Shot Dead at the Capitol While Living With Postpartum Psychosis
Case summary
On October 3, 2013, Carey, a 34-year-old dental hygienist from Stamford, Connecticut, drove into a White House checkpoint barrier, struck a Secret Service officer, and led police on a high-speed chase to the US Capitol, where officers shot and killed her. Her 13-month-old daughter was in the back seat and was unharmed. Carey was never charged with anything; she died at the scene. The case is included here because it is one of the clearest public examples of an untreated perinatal psychotic illness ending not in a courtroom but in a police shooting, and because the national coverage that followed put postpartum psychosis in front of an American audience for the first time since Andrea Yates.
Mental-health context
Carey's sister said she had been diagnosed with postpartum depression with psychosis in the months after her daughter's birth. Investigators searching her home found discharge paperwork from a 2012 mental health evaluation listing medications for depression, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Family accounts and investigative reporting describe a delusional belief that the president was communicating with and controlling her. Clinicians noted at the time that this picture points to an underlying bipolar or psychotic illness unmasked or worsened by childbirth.
Status / outcome
Killed by police during the incident; no charges were ever brought against her
Sources
- https://abcnews.go.com/Health/miriam-carey-capitol-hill-chaos-puts-postpartum-psychosis/story?id=20469977
- https://www.cnn.com/2013/10/04/politics/u-s-capitol-shooting/index.html
- https://www.cnn.com/2013/10/04/health/postpartum-depression-psychosis-explainer
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