HOUSTON — A human rights group has filed a complaint with state regulators charging that Andrea Yates received "shoddy" mental health care before drowning her five children in a bathtub.
Yates, convicted Tuesday of capital murder in the deaths of three of her children, was in a psychotic state caused by premature release from care, use of inappropriate drugs and overmedication, according to a complaint filed with the state Board of Medical Examiners by CCHR Texas.
Jurors after four weeks of testimony rejected claims by Yates' lawyers that she was innocent by reason of insanity — severe psychosis from postpartum depression. Yates drowned her children one by one in the family bathtub on June 20.
The jury was expected to begin deliberating Yates' fate Friday after closing arguments in her trial's punishment phase. She faces possible death by injection or life imprisonment.
A psychiatrist who decided to take Yates off her anti-psychotic medication has testified that he saw no evidence she was psychotic when he examined her two days before she drowned the children.
Yates' husband, Russell, has contended his wife didn't receive adequate medical care during two extended stays at the Devereux Texas Treatment Network, where Dr. Mohammad Saeed was a unit medical director.
Saeed said he decided on June 4 to gradually take Yates off her medication because he thought it was hindering her progress. He said he saw no evidence of psychosis at the time, and did not see Yates again until June 18.
"I cannot find any evidence that psychosis was playing any important role," Saeed testified.
Yates, 37, had been treated for schizophrenia and severe depression after the births of her last two children.
"We were appalled at what Andrea went through in her treatment," Jerry Boswell, president of CCHR Texas, told the Houston Chronicle in Friday's editions. "She basically came for help, and of course, we know what the outcome was."
Boswell said his group also planned to file a similar grievance with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The group obtained Yates' medical records, which are now public records, last week and had them reviewed by a board-certified pharmacist, a physician and a psychiatrist, said Boswell.
"We feel like she was in a system and she should have expected a positive outcome," he said. "There is accountability here."
Medical records from Yates' last hospital stay at Devereux in May indicate her condition had not changed much between her admission and discharge. Boswell said the complaints mainly target the League City psychiatric hospital.