An article in the New York Times today reported that a mother was being charged with murder in the death of her 7 week old child. The article can be found here.
Buried in the last paragraph of the article is the fact that the woman was being treated in a hospital for a suicide attempt. Also mentioned in the article is that her husband is the person actually believed to have murdered the child. The point here is obviously not to excuse the parents' behavior. Rather, the hope is to understand that there are often underlying reasons for why people do (or fail to do) certain things. In this particular case, it may very well be that the mother (and the father) suffer from a serious mental illness.
To the extent that a child abuse or neglect case is brought against a parent, prosecuting agencies and the courts are often overly focused on the result of the neglect or abuse. However, unlike criminal court, the family court is not, in theory anyway, a place designed to punish parents but to reunify families, to the extent possible. For the family in today's article, that is obviously not a feasible reality. But for most non-fatal abuse and nearly all neglects, there is usually a measure of hope. The extent of that hope depends on several factors. The most important of these factors is the parent's willingness to identify the underlying cause of the problem and their determination to address that problem forthrightly. A dedicated team of advocates including social workers, attorneys, therapists, case workers and the like can make a great deal of difference in bringing that goal to a reality.
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