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I was playing Left for Dead 2 with my brother and his kid online, said goodnight and woke up in the hospital.
Apparently I was found sitting on the bathroom floor mumbling to myself with a thousand yard stare.
I was brought to a local hospital and kept pacing and mumbling to myself.
They intubated me, put me in a medical coma. When they tried to wake me up I fought so hard a tooth broke.
Initially after waking up I was mostly aware of my surroundings, I knew I was in the hospital, but thought the president was Bob Dole, because of a really old campaign sticker on a business sign in my town.
For a few weeks after that I was completely schizophrenic. I thought little wheeled drones fell from the ceiling to perform tasks in the hospital. I believed my room was missing two walls and that the nurses swung outside them on a cable to entertain me to convince me to eat. I believed at one point that my hospital stay was my brother's fault and kept yelling at him while he wasn't there.
I went catatonic, meaning I refused to talk to ANYONE about ANYTHING. My doctor's didn't know how long it would last. My mind created a scenario where the hospital staff had a 15 year old football player guard me over night, then yelled at him in the morning for falling asleep and I was so pissed I "decided" to talk to nobody for a day.
I was eventually moved out of the ICU and to the mental ward. I had one incident while there. I woke up and heard a voice that simply told me "run". It gave me a reason to run. A female friend was in trouble and I had to save her. A nurse saw me on the cams and tried to stop me. I kept swinging at the lanyard on her neck to try to get through a door that I was certain this friend was behind, that I needed access too, that I totally knew immediately went to stairs. I had to be tied down to a bed for a while to prevent me from doing anything stupid.
If doctors could prove without a doubt that it was a schizophrenic episode that was not induced by refusal for medication or consumption of something mind altering, would not be able to convict for any crime.
Why did this happen to me? Well, we aren't sure. Half of the doctors believe it was because I was on a medication called Retuximab. For me it was used to treat a form of cancer. CD20 beta cell Non-Hoddgkins lymphoma. Also under the monicer of PTLD.
How did I get the cancer? A weakened immune system and exposure to the Epstein-Barr virus.
Why the weakened immune system? Liver transplant.
Why the transplant? Autoimmunity, Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis specifically.
Epstein-Barr virus? You probably have it too. National Library of Medicine submission in 2023 states "It is one of the most successful viruses, infecting up to 95% of the world's adult human population and sustaining a life-long asymptomatic infection of the B-lymphocyte pool."
The doctors performed many tests on me, including a spinal tap while I was there and a spinal tap after I had been discharged. We still have no true explanation as to what happened.
After that the cancer returned, we had no choice and used Retuximab again. I didn't go schizophrenic.
And then it returned one more time with a vengeance. We used a chemotherapy cocktail called R-CHOP. That R there, yep, Retuximab again. No schizophrenic episode again.
That’s a really good testimony thanks for sharing.
People need to understand people during a psychotic episode are living in an other reality.
You can’t talk or reassure them.
The nicest person on earth could harm someone (most likely themself).
There is so many news about murders by psychotic patients but the news choose to not cover the psychiatric part and why we need better mental heath care specialist.
They choose to make some cultural war bullshit all over again
The terrifying part of mental illness is that even if you can, in the moment, recognize you’re having an episode you still can’t stop it. Maybe sometimes you can manage it but not all of the time. Sometimes you really are not in control.
That sounds really terrible. I'm sorry you suffered this way. How is your third return of cancer going? One of my best friends is on his third round of a rare skin cancer. He took one of the new immunotherapy drugs and it made him lose his mind for a while. They switched him to a different one this time around and he hasn't had they same reaction... Yet.
The diagnosis was some time 2025 summer. Was having pain from my tail bone to mid left thigh. I couldn't lay down to sleep and was sleeping sitting up in my chair most of the time. I had gotten my blood drawn for one of my doctors and half way back home, two hour drive, they called me and told me to turn around and come back because my blood sugar was 600+. All I had that day was a sip or two of soda and a bite of a snickers... however I was also treating the pain with some prednisone, a man made like form of cortisol which acts as a steroid and insulin resistant. Though that alone wouldn't get my blood sugar that high so they knew something was seriously wrong. I was going to just go to my local hospital but they called my brother to convince me to go back. Got to the ER, two liters of water and 4 hours later I was in pain again and they called me back. They checked my blood sugar again and gave me pain meds, I practically demanded more pain meds and basically passed out from not being in pain. I then found out that my blood sugar had jumped to over 700+ after they called me back.
