A Delaware woman stands accused of killing her 7-month-old daughter over the weekend. She was in treatment for her bipolar disorder, but also was diagnosed earlier this year, shortly after the birth of her daughter, with postpartum depression.

Postpartum depression is a common mood disorder in mothers following the birth of a child. Mothers who have it feel completely overwhelmed by depression, about not being a good enough mother, and not having any desire to interact or even see their newborn baby.

This isn’t the first story of a mother killing her child shortly after the child’s birth. But what is more disturbing in this story is that the woman, Christie Padovani, was in active treatment — both medications (Risperdal) and psychotherapy — for her ongoing bipolar disorder. She even underwent hospitalization for postpartum depression back in April. In other words, she’s the model of a person actively working to help herself.

Despite all of this professional help, she still ended up feeling so overwhelmed, apparently, that she took her young infant’s life on Saturday. She called 911 immediately after drowning the child and reported what she had done.

Significant behavior change is often a sign that something is “up.” And while her husband noticed the change, it’s not clear that her mental health professional team did:

But in the past two months, her behavior had changed noticeably.

“She was complaining about being severely depressed and spoke about giving up the kids for adoption because she didn’t think she was a good mother,” he said. “She said she felt like she was a bad mother because she didn’t feel like taking care of the children and didn’t feel like getting on the floor and playing with them.”

Naturally, people will be asking the usual questions a terrible tragedy like this demands — “Who’s to blame?” and “How can we stop this in the future?”

These are never easy questions to answer. Given the woman was undergoing treatment for her issues, I’m not sure what else could’ve been done. This is just a tragic case of what can happen sometimes when someone decides to do something drastic and terrible…

Read the full story: Man copes with loss of baby girl

Dr. John Grohol is the CEO and founder of Psych Central. He is an author, researcher and expert in mental health online, and has been writing about online behavior, mental health and psychology issues -- as well as the intersection of technology and human behavior -- since 1992. Dr. Grohol sits on the editorial board of the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking and is a founding board member and treasurer of the Society for Participatory Medicine.

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    Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 4 Oct 2007
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