@ TW - QAnon

[sonrisa]

These kids would be alive without QAnon

www.sfgate.com/news/article/Mother-unraveled-in-depression-QAnon-style-16109264.php#photo-20879282

I’m not saying Qanon caused her mental health problems, but it did shape her specific psychotic ideation. Without it, those kids would likely still be alive. The capitol isn’t the only casualty of those dangerous conspiracies.

Where you go one, you go all? Are those a$$holes going to own this like they should?

[mrsukyankee]

That's super sad. We really don't do what is helpful to young mothers in any way in many countries around postpartum depression and psychosis.

[gretchenindisguise]

I hate qanon as much as the next person, but no. I don’t think it’s responsible for these deaths. Psychosis (or a different serious mental health disorder diagnosis) is responsible. If qanon didn’t exist, her delusions would have found a different source, it wouldn’t have just gone away.

It also sounds like a major failing of the system.

“ The killings followed weeks of pleas to child welfare agencies and police to get the three kids to safety, according to interviews, court records, Denton and his family’s notes documenting some interactions with authorities, and sources familiar with the ongoing investigation.”

[kath16]

Apr 20, 2021 7:58:10 GMT -5 gretchenindisguise said:

I hate qanon as much as the next person, but no. I don’t think it’s responsible for these deaths. Psychosis (or a different serious mental health disorder diagnosis) is responsible. If qanon didn’t exist, her delusions would have found a different source, it wouldn’t have just gone away.

It also sounds like a major failing of the system.

“ The killings followed weeks of pleas to child welfare agencies and police to get the three kids to safety, according to interviews, court records, Denton and his family’s notes documenting some interactions with authorities, and sources familiar with the ongoing investigation.”

i agree with both of these points.

@@@
i know someone who was hospitalized twice after giving birth (she's given birth three times total, two resulted in hospitalizations) for post-partum psychosis. she is absolutely not a conspiracy theorist and you would NEVER know this about her if she wasn't willing to share. the difference between her and this woman is that my friend was able to get help that she desperately needed, and was married to her partner so there was no custody battle involved. her husband saw that she and the kids were in danger and was able to intervene with no reliance on child welfare agencies.

[janegold]

Apr 20, 2021 9:14:24 GMT -5 turbo said:

Apr 20, 2021 7:58:10 GMT -5 gretchenindisguise said:

I cannot imagine the pain and anguish this experience is causing for everyone who knew the children, but especially for their father. He was trying so hard to get them to a spot where he could protect them, and our social services failed on every front. It’s absolutely tragic.

This.  It's so heartbreaking and infuriating.

[cville]

Apr 20, 2021 9:14:24 GMT -5 turbo said:

Apr 20, 2021 7:58:10 GMT -5 gretchenindisguise said:

I hate qanon as much as the next person, but no. I don’t think it’s responsible for these deaths. Psychosis (or a different serious mental health disorder diagnosis) is responsible. If qanon didn’t exist, her delusions would have found a different source, it wouldn’t have just gone away.

It also sounds like a major failing of the system.

“ The killings followed weeks of pleas to child welfare agencies and police to get the three kids to safety, according to interviews, court records, Denton and his family’s notes documenting some interactions with authorities, and sources familiar with the ongoing investigation.”

These were my thoughts exactly while reading the article last night. Blaming this on something like QAnon just shifts the focus away from the true cause of this tragedy, which is a severe mental illness that many people saw the mom display but no one was able to get her the necessary help to safely overcome. I personally think it happened, at least in part, because in this country we put the onus on the person struggling to find the help they need, which is limited in availability (compared to need), difficult to access, and often extremely expensive (if not the treatment itself, then the secondary expenses like loss of income, needing someone to watch the kids, etc.). Like so many other things in this country, we make it so that it is somewhat accessible to people with means and virtually impossible for those without means to access, and then act surprised when these very logical (and tragic) outcomes happen. If you don’t get cancer treatment, you will likely die, so we all accept the need for treatment; I don’t know why we think not treating mental illness is any different (I mean, I DO know why, but the stigma around mental health really needs to change).

I cannot imagine the pain and anguish this experience is causing for everyone who knew the children, but especially for their father. He was trying so hard to get them to a spot where he could protect them, and our social services failed on every front. It’s absolutely tragic.

Following on this, getting proper care for an acute mental health crisis is near impossible even when the patient DOES want help and has access to resources. Some of the worst, most horrific days of my life have been spent in emergency rooms and doctors' offices trying to help my friend, who WANTED to be there. Trying to imagine what that would be like with a person with 3 tiny children, limited resources, and a two-household family is heartbreaking.

I don't think we can discount the impact that the internet and Q style conspiracy has on our country and on people. And, with respect to mental health, if nothing else than providing a ready-made rabbit hole for people who are inclined to jump down it. But the root causes here seem to be mental health care and child protective care failures. And that's not ONLY on the agencies and individuals working there. It's the way our whole country is set up.

[rubytue]

I feel kind of weird seeing all this blamed on mental illness. It feels like when people blame mass shootings on mental illness, when it’s really a complex interplay of things. Would she have killed without Q? We don’t know. Did Q aggravate a low level mental illness? Are all Q followers mentally ill? I’ve seen people who I would have thought had no issues at all fall down the Q rabbit hole and become, unrecognizable. Reading the Q loved ones (I forgot the exact name) forum on Reddit, it’s often the same story. Q triggered something inside them, maybe it was there all along, but it took the psyop operation to trigger it.

