Miriam Carey and Postpartum Depression
HARLOW: Bottom of the hour now. Welcome back, everyone. I'm Poppy Harlow.</s>BLACKWELL: I'm Victor Blackwell. Here are five things you need to know for your new day. At number one, a tornado last night smashed as many as a dozen homes in Wayne, Nebraska. Incredibly, no one was killed. You hear those sirens there. The mayor says several people were hurt. And the American Red Cross is sending teams to the area to help.</s>HARLOW: Number two, a man is hospitalized in critical condition after reportedly setting himself on fire at the National Mall. This happened yesterday afternoon. And witnesses used their clothes to try to put out the flames. Paramedics rushed him to the hospital and police are investigating just why this happened.</s>BLACKWELL: And you'll get a kick out of number three. Workers at the National Weather Service in Alaska hid a clever message in their forecast. Look at the yellow here. The letters down the left side of this bulletin spell out "please pay us." The weather service is operating with a reduced staff during the federal government shutdown. Right now, employees are not getting a paycheck.</s>HARLOW: Number four, fall just started, but hey, it looks like the dead of winter in South Dakota. Some parts of the state could get more heavy wet snow today. Tens of thousands of people already without power. Officials are using - urging drivers to stay off the roads. And number five, that heavy snow also caused power outages and shutdowns in parts of the interstate in neighboring Wyoming. High winds caused snowdrifts four feet high. Making it tough for troopers to reach stranded drivers. Let's bring in meteorologist Alexandra Steele in the CNN Severe Weather Center. It's just amazing to me. It's not even Halloween and we're having this weather. Is it here to stay?</s>ALEXANDRA STEELE, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Yeah, it is. You know, three of the top five we had weather as issues. And, you know, you haven't even mentioned some of the issues we've got also, extreme fire day danger and tropical storm making landfall. So, here's a look. Again, bull's-eye here. Especially Rapid City, South Dakota, western South Dakota historic and certainly record-breaking snow. Another 20 inches potentially today. Of course, we talked about the tornadoes yesterday. Reports of 17 in three states. Now the axis of tornadoes today shifts eastward. Madison, Wisconsin, to Chicago. Down to St. Louis. Again, the greatest threat today will be winds, though, and even some hail. And of course, Tropical Storm Karen, there it is in the gulf. Where is it going and when will it make landfall. Two potential landfalls here. I'll show you where we could see that coming up, guys.</s>HARLOW: All right, thank you so much, Alexandra, I appreciate it. We want to move on to this story now. We're learning more about the woman who police in Washington say led them on a frightening chase this week. In the end she was shot dead.</s>BLACKWELL: Yeah, Miriam Carey's family said she had suffered from postpartum depression with psychosis.</s>HARLOW: Her boyfriend said that Carey had trouble sleeping. He also said that she had delusions that she was under some sort of surveillance, he was worried about the safety of their child together. Carey's relatives say they want an investigation into her death and they also question what the boyfriend was saying about her being delusional. Take a listen.</s>AMY CAREY-JONES, MIRIAM CAREY'S SISTER: It's very unfortunate that Miriam is not alive right now. And a lot of things are being said that she seemed to be crazy or schizophrenic or things like that. I can tell you that she was a woman that was a law abiding citizen. Carefree, loving just like anyone else. She had a baby and she did suffer from postpartum depression with psychosis, which comes along with medication and therapy. Which she did. She was very compliant with her medication. At the time that she was diagnosed with that, as you know, depression can have a certain level of instability at that time which is why she was diagnosed.</s>HARLOW: Well, the role that mental illness may have played in Thursday's Capitol Hill shooting has a lot of people searching for answers this morning, including Carey's family.</s>BLACKWELL: So, let's open this up, answer some questions here, what are postpartum depression and psychosis? And what are the warning signs for both the new mothers and for their families.</s>HARLOW: All right, so joining us to discuss all of this psychologist Erik Fisher known as Dr. E. Let's begin with this. I think it's a very important differentiation to make.</s>DR. ERIK FISHER: Right.</s>HARLOW: Postpartum depression is fairly common for new mothers. And postpartum depression with psychosis or postpartum psychosis is very rare. So, let's talk about the difference.