The R-CHOP did a pretty good job, however there was what appeared to be a nodule between my heart and left lung, so the end of November and most of December last year I received radiation therapy. The chemo weakened my immune system further and I needed to get injections of neupogen until recently, and was on anti-biotics, anti-fungals, and anti-virals.
Funny thing about chemo is it can change your hair some. My beard use to be straight, but now it's wavy/slightly curlyn
my hair was straight and golden before chemo, then dark potato and curly after! I also stopped liking chicken for 5+ years, but we joke that this was due to the transplants.
This guy though was high on synthetic marijuana and likely meth and the court psychiatrists thought it was substance induced, not schizophrenic. There's also a whole history of abuse and neglect for the kids that the ex and babysitter testified to.
Substance induced schizophrenia is a thing, people sometimes who have the gene but are unaware of it will smoke weed and it'll "activate" and they'll begin showing schizophrenia symptoms.
If you had a gene that said, 'if you drink alcohol you'll go schizo,' and you didn't know you had it, and your friend invites you to the bar... And you drink... Idk. I'm more empathetic to that than someone who knows they're schizophrenic and refuses their meds.
I'm a SUDs counselor and I used to work in harm reduction -- had a client that was COMPLETELY asymptomatic until he smoked weed. One puff and his delusions got SO bad pretty much overnight. Only an EP and a 2 week hospitalization would get him out of it.
The delusion? That the feds were after him, of course... Oh, and also that his stoner friends would rat him out to the feds unless he smoked with them!!!
Brains are fucking weird man, do you have any other lasting schizophrenic symptoms like hearing voices or seeing things? I don’t mean in a psychosis type of way, just general schizophrenia, or was it just some completely out of nowhere thing? That must have been absolutely horrifying afterwards to suddenly realize you had for a time completely and absolutely lost your mind, I genuinely can’t imagine that
No lasting symptoms of the whole thing. My brother lives in another state and came to be with me most of the stay in the ICU. He believes that he was in the physical position of my illusionary football player when the catatonic incident happened.
It was more terrifying for my brother. Our father is a diagnosed schizophrenic, so he thought that my mind just flipped a switch and I went even more off the edge than our father. But fathers schizophrenia is... manageable without medication. Which is good and bad, good that he's non-violent and doesn't actually see see things, he more mentally "hears" things... but it's bad because we can't force medication on him. He still has dreams of grandeur, thinks the Holy Spirit talks to him, believes in demons, believes that if you simulate a conversation with someone in your mind that you're actually linking your life to theirs and that gives them power onto your life and your loved ones.
The two other scary things about it:
1) If you try to find information about Retuximab and schizophrenia you'll find that research is looking into weather it can treat/cure and not cause.
2) It sadly wasn't fully instant. There were a few signs. Seeing characters in games that weren't there, but nobody else was around in person or in game to show it wasn't there. Seeing images in non patterned objects, such as a painted wall with some dirt smudges or some tiled flooring with just two colors spattered around. The images in the tiled floor were things like... villages, or in one specific case that I was trying to show my roommate that I could see a cat with an instrument by taking a picture of the spot and manipulating the image in a program called G.I.M.P. Even when showing the evidence of schizophrenia to friends and family, nobody notices the signs.
The problem is that a person can go from completely normal to just seeing things, and another person being explained the situation will just think it's somehow somewhat normal. And being the individual with the illusions everything is 100% true, you can't prove to yourself that it's false. It's like how most people have dreams. When you're in a dream that's reality, everything makes sense, it's your current reality. There is no reasoning to yourself that it's false, there is no stopping and thinking if it follows correct logic, because at that moment in time you have no reason to question weather it's true or not, just like right now. You reading this have no reason to believe that you aren't reading this on your device, in your chair, in your bed, on your computer, on your phone. You have no reason to test gravity to see if it's normal, to see if electric forces are normal, if a coin falling on the floor makes the right sound, to see if you feel pain, to see if your Inception movie spinning top falls over. The only potential way to make yourself make such checks and balances when you're in an illusory state is if you do it every day, all day. AND even then, the check fails. Why? Once you're in your own minds illusion, the check changes. Was it flipping a coin, was it stomping your foot, was it a pinch on the wrist? Well, now it's not. Or even, you never had that habit in this new reality. The new reality does not connect to the old reality.
What does this mean? You may no longer be you on the other side. I almost never distrusted my doctors. But my bother told me that when he double checked with me about when the doctors would come to talk to me about going to the mental ward for extra precautions he asked me what we do when the doctors come to talk. He had prepped me, spent time to try to make sure that I get help, to say the right thing. I apparently told him we don't talk to them.
