LHey, Giulia Lavatura, 41 years old, was saved. Her six-year-old daughter, who the woman brought with her in her suicide attempt, instead died. Even their dog ended up in the void with the little girl, both thrown from the ninth floor of a building in Ravenna. While the public prosecutor investigates for multi-aggravated voluntary homicide and killing of animals, some details in the history of mother killing her daughter they increase the dismay of those who read the news.
Meanwhile, the suffering experienced in solitude. The woman had been under treatment since 2009 in a mental health center for a bipolar disorder. She had been subjected to two compulsory health treatmentsfew years ago.
AND in a post-testament on Facebook she took it out on her father, “violent and aggressive”, and on her husband, “always on the platform”. The man, who normally actually works on North Sea oil platforms, was at home at the time of the tragedy. But he didn’t – incredibly – notice anything.
Why did Ravenna’s mother want to commit suicide with her daughter? The psychiatrist’s response
«These facts silence me. They open glimpses of unimaginable suffering. And, unfortunately, they are not that rare», he admits Claudio Mencacci, psychiatristPresident of the Italian Society of Neuropsychopharmacology.
In this, as in many others cases of filicide, the protagonist is one woman with mental distress. Several recent news events resonate. From the Del Pozzo crime, in which Martina Patti, 23, killed her 5-year-old daughter Elena with 11 stab wounds. To the case of Diana Pifferi, the little girl who died of hunger and thirst at 18 months old, locked in the house by her mother and left alone for six days. And Professor Mencacci offers a wide range of reasons that may be at the origin of these facts. And of unthinkable gestures for a mother such as killing her own child.
The “enlarged suicide” of the mother from Ravenna who killed her daughter
«There may be the condition of one woman who no longer has hope of receiving help from anyone and isolates himself”, explains Mencacci. «He lives in a condition in which he feels he has no resources and she is convinced that her beloved son will not be able to live without her in the world, which is bad and hostile. Suicide is then a sort of extended suicide». And this may probably be the main dimension underlying the case of the mother from Ravenna who dragged her daughter and her dog into suicide. Not out of little love but out of a condition of suffering that she didn’t know how to handle.
Among the other possibilities there is also that of “the mother who, by killing his son, he thinks he is saving him. It’s filicide altruistic. A woman with a hallucinatory disorder may feel the need to help him by ending her life,” explains Mencacci.
From the Munchausen syndrome by proxy to that of Medea
«There is the case of mothers who suffer from the so-called Munchausen syndrome by proxy. They cause symptoms of illness in their children to take care of them. Even to the point of killing them”, recalls the psychiatrist.
«And there are mothers who consider the children scapegoats for their difficulties: children who have ruined their lives, against whom we must rage because they embody the enemy.”
«There are filicides originating from Medea syndromewhich are forms of revenge against the partner.”
«And there are the mothers mistreatingwho attack their children, or negligent, who don’t care about them. But we cannot fail to also take into account the role they have in these events drugs and alcohol abuse».
Children of parents with mental health problems
In recent years the news has covered many cases of this type: episodes that have shaken public opinion for a few hours and the lives of many families forever. But the condition of children of parents with mental health problems is a much, much broader phenomenon.
«We certainly cannot question the parenting ability of those who suffer from a disorder. And not only because this would halve the population of parents.”
But also because not all disorders should cause fear for the well-being of children in the same way. «Many, many seriously depressed mothers have been able to be extraordinary mothers», recalls the psychiatrist. There is a wake-up call which, according to Mencacci, makes the difference. And I’m the so-called anti-conservative impulses: that is, when a woman isolates herself too much, she loses her social contacts and the hope that something can change. And she, perhaps in the shadows, contemplates disappearing.
In general, however, it is clear and obvious that being children of a mentally ill parent it naturally and always has consequences on life that must be addressed. «In mental illness there is indeed a genetic aspect, a familiarity. But it is true that there are also environmental conditions. And being the child of parents with an untreated and untreated mental illness puts you at risk of suffering from a disorder yourself».
Having a suffering mother or father puts the child or young person in a role that is not theirs. “Can become the parent’s caregiver, overloading themselves with responsibilities that are too great for them. But also suffer from a sense of abandonment. When, on the contrary, he should receive a sense of protection from his parent.”
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