Anna Oung Update: Woman Suffered from Postpartum Psychosis

It's being reported that Anna Oung suffered from postpartum psychosis, a condition that affects many women who give birth. The Long Beach woman had only been missing for about an hour when her husband led police to her car. Her lifeless body was in the trunk with "visible signs of trauma." While this case seems entirely suspicious, police in Irvine are convinced that this is a case of suicide. This latest claim of postpartum psychosis comes from an Irvine police lieutenant.

Anna Oung reportedly gave birth to her first child about three months ago and was being treated for postpartum psychosis. This happens to be an intensified form of PPD that is linked to such mental illnesses as bipolar disorder. Unlike your run-of-the-mill postpartum depression, postpartum psychosis is markered by sudden onsets of psychotic episodes, hallucinations and extreme mood swings that sometimes leave sufferers in need of psychiatric hospitalization.

In case you're not familiar with these types of news stories, there have been a few very notable crime cases surrounding the diagnosis of this psychosis. Andrea Yates drowned all five of her children in her bath in Texas in 2001. This horrible, gut-wrenching story can be read here. Be warned, you must have a strong stomach to be able to read what she did, methodically, to her children.

While it's a shame that Oung reportedly took her own life, suffering from postpartum psychosis is a recipe for disaster when there are young children involved and it would have been an even greater tragedy had she taken her own child's life, which judging by the case of Andrea Yates, was entirely probable.

Crime analyst and profiler Chelsea Hoffman can be found on The Huffington Post, Chelsea Hoffman: Case to Case and many other outlets. Follow @TheRealChelseaH on Twitter or click here to contact Chelsea directly.

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