[imagesource:wikimediacommons]

While we cannot know what was happening in the mind of Lauren Dickason as she ended the life of her three daughters shortly after moving from South Africa to New Zealand, a peak into the terrifying reality of postpartum psychosis might lend us an idea.

Ahead of her trial, which is set to start on July 17, Lauren will mount a defence of insanity and infanticide, suggesting that a psychotic episode of sorts could very possibly have led to the devastating triple murders.

Lauren aside, women all over the world struggle in the throws of depression and nightmarish thoughts straight after giving birth to their babies.

Insider gave voice to Sondra Pacitti, who experienced a 36-hour psychotic episode a week after giving birth to her twin boys, Lorenzo and Max, who were born on April 3, 2020.

“I watched helplessly as she spiralled from paranoia to hallucinations to an hours-long bout of screaming every fear and regret I knew she held deep in her heart out into the world”, recalled her husband, Toni.

“The baby books I read didn’t give much ink to postpartum psychosis other than “it is rare.” Rare, according to the MGH Center for Women’s Mental Health, means one or two women in 1000 experience postpartum psychosis after birth. Rare, and yet there she was the unlucky percent of a percent.”

Sondra was sent home with medication to keep her stable and strict orders to sleep, which is nearly impossible with twins. To make matters worse for the new parents, COVID-19 meant that friends, family, and neighbours were hesitant to step in and help.

With little to no sleep, the worst of it had settled into Sondra by the time the boys were six years old; “Sondra’s psychosis had reemerged, more subtle and secretive. I knew she was keeping something big from me,” writes Toni.

One morning, she admitted she wanted to end her life. Thankfully, the family acted before things took a turn for the nightmarish, and Sondra was sent away for 40 days to an inpatient psychiatric facility in Providence. The pandemic meant that Toni could not visit her:

“The only contact I had with her were brief phone calls, during which she never asked about our sons because she told me she didn’t love them and that she didn’t want to be a mom. I knew that wasn’t true, that it was the psychosis talking, but she didn’t even believe she was experiencing psychosis.”

Image: Toni Pacitti

“Meanwhile, I was at home, being the dad I always wanted to be. I was elbow deep in Similac and baby poop, but it was hard to sustain any real sense of joy. One minute I would be basking in all of the parts of fatherhood I’d waited for, then I’d think of Sondra, missing all of it, and feel something like survivor’s guilt. Even the boundless love I felt for my boys was eclipsed by my fear for Sondra’s well-being and the uncertainty hanging over our family’s future.”

The medication wasn’t working, so Sondra began electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). Fearing that it would end up being like those stigmatised depictions of “shock treatment” from movies, Toni was assured that ECT was effective in extreme cases such as Sondra’s.

“After her third ECT session, she called me, and for the first time in months, I heard her actual voice, not her voice filtered through psychosis.”

‘Apparently, I have babies? Tell me all about them!’

ECT does cause memory loss, so fortunately for Sondra, she does not remember the hellscape she’d just walked through. Unfortunately, however, that also meant that she had to relearn about her babies and how to be a mother to them.

“It’s been three years now, and despite all of the progress she’s made and all evidence to the contrary, I remain haunted by the experience. I watched her lose her mind, I heard her say she wanted to end her life, and I got a brief, bitter taste of a world without her. Along with the memory of the time she missed, I carry the fear that her psychosis might return at any moment.”

The bullet might have been dodged, but Toni still wakes up every day afraid that his wife’s psychosis will return and thinks he always will.

[source:insider]