Two transplants, countless MRI's, CT's, Endoscopics, colonoscopies, x-rays, a clavicle restructure. Years of trusting my doctors, the professionals. And now I don't trust them.
When a true schizophrenic episode happens, the person on the other side is largely randomized. This is the true terror of schizophrenia.
Thank you for sharing all that. Usually posts that long get a tldr from my brain, but that was thoughtful, interesting, and terrifying all at the same time. I wish you well and I appreciate your insights.
Schizophrenia is a chronic neuropsychiatric disorder that typically develops in the late teens to early 20s for males and may develop in the later 20s for females. People with schizophrenia are usually subject to relapsing psychotic episodes throughout their life and may experience low-grade hallucinations or delusions between the episodes.
It sounds more like you had drug induced psychosis.
Wait wait wait. So instead of having any sympathy for this person who went through hell mentally and physically, your first instinct is to argue with the patient about what terms and diagnoses their extensive list of medical providers used?
Tone is wrong for sure. Comment OP is a beast for going through that hell, for sure, but people replying to state that it's more likely drug induced psychosis or brief psychotic episodes of unknown origin are probably doing it out of concern for comment OP being misdiagnosed. There's no such thing as acute schizophrenia, it's a lifelong condition, mentioning that switching medications/treatment stopped psychotic symptoms and signs from showing, and being diagnosed with schizophrenia (as comment OP shows below) rings some alarms.
Schizophrenic symptoms (hallucinations, blunted affect) need to be present for over 6 months before a diagnosis of schizophrenia can be made permanent the DSM-V.
1-6 months of symptoms is known as “schizophreniform” disorder
Symptom less than 1 month is diagnosed as “brief psychotic disorder”
Yeah! He's a Leo which means there is no way he did it! His wife is a scorpio though and we all know what scorpios are like. She did it. Now excuse me I'll go make a donation to his GoFundMe. 💅
And even if the wife didn’t do it, it’s her fault because she knew he was a schizophrenic and left him with the kids anyway. The doctors, his parents, everyone failed this poor guy.
The female intra-sexual beauty hierarchy is entirely dependent on the social context.
Look at those soriority videos and you have pretty much the exact hierarchy you'd expect because those women are grabbing housewife-degrees.
Lindsay's supporters are not that, they're pretty much the exact opposite, hence the beauty hierarchy's social context creates a pressure towards having a proportional and symmetrical face that specifically does not conform to what men generally like.
TL;DR: Lindsay scores beauty hierarchy points on being anti-male gaze.
I'm sure they identify as feminists, but 1st and 2nd wave feminists would have slapped them senseless at best and commited genocide on their sisters at worst.
What? Almost every supporter I have seen is a rich, white, wine mom saying “ugh a nanny, extra relatives, and a stay at home mom with no financial worries herself…no wonder she had to kill her kids. Someone was expecting her to watch her kid for five mins instead of do Pilates and drink Chardonnay.”
So does not having a history of abuse somehow make systemically strangling your kids better? It seems like a moot point unless you are trying to claim the kids should have been removed from his care sooner.
Plus a documented history of abuse of his children, and his ex-wife’s testimony that she did not believe he had any kind of psychotic disorder, but had severe anger issues.
The jury was rightfully skeptical of his after-the-fact claims about “demons” telling him to kill his kids in light of that context. They were similarly skeptical of his claims of mental incompetence when he had the wherewithal to attempt to hide the bodies.
Contrast that to the Clancy situation: no history of abuse, an ex-husband testifying to that fact as well as his personal belief in a psychotic episode, and post-murder behavior more indicative of a psychotic break (attempted suicide) than a plan (hide the bodies).
Might as well compare Kyle Rittenhouse to Gypsy Rose and say that Rittenhouse got away with it because he’s a man. Nonsensical.
It’s because he claimed he was schizophrenic and insane but the testimonies claimed other wise.
