Andrea Yates Case Study

One of the most controversial homicide cases in US history was the case of Andrea Yates, who systematically drowned her five children in her home bathtub on June 20, 2001. Andrea’s trial was very long and difficult because it was hard to establish what the reasons were behind her killing her own children; to me a variety of different factors influenced Andrea and led her to commit this horrible act, there wasn’t just one reason. According to research Andrea had been bulimic and depressive as a teenager, despite her perfectionist traits and good performance as a student and daughter, Andrea had once spoke about suicide to a friend, which to me is an evident warning of a severe mental disorder, however; Andrea had seemed to overcome her disorders and signs of depression and took on a regular life and college career. While in college Andrea met who would later become her husband, Rusty Yates, who had been a devoted and serious Christian for a couple of years by this time. They had a four-year relationship before getting married. Rusty had introduced Andrea to his religious beliefs, which she adapted to willingly. The couple began to reproduce and strongly sustained that they would have as many children as God allowed them to. By the birth of their fourth child, …show more content…
Her struggles with harming thoughts and attempts of suicide came after she gave birth to her fourth child. Some time went by and there was uncertainty in Andrea’s emotional and mental health. Following the birth of her fifth and last baby and the only girl out of five, Andrea was struck and emotionally affected by the death of her father, by this time she had become completely emotionally unstable which potentially unraveled her