break. (And it is a question of constructing a whole: what do Western religions and complexity theory have in common? They both constitute "Theories of Everything" with an explanatory principle just beyond the boundaries of knowing, and they are hence both attractive systems in the fractured world of the psychotic).

By the way, I am an atheist as well. But I think we stray into dangerous territory when we try to draw larger morals from this particular case. This particular case is fairly simple: Yates suffered a psychotic break, and turned to the one "reality system" (a system of the Whole) that she familiar with in order to stabilize her world. That that system was perverted is obvious, but almost any such system would be. That is the nature of a psychotic break. What's behind it? Chemical modulations of the body.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

8. Good analysis

thanks for the information. I've known people who had a psychotic break that dealt with extraterrestrials - like you said, whatever is used as an excuse is just that-an excuse. Doesn't cause the imbalance that is the real reason the psychosis happened.

[glitch]

22. Good post nt

[Alcibiades]

25. Yes

The fact that she was found NGRI had nothing to do with the content of her delusional system. What scares me, in this case, is that this wasn't her first trial. This NGRI verdict is a just one. It's rare in our system that someone will be found legally insane. The legal standard is very strict.

The forensic psychologist who testified (testilied) in this case was well-known for always, always being harsh, always finding people competent, sane, etc., fully eligible for the death penalty and anything else the state of Texas had to dish out. In fact, the forensic psychologists I know nicknamed him "Dr. Death." Hopefully, the other cases he handled will be granted appeals.

[Demeter]

33. If Yates Hadn't Been Enslaved To An Insane Belief System

She might have gotten some useful, scientific and reality-based medical help. If the people around her hadn't been similarly enslaved, they might have seen that she got appropriate assistance.

Insanity can be cultural.

[alcibiades_mystery]

34. You have to make a distinction between insanity and bad decisions

WE throw around the word insanity to easily. Is the decision to aschew medical treatment a bad one? Yes, of course it is. But mental illness is not a question of bad decisions. It is a question of particular, identifiable states of the body.

[Demeter]

36. Voluntary Slavery Sure LOOKS Like Insanity In the Land of The Free.

Her religion was detrimental--much worse than ineffective--and of absolutely no use to her or her children or the community.

[checkmate1947]

3. We are the Insane

for allowing the right wing nut jobs and Bushco and his followers to take over free America.

[Warpy]

4. Nothing looks nuttier than somebody else's religion

and that's as true for religious folks as it is for atheists who think all religions look nutty. However, completely reasonable people can believe in those nutty looking religions and manage to function day to day, living completely normal lives.

What crosses the line are getting messages from god, of divining the future through reading messages from the past, of claiming to be the one person who has the answer to the nature of life, the universe, and all that--and it's not 42, by the way.

By this measurement, most of the people Stupid surrounds himself with are insane. Many of the people in the wingnut churches are insane. The insanity may be temporary and as a result of mob psychology rather than true pathology, but getting swept up in insanity for any length of time actually changes brain structure, meaning only sustained trauma can reverse it. It took Europe two world wars and a massive depression to shake this stuff off.

I've worked in psychiatric settings and found out one of the hallmarks of schizophrenia and other psychotic breaks is a hyper religiosity. In other words, there's no crazy like god crazy, and most crazy people will claim an intimate knowledge of god. Few are unbelievers, and they will claim an intimate knowledge of the CIA, the KGB, or whatever they claim to be important enough to have chasing them.

Back in the bad old days before deinstitutionalization left crazy people no place to go but the street, people who claimed to be getting messages from god were taken in for psychiatric evaluations, not elected to office.

This is what we need to return to, not the fawning over end times blasphemers who write amateurish novels.