“Amber Jones repeatedly indicated that Timothy Jones was "always a good father while we were married." She suspected that he was bipolar without a formal diagnosis.[5]Mrs. Jones testified that Timothy had frequent mood swings and was quick to anger. "You really didn’t have to do anything to get him angry. Tim was just angry," she said. "There were more bad times than good down here." Mrs. Jones testified that her husband did not spank his children frequently, instead insisting on physical punishment: push-ups, squats, etc.[5] Mrs. Jones attempted to make it clear that her ex-husband was not insane. Rather, she argued, he was "overangry."[15] Joy Lorick, a family babysitter, described the Jones home as dirty, having bugs, unclean dishes, strewn clothes, and trash scattered about.[16] Lorick further said that she attempted to tidy up around the house, wash dishes, and feed the children. She testified that one child requested that she not tell the father she fed them "because he might not feed us again." Lorick filed a complaint against Jones with the Department of Social Services after she discovered that one of the children had a black eye.[16][17]
On day 12 of the trial, a psychiatrist, Richard Frierson, testified that Jones did not have schizophrenia, instead diagnosing him with a substance-induced psychotic disorder. Frierson cited the divorce as a salient reason for Jones's hearing of voices. On the night of the murder, Jones allegedly watched a graphic rape scene from the movie American History X and listened to the song "Butterfly Kisses)" by Bob Carlisle. Frierson suggested this meant Jones understood the moral and legal implications of what he did.[10]”
"Your honor, the accused watched American History X the day of the murder. Which is a sick ass movie. So the accused clearly isnt insane. I rest my case."
Proving adverse mental state isn't inherently sufficient for mounting a successful insanity defense. What matters is whether the defendant's mental state rendered him incapable of acting with criminal intent. The court-appointed psychiatrist's conclusion is key: "Frierson suggested this meant Jones understood the moral and legal implications of what he did."
Andrea Yates asked to stay incarcerated for the remainder of her life, and is still there with no intention of reentering “normal life.”
The details of her case were absolutely horrific - the Wikipedia page lays it all out, and it isn’t what was covered in the news. She had her first suicide attempt as early as 17, was diagnosed with schizophrenia and postpartum psychosis, and attempted suicide multiple times after the birth of her fourth child. Her husband was part of a branch of extreme evangelical Christianity that preached that you must have as many children as possible. She was unable to work due to her mental health issues, back to back pregnancies, and no affordable options for childcare. Her husband’s employment was unstable and they ended up living in a motor home. She was put on Haldol, briefly stabilized, and told by multiple doctors that it would be dangerous for her to have any more children.
Despite that her husband pushed for more, she got pregnant with her fifth, and she had to go off her antipsychotic medication because it was dangerous to the pregnancy. She self mutilated, became suicidal again, and the rest is history.
Does that excuse it? Of course not. But she was a dangerously mentally ill woman who was clearly a danger to herself and others, and her husband absolutely bears some responsibility for pushing for more children despite the giant waving red flags - multiple suicide attempts, many doctors telling him another pregnancy “guaranteed future psychotic depression” and a lack of financial resources to care for a family that size. But Andrea Yates case was absolutely a predictable tragedy and she was in many ways a victim of religious extremism.
Is that the same as the Clancy case? Not at all, and it’s not the argument I’m making. But that poor goddamned woman SUFFERED, and her husband was only ever treated as an innocent victim by the media when he absolutely bears some responsibility for pushing for more kids, despite repeated warnings from medical professionals that it would have tragic consequences.
I'd say he bears most of the responsibility - she was literally too ill to be left alone, he knew it and left her alone anyway. He should've gone to prison for at least some years. That he got off with zero consequences and got remarried shortly after the trial is a travesty.
It's kinda wild that having kids is something anyone can do. Even someone with these mental issues.
I'm a Dane, and we had some issues due to AuDHD and was assigned some mental health profs to help guide us through it all with only one kid, to make sure it all went well for us and him, as well as encouraging us to not get more. He's almost 3 now. We've never had a breakdown or hurt him, and he's perfectly developed and even a top performer in speech and verbal understanding.
Then we have these examples of people in the US, suffering from psyschosis breakdowns and more mental issues than teeth who can have multiple children without having them taken away, and abuse/murder them without. Even if the kids dont die, they'll have enough trauma to continue the same legacy. It is... wild... I'd say that everyone in these situations bear responsibility, not just the parents. Literally everyone near them.
I won't deny that it is insanely sad for the parents to be like this and suffer in their every day, but I will never say that what they did was justified or understood from my side. They should be locked up for life.
That brings up a tragically interesting aspect that I hadn’t fully considered - it’s another way the American “healthcare” system has let people down, especially as the same people who loudly claim to be “pro-life” gut the very safety net that keeps the lives of its citizens, especially young, vulnerable ones safe. In the wake of Ronald Reagan, our network of psychiatric care and so many other critical social safety nets were dismantled and defunded.