[cville]

Apr 20, 2021 11:42:33 GMT -5 rubytue said:

I feel kind of weird seeing all this blamed on mental illness. It feels like when people blame mass shootings on mental illness, when it’s really a complex interplay of things. Would she have killed without Q? We don’t know. Did Q aggravate a low level mental illness? Are all Q followers mentally ill? I’ve seen people who I would have thought had no issues at all fall down the Q rabbit hole and become, unrecognizable. Reading the Q loved ones (I forgot the exact name) forum on Reddit, it’s often the same story. Q triggered something inside them, maybe it was there all along, but it took the psyop operation to trigger it.

Huh. I get this perspective.

For me, I was speaking to the but for cause. I don't see that "cause" here as Q or as mental illness, but systemic failures. There were frequent contacts with lots of authorities and agencies and no intervention was made to protect the children. Did Q contribute to this entire situation? Absolutely. It's tragic. But intervention could have changed it.

And the impact Q style conspiracy has on all of society makes it harder for any part to function properly. When you call and rightly say your child's mother is having delusions about a pedophile sex ring, and the effing former president has tweeted in support of people popularizing that dreck, it's harder to know what's right.

[mouse]

I feel like this case seems more like what I expect to come out of Q -
www.tampabay.com/news/crime/2020/11/17/florida-man-with-sovereign-citizen-views-shot-to-death-by-woman-police-say/

Florida “sovereign citizen” claims that he can help parents regain custody over some arcane legal maneuver he made up in his own head. Gets heavily involved with a woman tied up in the Q conspiracy, and she decides he’s part of it and kills him.

I don’t feel particularly bad for him, because it sounds like he was exploiting some vulnerable (if awful) people. But Trump isn’t the only conspiracy-pushing swindler and all that negative energy they stoke is going to go somewhere.

[sonrisa]

My thoughts (which I did not articulate well in the OP) were analogous to what rubytue posted, if not exactly that.

Psychosis happens within a cultural context. How it manifests is affected by the specific circumstances and culture. For example, after the movie ‘the Truman Show’ there was a huge up tick in people whose psychotic ideation mirrored the movie plot. These days, more and more people with psychosis are incorporating QAnon conspiracies into their delusions.

This woman specifically believed her town was thr center of a child sex trafficking ring. That was central to why she killed them. She feared that otherwise they would be subjected to lives as horrible abuse. If that delusion were true, her actions have precedent. Historically, some mothers have done just that - killed their children if they thought a sacking army or existing slaveholder would subject them to unspeakable cruelty. Without QAnon, her psychosis would likely have looked different. It probably would not have focused on her children being victims of a child sex trafficking ring in Porterville. And without that, it is much less likely she would have killed her kids.

Yes, the system failed her and her family. Yes, all the other factors mentioned are relevant. I don’t want to discount or absolve any of that. But QAnon is influencing how mental illness presents in this country. In her case the results were horrifyingly tragic.

[gretchenindisguise]

Sonrisa, I think we partially agree and I understand what you're saying.

I agree with this "But QAnon is influencing how mental illness presents in this country" but not with this "These kids would be alive without QAnon." Do I think it influenced how her delusions presented, yup. Do I think they delusions would have glommed into something else in the absence of QAnon that likely would have had the same tragic result, yup.

[sonrisa]

Apr 20, 2021 21:35:23 GMT -5 gretchenindisguise said:

Sonrisa, I think we partially agree and I understand what you're saying.

I agree with this "But QAnon is influencing how mental illness presents in this country" but not with this "These kids would be alive without QAnon." Do I think it influenced how her delusions presented, yup. Do I think they delusions would have glommed into something else in the absence of QAnon that likely would have had the same tragic result, yup.

fair enough.

[carmenere]

Apr 20, 2021 11:42:33 GMT -5 rubytue said:

I feel kind of weird seeing all this blamed on mental illness. It feels like when people blame mass shootings on mental illness, when it’s really a complex interplay of things. Would she have killed without Q? We don’t know. Did Q aggravate a low level mental illness? Are all Q followers mentally ill? I’ve seen people who I would have thought had no issues at all fall down the Q rabbit hole and become, unrecognizable. Reading the Q loved ones (I forgot the exact name) forum on Reddit, it’s often the same story. Q triggered something inside them, maybe it was there all along, but it took the psyop operation to trigger it.

I agree, the lines between mental illness and extreme belief are blurry. Q preys on people who are already susceptible to believing conspiracy theories, whether due to mental illness or just desperation for a theory to make sense of the world. In this particular case, the article leads me to believe her illness was already manifesting and the abuse delusions compounded it. This case seems so similar to Andrea Yates - she had a history of postpartum psychosis, and what triggered her to kill her children was a religious delusion. I don't know exactly where the line is, but ultimately if these women had gotten proper care for their mental health their children would still be alive.

[rubytue]

carmenere , yes! And Q is so close to a religious cult. With the same fanaticism. An all knowing, powerful figurehead, taking their word about, well, everything, on faith. Requiring the suspension of rational thought. I think of the most radical Q follower I know. We use to work together, but she quit her job to go to Christian mysticism school (or something like that).  Going down the path of a radicalized Christian. 

Maybe best to think about it as comorbidities. Without Q, the kids would be alive. Without a mental illness, the kids would be alive. My feelings in saying that the mental illness alone is what killed the kids, and that they would be dead even without Q. There is an interplay here.

And yes, I truly feel that using the argument here is not that far away from when an angry, white man goes on a shooting rampage, and the NRA says it’s mental illness. No. It’s a pent up anger, disillusionment, or something that combined with easy access to guns. Would counseling and finding new ways to cope have helped, probably. But is it DSM-IV diagnosable mental illness?

[picksthemusic]

So DH and I have been watching the Q documentary on HBO, and it's incredibly disturbing and fascinating all at the same time. The people involved are, in my opinion, power-hungry, misogynistic, and racist a-holes. If you have a chance to watch it, I feel like it's an important watch.