My Trading Plan. Feel free to use and tweak.

Yes, postpartum depression exists. Yes, severe mental health disorders exist. Yes, depression exists. But when does an explanation become an excuse? We need to be careful with the language we use when discussing horrific crimes. If a mentally disturbed man walks into a classroom and deliberately kills innocent children, we don’t suddenly erase the victims from the conversation because he had mental health problems. We call the act what it is: murder. We investigate his mental state, determine whether it affected his capacity to understand or control his actions, and let the law decide what responsibility follows. So why does the conversation sometimes change when the perpetrator is a mother who kills her own children? When Lindsey murdered her children, the immediate discussion became about postpartum depression, depression, mental illness, or what she may have been going through. Those things may be relevant to understanding why something happened. But understanding why a crime happened is not the same thing as saying the crime was acceptable. There is a crucial distinction between explaining an act and excusing an act. Mental illness can explain behavior. In some circumstances, it can also have serious legal implications regarding a person’s capacity and criminal responsibility. But the existence of a diagnosis should never automatically become a moral eraser. The victims were innocent. Their lives mattered. Their suffering matters. And their families deserve to be able to say, without qualification, that an unbearable wrong was done to them. We can have compassion for someone suffering from severe mental illness while simultaneously condemning what they did. Those positions are not contradictory. In fact, I think that’s where the conversation about mental health needs to become more mature. We should stop using mental health as a simplistic explanation for every horrific act, but we should also stop pretending that mental illness is irrelevant when it genuinely affects someone’s ability to understand reality, exercise judgment, or control their actions. The right question isn’t: “Did this person have mental health problems?” The right questions are: What exactly happened? What was their mental state at the time? Did it impair their ability to understand what they were doing? Did it affect their ability to control their actions? And what does justice require for both the perpetrator and the victims? Victims deserve justice. And accountability should not disappear simply because the circumstances are complicated. -BC.