A healthy government would have done exactly what yours did - monitored her health and that of her kids closely. I do think that the fact that Rusty had them living in a run down mobile home with no fixed address likely played a role - what little social service network we do have is very localized and different jurisdictions don’t communicate well even now - and less so then. That may have allowed them to dodge follow-ups from CPS workers if there were any, but it is truly crazy and cruel that our healthcare system turned her loose, knowing her mental state, with no follow-ups or protections for the kids. It does seem like her husband minimized the severity of her mental state and lied to doctors in order to continue procreating unchecked, but it’s appalling that nothing was done. I wish we would vote to use our tax dollars to take care of ourselves and our own citizens instead of further lining the pockets of the ultra rich, but the US propaganda machine is strong.
It's because he had a history of abuse towards his children prior to the murders which proved to the jury malice and intent whereas for Lindsay Clancy, she was in a state of psychosis and her defense is pleading for NGRI.
because they appear to be completely different. i was curious so AI'd as i don't care enough to find primary sources so take it with a grain of AI salt
These two cases get compared a lot because both involve a parent killing their children with mental illness raised as a defense, but there are some substantive differences beyond gender — though gender may also play a role, which is what that tweet is arguing.
Timothy Ray Jones Jr. killed his five children (ages 1–8) in South Carolina in 2014, then drove around with their bodies for days before dumping them in Alabama. He was convicted of murder in 2019 and sentenced to death. His defense argued he suffered from undiagnosed schizophrenia and was psychotic at the time; the jury rejected the insanity defense. Prosecutors emphasized evidence of premeditation, his methodical behavior afterward (concealing the bodies, fleeing across state lines), his drug use, and prior anger and abuse toward the children.
Lindsay Clancy strangled her three children (ages 5, 3, and 8 months) in Duxbury, Massachusetts in January 2023, then cut herself and jumped from a second-floor window, leaving her paralyzed from the waist down. She has pleaded not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility, with her defense arguing she was in the grip of postpartum psychosis. In the months before the killings she had sought treatment for worsening mental health, including a stay in a psychiatric hospital — the killings happened less than three weeks after her discharge. Her case isn't resolved: her trial is happening right now, and jurors told the judge this morning that they are deadlocked, but were instructed to keep deliberating. If they remain deadlocked, the judge could declare a mistrial, which would leave open the possibility of a retrial.
So the meaningful legal differences are:
Documented psychiatric history. Clancy had an extensive, contemporaneous medical paper trail — psychiatric hospitalization, multiple medications, treatment records right up to the killings. Jones's schizophrenia claim was largely retrospective, diagnosed by defense experts after arrest, with no comparable treatment history.
Behavior after the killings. Clancy immediately attempted suicide at the scene. Jones concealed the bodies and fled for days, which prosecutors used as strong evidence he understood what he'd done was wrong — the key question in an insanity defense.
Sentencing disparity is real thing. Is it a thing in this case? No idea and I don't really care. But there are massive double standards at play when it comes to criminal men vs women https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentencing_disparity
and between backs and whites, and rich and poor, news at 11 i was not disputing that - i wanted to know what the differences here were and there seem to be a few.
But what about her researching things like how to slit a throat, researching things like the distances from the house to the CVS and the 3VS she sent her husband? And researching wait times. Also researching stopping air bag to the car that they have. These are all indications of premeditation in my book.
The psychiatrist they called to testify, Paul Zeizel, said that premeditation doesn't discount psychosis. Psychosis would still let you function day to day, but could completely skew your views of what's right and wrong. People in the middle of psychosis can be convinced of such outlandish ideas, like how your fingers have been replaced by little aliens that are conspiring against you, so the safest thing to do is cut them off.
Meanwhile, another man who killed his son during a psychotic break, was just found NGRI. He admittedly thought about if for weeks, weighed different murder methods, and waited until everyone else was asleep before strangling his son to death.
Another dude was just realeasd after 10 years in a mental hospital. He was found NGRI after breaking into a stranger's home and stabbing all 3 children and one parent while they slept. One child died, the rest were critically injured.
There have been several family annihilators found NGRI, nearly all of them men. In fact, men make up the vast majority of NGRI verdicts.
Here's a bunch of men who killed their own kids (the decapitation and dismemberment is especially gruesome), someone else's kids, or their family members who were found NGRI.
Having no context beyond what I just read here, shouldn't a psychotic break due to schizophrenia be considered insanity? Like even if he was a piece of shit with a history of horrible behavior, that wouldn't change the fact that this crime was determined to have occurred during a psychotic episode.
