A plea of insanity is the only option Andrea Yates has. One of the three perspectives that could help her case is the Humanistic Perspective. We see Andrea as a whole person and the roles that she plays. She is a daughter, mother, and wife. She experienced depression after the birth of each of her four children and the effects gradually got worse. She experienced a shift in her mental health as she tried to adjust to the fact that her father was ill.
The Humanistic Perspective has to do with the choices that we make and the consequences that come as a result of our choices. She chose to sweep her illness under the rug and “considered” getting help when her illness got worse.
At that point, it was too late and she really didn’t know what she was capable of. The second perspective that could help her case is the Behavioral Perspective. This perspective is effected by the conditioning one receives through their environment.
Andrea was effected greatly by the responsibilities she was given. She had to run an entire household and provide education for her children. Her environment was unstable and one could make the assumption that she received no help from her husband. On the day of the horrible incident her husband said the following “good luck finding a clean glass in this house”. Her house was untidy and unkempt according to the police. An untidy environment can at times be an outward expression of something bigger.
The family lived in chaos physically as she lived in chaos mentally. The Cognitive Perspective is the last and if not most important perspective for this case. One of the things that I was shocked by is that her physician discontinued her medication. Why wasn’t she referred to a Psychologist to adjust her medication to insure she was mentally stable? Did her doctor ask her how things are at home knowing her reoccurring issue with severe depression? She had already tried to commit suicide at her parents’ home and that wasn’t a red flag to those surrounding her? They knew that her mental cognition had changed drastically yet her husband didn’t do a thing. She could no longer help herself and became robotic. If only her family had gotten her the help she needed instead of sweeping it under the rug, her four precious children may be alive today.
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