</s>FISHER: Well, I think first we want to start off by talking about the baby blues. The baby blues is very common. Because you have this rush of hormone activity after the child's born it can affect somebody's emotions and these hormones are going to influence, you know, our neural biologies, which is going to affect our perception of the world reality. Postpartum depression occurs in about nine to - anywhere from nine to 19 percent or what different studies say. Postpartum psychosis is about 0.1 percent. But what we have to understand are the difference in the symptoms from somebody who's having a baby blues where they might have bouts of sadness, difficulty eating. Mood swings, things like that, hard time sleeping to more significant issues of depression that come with a postpartum depression. This can also come with difficulty of attaching to your child. Thoughts of hurting your child and even some isolation issues that can occur on that. Postpartum psychosis, the difficulty with that you're really losing touch with reality. And you can have delusions. You can have auditory and visual hallucinations. And the key to depression and psychosis both of them need to be managed often psychiatrically with medication. It's not something that people can just work their way through like the baby blues.</s>BLACKWELL: Now, the Carey family wants to know if protocol was followed properly in this situation. Is there any way with a woman who was driving this, as it's been called 1400 pound weapon, to reason with the person who is in this state?</s>FISHER: You know, when people get in the state of delusion, you know, delusional beliefs, what they believe is they are right. That's the way they see the world. One of the things about - she might have been treated and come through this very well. However, sometimes even menstrual cycles can trigger a relapse of some symptoms. So, we don't know what happened here. And I think that's - it's important that we kind of talk generally about this situation. But you have to look at other risk factors, too. Traumatic brain injury can be a risk factor. Previous history of psycho-effective disorders in a family. Any other traumas could be triggers that could lead down this road to some of these outcomes that we see in this situation.</s>BLACKWELL: All right, Dr. E. We appreciate your expertise. There's still some discrepancies on any injuries, anything that might have happened leading up to this.</s>HARLOW: A lot of questions.</s>BLACKWELL: -- build out that full fixture. We may never know exactly what she was thinking then. But we thank you for discussion.</s>HARLOW: Thank you for joining us.</s>BLACKWELL: Thanks for having me.</s>HARLOW: I appreciate it.</s>BLACKWELL: OK, so, you have to admit, the government shutdown is not much to see, actually. There are no explosions, no wreckage, raising and raging fires or rushing floodwaters or anything like that.</s>HARLOW: Although people are that angry.</s>BLACKWELL: Yeah, that's true, some people are.</s>HARLOW: But the war of words coming out of the mouths of politicians, they've been dropping like 4th of July fireworks over the Washington Monument.</s>REP. DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ (D-FL), DNC CHAIRWOMAN: We will not associate jeopardizing the economy with whether or not everyone in America is going to have access to health care. That's irrational and irresponsible.</s>REP. JOHN BOEHNER, (R-OH) HOUSE SPEAKER: Senate decided not to work yesterday. Well, my goodness, if there's such an emergency, where are they?</s>SEN. TED CRUZ, (R) TEXAS: I think we ought to start passing continuing resolutions narrowly focused on each of the things the president listed.</s>SEN. DICK DURBIN (D) ILLINOIS: For goodness sakes this is irresponsible and it's reckless. Why do these senators of the Tea Party Republicans think they can pick and choose the priorities of the American government?</s>BOEHNER: All we're asking for here is a discussion, and fairness for the American people under Obamacare. I wish, I would hope that the president and my Democrat colleagues in the Senate will listen.</s>SEN. CHARLES SHUMER (D) NEW YORK: Speaker Boehner's in this position because sadly he's become a puppet with Ted Cruz pulling the strings.</s>ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: Ted Cruz says fraud?</s>REP. PETER KING (R ), NEW YORK: Those who have spoken to him think he's crazy.</s>SEN. HARRY REID, (D), MAJORITY LEADER: John Boehner, this is not about you, and it's not about Harry Reid. It's about our country. It's about our national security.</s>BOEHNER: This isn't some damn game. The American people don't want their government to shut down. And neither do I.</s>HARLOW: Well, you heard it right there.</s>BLACKWELL: Yeah.</s>HARLOW: War of words and it continues.</s>BLACKWELL: Apparently we're going to hear more.</s>HARLOW: All right, also coming up, swarms of killer hornets. This is very serious. Sounds like a crazy movie but it's serious. They're terrorizing people across China.</s>BLACKWELL: While experts say these giants are a bigger problem than ever.