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So sick of people saying oh i have this sickness or this made me do it........
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I don't know if the article is saying she's trying to blame what she did on her illness.
The article said a social worker informed them of her bi-polar disorder, and the prosecuter said they wanted to make sure their "mental health experts are ready". This might be standard procedure and they're assuming that because of her bi-polar disorder she may not be cooperative, or may not be able to consistently answer their questions.
I too am tired of people trying to blame things they did on bipolarism though. There are certain acts the bipolarism may make you more likely to do, but some of the things people blame on it are ridulous. Often the disorder can cause someone to make poor judgements, but most likely the person had to of already been inclined towards that behavior.
A lot also depends on how severe the bipolarism is. There are too many people diagnosed as bipolar that aren't truely, or don't have severe ups and downs, and I don't think in that case bipolarism is a valid excuse for their behavior.
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I just tought about something, bi polar is about having ups and downs ? This lady didn't seem to have any ups, she never had a moment where she tought she was doing a bad thing. So I don't think she can use this as an excuse, just my
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The ups ARE the part where you might think you're not doing anything wrong. When you're in a manic episode you might think that you have better judgement than you actually do. You might think that you have the power to do things that aren't actually within your power. You also may not sleep for days, which can contribute to delusional behavior.
In a depressive episode (or a "down") you may have feelings of guilt. You may think nothing you ever did was right. You may actually consider killing yourself, even for things that aren't that bad.
The article says "She had called Columbus police over the weekend telling of her crimes." This was probably during one of her depressive episodes, if she is indeed bipolar.
You can read about the symptoms here:
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/publicat/bipolar.cfm#bp1
The problem with bringing mental illness into court as that the general public has a very poor understanding of most mental illnesses. Plus they judge/jury has to decide "Is this something the person would have done anyway? Did they know it was wrong at the time they did it, regardless of their mental illness?".
My mom is schizoaffective (manic depressive + schizophrenic), so I have firsthand experience on what some of these illnesses can do to a person. I've also researched and met several people with all kinds of mental disorders because of her.
Medically, can a mental illness be an excuse for extreme behavior? Yes. Can it in court? That's heavily up for debate.
That said, I think the lady in the article is extremely sick. Killing 650 animals? Especially the way she did, she had to of known at one time or another what she was doing was wrong.