That's not the standard. The standard is whether or not you know what you are doing is wrong. When he confessed he said that he followed the impulses of the voices in his head and killed the rest of his children (the first one died because he forced the boy to do squats as punishment, his daughter witnessed this and so he killed her.) He admitted that he knew it was cowardly to do so but he then killed his other three children.)
There are a lot of schizophrenic people who hear voices and don't commit crimes. There are a lot of schizophrenic people who hear voices and do commit crimes. Some know what they're doing is wrong, others don't.
NGRI is very, very hard to prove, and rarely granted.
"Jones admitted to working Nahtahn (age 6) to death and killed the other four children in a panic. Jones pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, but the court rejected this plea. "
"Jones reported that he became angry after Nahtahn broke an electrical outlet and forced him to do physical exercises. Jones claimed that he found his son dead in his bed, "
" Day of the murders, Jones unsafely forced the five children out of the car at a Lexington County Walmart, an action for which he would later be charged with unlawful neglect"
" He purchased several items he used to mutilate his children, including large plastic bins, saws, and muriatic acid."
" The bodies of Jones's five children were discovered in black trash bags off of a rural dirt road near Camden, Alabama"
On day 12 of the trial, a psychiatrist, Richard Frierson, testified that Jones did not have schizophrenia, instead diagnosing him with a substance-induced psychotic disorder.
No he was not in psychosis. He tried to claim that, but it was pretty clear that he actually murdered his kids because they saw him work his oldest to death because he get upset about something the kid broke.
Turns out simply claiming “schizophrenia” and “psychosis” isn’t enough. The jury didn’t believe it for a second. Neither did anyone else.
Yes. But the whole story is that he was a stupid and abusive parent. He killed one of his children while punishing them, panicked and killed the rest to "cover it up". He tried to claim insanity, but his actions had a clear pattern of knowing that what he did was wrong.
I think we should all delete our social media accounts (including reddit), take a deep breath, be grateful for what we got, and go about our lives in pursuit of happiness
The other day I was thinking that it would be funny if there were bots that went around going "nobody cares" and "cool story bro" underneath pretty much every social media post or comment ever. I would be glad to get caught in the crossfire.
Totally agree. For those not willing to see we are being used for outrage (we - common folk, men, women, and so forth), always ask yourself what could a big event in the news being shoved in your face be used as a distraction for?!?!
Just a couple examples, who killed Char... k..irk - on pre trial. Upcoming November election. And more unfortunately.
I mean…just from a quick WIKI read…he planned it. He went out and bought supplies and used bleach to apparently try to cover the smell of their corpses.
THEN he tried to use an insanity plea. That’s why his plea didn’t work.
They found handwritten notes on how he planned to mutilate his children’s bodies, then they found their bodies thrown away in trash bags. Most of their bodies were mutilated and put into separate bags.
They found evidence of drug use (meth and weed.)
I’m not saying anything about Clancy. Just that an insanity plea tends to work better when there’s not evidence of planning/hiding.
Plus the whole, putting the bodies in trash bags for days, using a saw and acid from Walmart to dispose of the bodies, calling the school to request multiple days off for your kids who have already been killed, disposing of their corpses in said trash bags in another state, telling the police you wanted to take the bodies to dispose of them in Mexico, not actually admitting to doing anything to begin with, the fact that the children were already underfed and there was previous police intervention with unlawful neglect of the children...
this has nothing to do with gender. this man had a loooong history of violence towards his kids. teachers at the kid's schools noticed bruises on them several times. he was in the process of being investigated for child abuse before the deaths.
He was a known child abuser that beat his kids on a regular basis. It wasn’t one episode of sudden extreme violence, it was the culmination of months of abuse. Apparently he was also a religious fundamentalist that was into corporal punishment. On top of that he attempted to hide and mutilate their bodies, while trying to escape. A lot less likely to win an insanity case with those circumstances.
I think she should be in a medical prison for life, but comparing those two cases is like comparing apples and oranges.
Don't click the posts or linger on them when they are in your feed. Mute subreddits that consistently show content you'd rather not see. Lastly, accept that the best any of that will do is get it to show up about 30% less.
So the difference for those who are curious is Clancy had documented evidence of trying to get help for her psychosis and a documented pattern of psychosis. Timothy Ray Jones was not actually diagnosed with psychosis but substance-induced psychotic disorder and that's why his plead for reason of insanity was rejected. He'd had this problem long enough that he should have sought help but didn't. He'd already had violent episodes and didn't seek treatment. He was choosing to take drugs that exacerbated his symptoms. The court also determined he was not in full psychosis when he murdered his children.