[cosmik debris]

5. On the lighter side

From "News of the Weird"

07/16/2006

LEAD STORY

The Texas insanity-defense law requires that a delusional person acting under "orders" from God be judged not guilty by reason of insanity, but that a delusional person acting under "orders" from Satan be considered sane, according to prominent forensic psychiatrist Park Dietz (according to a June USA Today story). Thus, Dietz believed that Andrea Yates (at press time being retried in Houston) knew that drowning her kids upon command of someone "without moral authority" (such as Satan) was wrong and thus that she did not qualify for insanity-law protection. Dietz later concluded the opposite in another Texas child-killing case because God had supposedly assured that mother that her kids would be better off dead.
http://www.uexpress.com/newsoftheweird/?uc_full_date=20060716

[Prophet 451]

7. WTF? doesn't even come close.

I'm not sure whether to be amused, offended or bewildered.

[Prophet 451]

6. Not the same thing

Full disclosure: I'm a devil-worshipping Luciferian. I don't "get" Christianity in general and this weird End-Times variant especially.

That said, while Robertson, Falwell and their ilk are "insane" in the common usage, they aren't medically insane, they're just evil or, if we're being very charitible, self-deluded. yates is different. She actually was medically insane. It's not at all unusual for the extremely mentally ill to fixate on religion but the religion is filtered through their insanity, not caused by it.

The majority of the End-Timers aren't insane in the medical sense. Some of them are crazy in the casual sense, some of them are just desperate people looking for some answers, some of them are incredibly unpleasent people (I have a theory that fundementalism is on the rise purely because it's a socially acceptable reason to wish harm on others) but very few of them are actually insane.

[peacetalksforall]

9. It is easy to consider being an atheist in the interim after observing

fanatic Christians and other fanactics driven by interprestations of their religion.

I have long considered that PNAC and their think tanks took long studied looks at conditions and settings that worked to get the populace of historical barbarians to do their bidding. Am I delusional?

Take a look at what they're doing - whatever they studied and we know they had untold numbers of think tanks at their bidding, you can see the results everywhere - getting control of the networks and airwaves, votes.

Plenty has been written about their studies of everything that hit a high of interest in the 60's and 70's - psychedelics, out-of-body experiences - antque theosophy, voodoo, mushrooms, etc., and they took from science fiction - lasers, chemicals, transformations.

I have a feeling that we will be astounded when we find out what they have been spending our money on.

To get to Yates - they figured out religion early on. They figured out what it would take to get the reverends working for them - what they would have to promise - just as they figured out and partnered with the mafiosa's of many countries.

Everything they are doing is probably more about people control than it is about money, just because the Lays, Skillings, Cheneys, and barons gather their riches, they have to secure it. Control requires goals, objectives, and agendas - and they flew to the project of controlling us. Microchips coming soon, just like the dogs and dolphins.

Well, I can fully agree with your post, BobcatJH and you may be right in being an atheist for now.

[Rottenmac]

10. In TEXAS no less...

if she was a minority, regardless of her faith, she would be on death row with no chance for retrial, absolution, retrial, etc...

Not to mention that if they can put mentally handicapped people to death there, and her religious beliefs made her 'crazy' ...

i think my head just kerploded at the hypocrisy and insanity (no pun intended) of the entire thing.

(edited..)
After readint the information about her post-partem depression, I can see how one would need any support system, and in the Bible-belt, its jesus or social isolation. these people are almost as disconnected from reality as the parents of Christian Scientists who reject penicillin for their childrens illness, thinking that prayer and more faith will serve and save them. In the end it never does.

[Bridget Burke]

12. Ever hear of Juana Marie Leija?

She threw six of her seven children into the murky waters of Buffalo Bayou in 1986. Two of them -- Juana, 5, and Judas Dimas, 6, -- drowned before rescuers jumped in and saved the others. She attributed her actions to years of domestic abuse at the hands of her husband. She received 10 years' probation in the deaths.

www.fact.on.ca/news/news0106/hh01062i.htm

She was a "minority." (Buffalo Bayou runs through downtown Houston.)

