Postpartum Psychosis: The Case of Andrea Yates

The new mother.

Hello!

[LAUGHS] Mother for the fifth time.

Uh huh.

This home video of Andrea Yates was taken by her husband Rusty just after she gave birth to their fifth child, Mary, last November. It was just seven months before she would kill her baby daughter and her four sons.

Look at the camera, Luke. Say cheese!

Cheese!

Two year-old Luke, three year-old Paul, five year-old John, and Noah, who was seven.

Everybody say goodbye.

Bye!

Bye!

Right to the camera.

Bye!

It is hard to comprehend that this 37-year-old woman, a former nurse and high school valedictorian, who's been described by everyone who knew her as a devoted and loving mother, is the same person who is charged with capital murder. The person who has the hardest time comprehending all of this is her husband.

She's a terrific mother. Loved the children. They're always climbing up in her lap and she'd read books to them. And just all kinds of stuff.

And she loved them. And so I knew that there's no way. I mean, there's just no way that she would ever do anything like what happened.

But she did.

No. No. But it's 'cause her mind was sick, you know?

Mm hmm.

I mean, that's it.

Although there were indications that her mind was sick, Andrea Yates never gave any signs that she intended to harm her children. But after her arrest, she told authorities that on and off for the past two years she'd heard voices telling her that the devil was after the kids and that she needed to save them. She said they were quote, "hopelessly damaged." And on the morning of June 20th, Andrea Yates waited to act until after her husband left their home to go to his job at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, where he's a civil engineer.

Well, I got a phone call from my wife at five til 10. And she said, you need to come home. And she sounded really very stern, very cold.

I said, what's wrong, Andrea? And she said, you need to come home, and she hung up. And I was really getting nervous because of her tone.

And I called Andrea back at the house and she picked up the phone. And I said, Andrea, what's wrong? I said, is anyone hurt?

And she said yes. And I said who? And she said the kids.

And I said, which one? She said all of them. And I mean, I was just devastated.

According to what she told police, Andrea Yates had filled the family bathtub and methodically drowned her five children. Then she dialed 911.

By all appearances, the Yates were a normal happy family until two years ago. Soon after the birth of their fourth son Luke, Andrea began showing signs of depression. Twice in 1999 she tried to kill herself. First from an overdose of sleeping pills, and then a month later, she took a knife into her bathroom.

She had a knife held up to her neck. And it's like she's looking at her neck trying to figure out how to cut herself so that she could successfully kill herself.

And I said, give me the knife. And she said, let me do this. And I said, no, give me the knife.

And she wouldn't do it. She just stood there like this. So I grabbed her arm and pulled it down. And I pried the knife out of her hand.

The next day Andrea Yates was admitted to a psychiatric hospital. She was there almost three weeks and diagnosed with postpartum depression with psychosis.

About 75% of new mothers experience some form of postpartum depression. It's commonly known as the baby blues and usually fades away in a few weeks. But Andrea Yates fits into a much more severe category that affects less than 1% of women. They may either kill themselves or their children.

Andrea Yates seemed to fit that profile perfectly. There's no evidence that she abused her children. But during her hospitalization, she described being stressed trying to raise so many young kids, saying it was a big responsibility. I don't want to fail.

According to hospital reports, she said she had "recurrent, obsessive thoughts," and that "most of them are over our children and how they'll turn out." She was treated with two antidepressants and an injection of the anti-psychotic drug Haldol. Her husband Rusty says the response was remarkable.

Within a day, Andrea went from being completely catatonic to sitting on the couch with me in the visiting area, and we carried on-- I referred to it as the best conversation we've ever had. The thing I learned from it is that she needed the right medicine. When I saw her respond to the medicine at that time, I'm like wow, there's hope. There's hope that Andrea will return.

After returning home, Andrea Yates was soon back to the job of being a full time mom, which she appeared to enjoy.

Bringing up the rear is Luke. Hello! All right!

She shot this home video of her children playing around the house.

This is our knight ceremony here.

Andrea Yates home schooled her oldest children, even designing their sets and costumes for a lesson on medieval history.

OK, Sir John. Sir John Yates. And he will go to his castle.

She also cooked and cleaned the house.

[CHILDREN SHOUTING]

Hey you.

[LAUGHTER]

Her doctor suggested she get some help taking care of the children and that she devote some time for herself. But Rusty says she chose not to.

For more than a year after she got out of the hospital and was off all medications, by all accounts, life in the Yates family was back to normal. They decided to have another child.

There's the belly. There's the baby in there.

Ignoring a doctor's written warning which said that doing so would "surely guarantee future psychotic depression."

Well, no. We looked at that and we said, well, this was a very difficult time. But then we said well, would we rather have not had Luke? I mean, of course we'd rather have Luke and have gone through that.

What we were told is that there was a 50% chance that she would be depressed again if we had another child. And if she got depressed again, she would have the same symptoms as she had in '99, and that the same treatment that worked for her in '99 would work again.

Within months of Mary's birth, Andrea Yates' depression returned with a vengeance. It was a depression which her husband says led her to murder their children.