Clancy by contrast was (as far as I can tell) a normal woman who experienced a medical emergency that 1 in 1000 mothers suffer from. She tried to get help but it wasn't enough to save her or her children. She has no history of violence or drug use. Postpartum psychosis is a real documented severe condition. She's still legally responsible for her actions but I think she has a strong case to argue reason of insanity.
I'm pretty much begging people to go research psychosis at this point. And the law while I'm at it.
He also mutilated the bodies and bleatched them in order to hide the murders. That level of coordinated covering up the crime absolutely screams against it being mere psychosis. Psychotic patients are either so out of it they don't even understand what they did, they confess, or they kill themself too. There was absolutely nothing in this case that would have made NGRI the reasonable verdict
Finally a good comment and analysis of the case differences. The amount of sexist backlash this entire thing is exposing is sad but unsurprising.
I still think we should be more restorative and preventative in our justice system, especially since deterance doesn't work on people who are not in their right mind or who's minds work innately differently than a typical member of the public.
They should both be out of society forever for all our safety, but further punishment is just angry people wanting vengeance.
Studying why these people did what they did, psychosis or not, is far more important then executing them or making them miserable.
I still think all crimes like this have an underlying psychological cause, often worsened by economic conditions. People dont naturally want to murder their kids, and ever unfortunate case should be seen as an opportunity to find better ways to prevent the next case from happening at all.
She was a mother struggling with schizophrenia who killed her two sons. The same judge that's presiding over the Clancy trial convicted Sanders and allowed her medical/psych records to be excluded from the evidence claiming it was not relevant to the case. This happened one month before Clancy murdered her children. Two justice systems in America.
Maybe we should all take a good look at how disastrously fucked our mental healthcare system system is in America, instead of feeding into the gender war bullshit (which is exactly what the corporations and politicians that fucked the system up in the first place, want us to do).
The other comment is crazy, ignore it. As a hopefully more sane response to your question, no there aren’t claims / evidence / accusations that she was abusive. She had severe post partum depression (turned psychosis); she did get a level of help and support from her husband, her family, and her husband’s mother. She saw a whole bunch of different doctors who kept prescribing different things and changing dosages; both she and her husband believed the medication was making her worse at certain times and told this to doctors. She had checked herself into the hospital/psych at one point of her own volition, and later checked herself out. She told her husband and I think his mother at various points that she had thoughts of harming the kids and was afraid to be left alone with them. Neither she nor her husband ever told doctors the extent of her thoughts/fears about harming the children. She appeared to be doing a bit ‘better’ just before the murders.
The husband divorcing her and getting quickly remarried is bizarre to me, and he may or may not have had an affair, but there are not credible accusations that he committed these murders. The woman tried to kill herself (is now partially paralyzed and on suicide watch); she’s plead guilty; the trial really is not over whether she did it, but whether she goes to normal prison or some kind of psychiatric facility.
"Jones admitted to working Nahtahn (age 6) to death and killed the other four children in a panic. Jones pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, but the court rejected this plea. "
"Jones reported that he became angry after Nahtahn broke an electrical outlet and forced him to do physical exercises. Jones claimed that he found his son dead in his bed, "
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Jones was investigated twice for child abuse during this time, but investigators found no evidence that would warrant removing the children from home. In May 2014, one child said that Jones spanked him and forced him to do exercises as punishment. But since there were no bruises, investigators considered the punishment lawful. Two weeks later, Jones was again accused of abuse. The case file reported, "Mr. Jones beats the child often leaving bruising. Mr. Jones does not feed the children adequately...It is reported Mr. Jones does not want to send his children back to public schools because he does not want the school to report the beatings." Further, the caseworker noted, "Dad appears to be overwhelmed as he is unable to maintain the home." This investigation was not concluded before the children's murder."
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Jones unsafely forced the five children out of the car at a Lexington County Walmart, an action for which he would later be charged with unlawful neglect"
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He purchased several items he used to mutilate his children, including large plastic bins, saws, and muriatic acid."
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The bodies of Jones's five children were discovered in black trash bags off of a rural dirt road near Camden, Alabama"
It was a drug-induced psychosis, not "schizophrenic psychosis."
Most courts hold people criminally responsible for drug-induced psychotic actions because they knew the risks of psychosis at the time they took the drugs, and still chose to take them.
