Breaking Point

I kept avoiding this book because I, as so many others have said, thought I already knew everything there was to know about this tragic case. Of course, I was wrong.
I have always had enormous sympathy for Andrea Yates as I have for Susan Smith as well. Perhaps this is something only women can feel on a deep level, a sympatico, though Andrea was blessed with a legal defense team that seemed to be protective and understanding of her, as well as many psychiatrists and mental health professionals. Unfortunately, the caring and concerned and helpful medical personnel entered her life only after her shattered psyche had pushed her over the edge and five beautiful young lives were torn from this world.
Author Suzy Spencer writes an intimate and jarring portrayal not only of Andrea Yates, but of the devastating intrusion and influence of a self-appointed and self-annoited minister, lackadaisacal and incompetent medical professionals, Rusty Yates who seemed to think Andrea's thinning hair and bleeding scalp, her mouth sores and blank stares and silences signified just a little weariness.
Andrea Yates had been pregnant and/or nursing from the time of her first-born Noah's birth up until baby Mary was six months old. A total of seven years when her body and mind finally gave out, and she collapsed physically, unable to eat or drink, sleep, rest, or concentrate, or barely speak. She also became delusion, hearing Satan speaking to her, hearing cartoon characters sending messages from the television, believing more and more deeply that she was a bad mother and that her five children were destined for hell.
Rusty Yates had dozens of videos that Andrea watched from the self-proclaimed minister on which was flashed the mask of Satan and he repeated that all were going to hell.
A message that penetrated Andrea's broken psyche.
A message that made her determined to save her children. And there was only one way to do that: Send them to Heaven before she and the corrupt world could corrupt them.
I was so joyful to read that in spite of the immense harm Ms. Yates endured, and the enormity of her actions, she was never incarcerated in a prison, but instead sent to a psychiatric facility where she remains today and where, finally, she is getting the help she needs.
From mopping the floors at first, a job she loved, to helping with crafts, which was her calling, and gardening, this woman who had been stricken with mental illness that was left untreated, that only progressed to the point where so many had said she was one of the sickest individuals they had ever seen, Andrea Yates is living a full life.
I want to thank Ms. Spencer for writing this book.
I highly recommend it.
It is high time for our nation to move past punishment and look towards rehabilitation. The prosecution in this saga was reprehensible, Mr. Owmby especially. How could he look at that shell of a woman and berate her as he did. Shame on him! Andrea Yates history was there for them to read, yet these ghouls wanted to send her to the gas chamber!
We need to do a much better job of understanding mental illness in our society.
I remain appalled to this day at our injustice system where female rape victims can still be treated as though they asked for it, unarmed black men and woman are gunned down by white cops, and mentally ill people are not listened to and their condition not taken into account.

Great read...very informative and enjoyable read filled with good details and interesting facts!!