[Parmy]

Originally Posted by Toy Soldier

It's not about making excuses for this woman or get out of jail free cards, for the 700 billionth time. I honestly give up, I'm convinced people simply are not reading the posts.

Also, Annie, honestly it's wonderful that you are in control of your depression, although unfortunate that you have to suffer it at all.

However I think you should know (and tbh probably already do know) that it's not a "one size fits all" condition and there are plenty of people out there who are not lucky enough to have a handle on it. Something being true for you, as someone suffering from depression, is not necessarily true for everyone else. Especially as - and I'm going to be frank here - it seems like you are an educated and intelligent person and those qualities are a huge part of what would give you the self-awareness required to seek help. These things don't discriminate, however, and are in fact even more prevalent in lower socio-economic groups, who have lower levels of education and introspection in general, and wouldn't have a clue where to even start when it comes to seeking help before it's too late.

Which is WHY

...here we go again, god help me...

It is important to understand this woman's state of mind and how she got to that point. NOT to excuse her, NOT as a get out of jail free card, NOT to say that what she did was in any way OK, but to help identify these issues and intervene early in future BEFORE they / another person / an animal ends up suffering.

This actual specific woman - can she be helped? God's honest opinion, probably not. So whatever, lock her up... do whatever... it doesn't really matter, so long as there's still an effort to understand what actually happened and what lead to it. The major problem with insisting blue-in-the-face that someone who does something like this is "just scum", "just evil", "just lazy", "just" and brushing their perfectly evident psychological issues under the carpet (because what? Because "the system" didn't notice? No ****, they don't notice anything!) is that nothing changes and these incidents continue to happen.

"Burn the witch" saves fewer people / animals in future than "What happened to this woman". Yet narrow-minded people, in their anger, want to focus only on punishment at the expense of understanding even though it saves FEWER of the animals they're so up-in-arms about? Meh.

I just don't know why I bother, I already know that this is going to fly straight over the heads of anyone who didn't already "get it", and no doubt will only prompt another dozen "...but it's not an excuse!!121!1!" responses. Complete and utter waste of time. Stupid TS.

good read, but in this scummy gummy's case you got depression/mental issues etc muddled up with alcoholism.