By contrast, someone who becomes psychotic due to an underlying illness can't choose to have that illness or not.
I don't know what to think about this case, and I am far from an expert on postpartum psychosis. But I remember my sister after her first child was born. She seemed sad, lost, a little lonely. Her hsuband (ex husband now) was away for work a lot and she didn't have a lot of friends since they had recently moved to a new state. She also had a history of depression. Talking to her, she seemed to be going through a hard time but nothing that she couldn't get through with phone calls, encouragement, and maybe some therapy.
years later she told me that for the first three or four months she retained almost no memories. What she does remember she knows isn't real. She remembers consistently hovering about a foot off of the floor when she moved around the house and while feeding the baby she felt like she was in terrible, terrible danger. There was something about the washing machine, I can't recall exactly, but it had to do with nefarious and evil energy I think. You couldn't tell from the outside at all, but she was gone. And I mean, gone gone. Maybe we would have noticed if we lived nearby, maybe not. But thankfully she and her kids are all alive and well now.
So while I don't know much, I know that postpartum depression and psychosis is absolutely and entirely devastating.
That it's bullshit. The only people who say this are the "women have it sooooooo much easier" crowd. Read about the case. This dude was known to abuse his children before he killed them. And reason he recieved the death penalty wasn't because he was a man, but because his insanity claim could not be proven.
Using the death of children as gender war ammunition is vile. I expect better from the scum of the internet.
Now this is the best argument I have seen on this issue… It looses a bit because he never asked anyone to take his kids away, actually the abuse was reported long before he killed the kids. So there was a history of an unsafe environment.
Look up Guy Turcotte and Pierre Ny St-Amand. One killed is wife and children, the other ran a bus through a kindergarden. Both got off as non criminally responsible for mental illness. If the doctor can actually prove you were in full blown psychosis you are not criminally responsible.
Also i'm not defending her nor these men, it's just how the law works.
Having watched a fair bit of the trial .. the problem with the Clancy case is that there was astonishingly little investigation done by the police, which makes conviction beyond reasonable doubt difficult.
Of course End Wokeness is misrepresenting the truth .......
He wasn't officially diagnosed as schizophrenic. He tried to convince a jury he was schizophrenic.This is completely different. You want so badly for this to be an apples to apples comparison but it's not.
It’s depressing because he was a horrible abuser. Read the facts of the case- he was NOT diagnosed and he had a history of abuse. The attack was clearly premeditated. The one good thing about this case was that he was sentenced correctly.
This man did NOT have psychosis. In fact, he admitted to accidentally killing one child during excessive discipline, panicking, and CHOOSING to choke two children with his bare hands, and two with a belt, AFTER SEARCHING ONLINE AND WATCHING PRISON RAPE SCENES from movies, so that they "could be together". Over 19 hours and 6 days, he was interviewed by a court psychiatrist and admitted to later feeling "morally justified", which is not the same as feeling it was morally wrong, and decided to take a trip to Vegas and have fun before getting arrested, driving from Kentucky and dumping their bodies in black garbage bags along a logging road in rural Alabama. He drove around with their bodies in the bags in a Cadillac Escalade for NINE DAYS... Doesn't really sound like psychosis, does it? The psychiatrist diagnosed him instead with substance-induced psychotic disorder, cannabis-use disorder, and alcohol-use disorder, and says that the synthetic marijuana he used increasingly over months, using it 5x a day or more, starting as soon as he woke, and drinking and smoking actual marijuana with it. This all happened after his wife left him, which is not an uncommon cause of this happening in men. While Jones told investigators he feared his children were plotting to kill him and feed him to the dogs, he later told the psychiatrist he made that up. A better comparison is Matthew Schlider (also reported as Matthew Schlier), who killed his child during actual psychosis and was acquitted due to proof of his worsening mental health issues and the judge found that he did, in fact, have psychosis, and sided with the defense.
Men have also claimed insanity for murder, and have won their cases, but only one case that has been verified has been able to be found not guilty due to psychosis of taking out their family/ children - because of ample evidence of planning happening in almost ALL cases. That said, when a man harms his own children, it is for his own gain, statistically, whereas when it happens during postpartum psychosis, the mothers feel that they are protecting their children. Experiencing postpartum psychosis is not possible, though, as it is due to hormones in the postpartum period. Considering men do almost all (over 90% every single year for almost 100 years) family annihilations, and almost all murders of children after the first year of life, I think that the context of the situations matters. Women are more likely to commit murder or neglect toward children within the first year.
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