Andrea Yates Was Insane

Jenifer describes being fearful of her step father’s outbursts and made a concussions decision to marry a man that was not this way. Jenifer describes not feeling right since her move to Maine. She says that she is unmotivated, tiered, cries often, and feels hopeless. While she feels this way when asked she says that she does not want to harm herself but does state that sometimes wants to fall asleep and not wake up. Jenifer did undergo Psychiatric evaluation and was diagnosed with Major depression, that is why we are all here today.

During her pregnancy, her father died and her psychosis returns and she was given medication to treat it. Two days before she murdered her children, Andrea and her husband Rusty went to the doctors in an attempt to get the doctors to switch her medication. The day of incident,

She may have had her emotions completely take over and her mind may have been telling her body what to do. Being emotionally unstable, makes our brains “foggy” and can often blind us from the real world and concepts of right and wrong. She was obviously not psychologically stable in her life during that

She started to hear voices and the hormones produced by her body made her crazy. Between her 4 and 5th child she was prescribed pills and her condition got better, but her irregularity with her treatment also worsen her biological and psychological state making her body resistant to the treatment and worsening her psychological reaction. When she got pregnant with her last baby she left the pill completely leading to a complete comeback of her symptoms after the baby's birth. Andrea started to imagine things again but now it was worst. Because of her resistance to her treatment and her mind playing tricks with her she started to think two things , 1) if she drowned her children they would go to heaven and 2)

Wuornos later stated that she also had sexual relations with her brother and was pregnant in her teens; the baby was given up for adoption. Not much later, Wuornos was kicked out of her grandparent’s home and went on to live in the woods (Biography.com Editors, n/d). It is easy to see that Wuornos did not have an easy childhood, and that could have played a role in the murders she committed.

Aileen also had a brother. At a young age, her mom abandon both her brother and herself and they were left to the grandparents who later adopted the two of them. In the younger years of her life her alcoholic and violent grandfather would sexually abuse her, which is likely the reason for her sexual behaviors which arose later in life. Around the age of 11, Aileen began engaging in sexual behaviors in exchange for items. This was the starting point to her downhill spiral.

They thought she had befriended the devil herself and basically saw him as her master when she was just wrongly

“It was the standard story- it won’t happen again- but it did” It was a pattern in Reenie’s life, one she never thought she’d fall into. She was raised in an alcoholic family. Her husband was too. “I was just scared, scared to death to leave.

Of course, she was evil. Nothing ever mattered to her. She wanted to be her and all about her. She always found a way to get what she wanted. She was rude to others and disrespectful.

She killed her five children, ages ranging from seven years old to six months old by drowning them in the bathtub. Her family history of mental illness as well as her upbringing contributed to the incident. She was raised as a Roman Catholic and part of the reason why she killed her children was because “…she had been marked by Satan and the only way to save her children from hell was to kill them.” Her family’s religious views brought in the idea that parents are responsible for their children’s afterlife path, if they went to heaven or hell. (McLellan) Her mental state was fragile even before the birth of her youngest child, and it continued to worsen after.

When an individual's mind is weak, the devil can easily slip in in order to act through his or her actions and attitude. Coonie is aware of this, yes, but she lets herself believe that her body and heart “was nothing” (Oates 210). This fiend of a man is able to enchant Connie to do what he wills. Now, some could argue that Arnold knew the right words to convey. Others could dispute that Arnold was a crazy stalker.

This suggests that the woman herself knew that she was consulting with the devil or some other demonic spirit, but also thought that she needed protection from them. This aligns with Kieckhefer’s definition of demonic magic which “invokes evil spirits” and was “religion that turned away from God and towards demons for help”. The need for protection is also expressed in the lengthy list of acts she feels are necessary to save her body from the devil, which her children try their best to follow, though their actions are not enough to protect her. William blames this on the woman’s guilt and the “devil’s violence”, drawing yet another distinction between the

We all like to think that evil is not born within us, but rather nurtured into us; while this may be true for some, others have evil born directly into them. When man toys with the powers reserved for only God, God strikes back with a wicked evil to show man the power that they truly lack. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein contains a prime example of a being born of unnatural causes and thus having these evil urges that they cannot control. Frankenstein’s monster is a highly intelligent being, and hence he is very manipulative.

Soon Sara is addicted to the pills and begins to have hallucinations. The hallucinations begin to make her think her refrigerator is attacking her; because of this, she becomes anorexic because she is afraid of food. Her hallucinations even go as far as making her think that she is on the TV show portraying herself as the perfect woman with a perfect family like she has always dreamed of. She even brags about her son and his wife and how successful he

She knows deep inside that her children going to exile will not give them life at all. Even if they stayed with their father, the children will not be treated as royalty and will not have a bright future. Therefore, she knows that her children will not live a happy life. In her defense, she tells Jason that she did not murder her children. She murdered only his.