The Yates family was isolated by religion. She was raised Catholic & he was some sort of Protestant. But Rusty became a follower of Michael Woroniecki--whose twisted version of Christianity goes far beyond "Fundamentalism."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Peter_Woroniecki

Involvement with a "real" church would have helped Andrea's isolation--if she had been able to take advantage of it. (She'd had serious problems before her Postnatal Psychosis.) NO religious leaders came out to defend her afterward. (Like those who fought for Karla Faye Tucker, the axe murderer who became a "Born Again" Christian in prison. Bush had her executed anyway.)

How often have you visited Houston? All sorts of Christians are strong here. Also Muslims, Jews, Sikhs, Hindus, Buddhist, Taoists, etc. Plus many of us "none of the above."

[Alcibiades]

26. The mentally ill are a minority

albiet one that is oppressed on the basis of an illness, not skin color or ethnicity. And, lest we forget, she was found guilty by another jury, before it came to light that the forensic psychologist who testified in her case lied.

The key in this case was good lawyering.

[erknm]

37. Seems inconsistent to me

to be able to claim insanity because you were instructed by Satan if you truly do have faith. Certainly the fundamentalists must think so, right? Fundamentalists must believe that she should not even be considered guilty, as she was acting on her faith, right?

I grew up Catholic, still practice Catholic faith and tradition and someday hope that the Catholic faith will once again rule the decisions of the catholic church. Right now I do not see too much of the Catholic faith leading the behavior of those who are leading the catholic church.

At least there is some consistency to Catholic instruction, the death penalty is wrong, always. I support this position, even in this case. I hate to see our justice system perverted, but if this is what it takes to keep another person from being executed, then so be it.

FH

[Alcibiades]

38. In this case the question wasn't simply a claim of insanity

but actual insanity. So the question here is about the faith of an insane person. The insane are not bothered by inconsstency. Anyway, the NGRI case was made by the lawyers, not Yates herself. The really crazy ones never think that they are crazy.

[mnhtnbb]

11. Just because Andrea Yates was a nutcase, doesn't mean that

she didn't know it was wrong to kill her children. You can be nuts (so says my husband the psychiatrist/psychoanalyst in practice for 30+ years) and still know right from wrong. She knew what she was doing was wrong.

Andrea Yates belongs in jail--with access to mental health services.

[Bridget Burke]

13. Andrea Yates will be in mental health institutions....

Probably for the rest of her life. Institutions run by the State of Texas. Sorry if that's too "soft" for you.

The eminent psychiatrist/psychologist whose lies invalidated the first trial also testified at the recent one. He agreed with your husband. The jury didn't.

[The Deacon]

14. Yes

But in (modern) legal theorey (don't know of they have that in Texas) it doesn't matter whether you know right from wrong - what matters is if you lack the ability, due to your mental illness, to conform your behavior to legal/societal norms. If the jury found Andrea Yates was unable to do so, they were correct in their judgement.
Classic case is: I don't think anyone would argue Ted Bundy was sane by any measure - yet he was, when the occasion called for it, able to conform his behavior to legal/societal norms. It was only when he was in no danger of being observed that he let his little monster out.
Interesting sidelight: while "conforming his behavior to legal/societal norms" Ted Bundy was a rising young star with the Seattle area Republican Party.

[Bushladen]

16. I think

Her husband should be in prison too. He knew she had problems with their first child and he kept on getting her pregnant.

[domlaw]

17. he kept on getting her pregnant?

Excuse me? I always thought that took two people.

[Dr.Phool]

19. I think in her case, she didn't have a choice.

I read after her first trial that the doctors told her that her pot partum depression was so bad from the earlier births, that she should never have any more children.

But in a lot of fundamentalist sects, she's totally submissive to her husbands will. And they don't normally believe in birth control either.

[domlaw]

21. I think

I'm more responding to the idea that he should be tried because she killed her children. Fact is, regardless of the religious bent of their relationship, he did not kill the children. I think, honestly, that she belongs in an institution and nothing is served by jailing her. Also, what would be gained by jailing him?

I think some loopyhead said on TV yesterday that society is being cheated by the fact that she is not in jail. I'd just like to know who benefits from her being in jail? Further, what's gained by incarcerating her husband?

[gumby]

23. Excuse me?

Perhaps you don't understand some "religious" teachings.

[domlaw]

24. Jeez

This had nothing really to do with religion. This woman suffered mentally, her break with reality could have glommed on to anything. The fact that she was kooky religious didn't help but certainly was not a major component. Why? because other women have done the same thing and we don't blame the fact that they are a muslim / catholic / protestant for it do we. Why, you may ask, do we in this case "because the media played it up".

The fact that she went on having children after her doctor advised againt it is bad, but what's even worse is that another doctor advised her to go off Haldol (should he be incarerated?)

[Alcibiades]

27. Yates met the legal standard

If anyone ever did, she did.

[saberjet22]

15. By reason of insanity

The missing word is, of course, GUILTY!
That should read, GUILTY by reason of insanity! Enough of this NOT GUILTY by reason of insanity crap.

[Alcibiades]

28. Whatever

"Crap." That pretty much sums up your argument nicely. It's "thought" such as that that makes me wonder if you know anything about this case at all.

NGRI has a long history in our legal tradition. This is a question for legal theory, not righteous indignation. NGRI was established to protect the mentally ill from people who are pretty much just pissed off and looking for a convenient target.

[elehhhhna]

18. "GOD" is a crutch, Bobcat. That's all. A manmade crutch.

Plus he's mean, blind, deaf and evidently a really shitty money manager.

[daydreamer]

20. Why did she not kill herself so she can be saved from Satan?

[Alcibiades]

29. Because she was/is insane

Yes, that would be the logical thing to do, but, as has been pointed out, Yates is what the clinicians refer to as a complete and total nutjob.

[TrogL]

31. Some people just are batshit crazy

Some pick religious stuff to obsess on.

A few years ago I had somebody stuffing my mailbox with flyers saying that the RCMP was using UFO's from Venus to implant stuff in his head and send gamma beams to make him unconcious so they could rape him. Lots of detailed pictures.

[Demeter]

32. Amen! (What Else Would Be Appropriate to Say?) n/t

[unpossibles]

35. While your idea is interesting and I agree with you on several

points, I will say this (in addition to what other posters already said about insanity):

The state essentially found her insane; the hard core, slavering at the mouth fundies like Robertson most certainly think she was possessed by the devil to do these. Hell, they think I am possessed by Satan if I wear shorts or smoke or think that gay people deserve equal rights. I sadly see no contradiction.

[rhett o rick]

39. Anyone - Isn't an atheist just a pissed off secularist? Anyone, anyone?

Not trying to piss anyone off, just curious. I don't know the difference between the two.

[Bridget Burke]

40. Define "secularist" please.

Then I'll know more about where you're coming from.

[rhett o rick]

41. Gladly. From wikipedia

Secularism has two distinct meanings.

1. It asserts the freedom of religion, and freedom from religion, within a state that is neutral on matters of belief, and gives no state privileges or subsidies to religions.
2. It refers to a belief that human activities and decisions should be based on evidence and fact, and not superstitious beliefs, however devoutly held, and that policy should be free from religious domination. For example, a society deciding whether to promote condom use might consider the issues of disease prevention, family planning, and women's rights. A secularist would argue that such issues are relevant to public policy-making, whereas Biblical interpretation or church doctrine should not be considered and are irrelevant.

[Bridget Burke]

43. Believers can be "secularists"...

They realize that separation of Church & State is good for the State--& good for the Church.

Many Religious Right sites use "secularists" as code for atheistic, commie, multicultural, gay, abortion-having leftists.

[rhett o rick]

44. What's the definition of "believer". nm

[Bridget Burke]

45. Someone who believes in God, Gods and/or Goddesses...

Whether or not they are members of a congregation, temple, ashram, coven, etc.

[rhett o rick]

42. Maybe a secularist could believe in God but not church. I'm just askin'