Death of Lisa Gibson, kids renews calls for postpartum depression support

There are renewed calls for better support for women with postpartum depression in the wake of the death of Lisa Gibson and her two children.

The Winnipeg mother's body was recovered Saturday from the Red River, a few days after her three-month-old son Nicholas and two-year-old daughter Anna were discovered in the bathtub of the family's home. They died in hospital.

A relative told the Winnipeg Free Press last week that the 32-year-old Gibson had been treated for postpartum depression. A police source confirmed that for CTV News.

The Winnipeg Regional Health Authority told CTV News it has many resources to detect and treat postpartum depression.

“So it really is a tiered system which really provides the appropriate intervention based on the circumstances and particular needs for a woman,” said Dr. Carrie Lionberg, a psychologist and postpartum depression specialist.

[ Related: Understanding & Easing the Symptoms of Postpartum Depression ]

But Nichole Gamble, who runs Winnipeg's only support group for mothers with postpartum depression, said some women don't connect with that help.

“So many people slip through those cracks," Gamble, who started her group after finding a lack of resources in her own battle with the illness, told CTV News.

"Not everybody gets that home visit, and if they do it's usually in the first week and as we know people don't always start that early."

The head of the Schizophrenia Society of Canada says an inquest would help Canadians better understand tragedies like this.

"You can't prevent every suicide," society chief executive Chris Summerville told CBC News. "But when a mother is experiencing postpartum depression or postpartum psychosis there needs to be a thorough suicide risk assessment."

The health authority is looking into what contact Gibson had with medical professionals in the time leading up to her death, CBC News said.

Erin Bockstael of the Women's Health Clinic in Winnipeg echoed Gamble in saying the case underscores a need for greater resources for mothers struggling mentally after giving birth.

"There is a stigma around mental health, and there is a stigma, I think, when we are having difficulty, that it can be difficult to reach out for help when we feel we want to be successful in this role," she told CBC News.

Mothers who kill their children in such circumstances are rare, but make news because the crime seems so much more tragic. Most women, and their families, suffer through postpartum depression privately but we hear about it sometimes when it tips into postpartum psychosis.

Last year, an Alberta judge gave Allyson McConnell six years in prison (15 months, actually, because of double credit for time already served in a mental hospital) for drowning her two young sons in the bathtub in her rural home, then trying to kill herself by jumping off a freeway overpass in 2010.

The court was told she suffered from postpartum depression, as well as the mental strain of a bitter divorce and the legacy of sexual abuse by her father that left her pregnant at age 15.

The sentence caused a spasm of outrage, exemplified by a Calgary Sun editorial that argued if her mental state caused her to kill her sons, then she should have been found not criminally responsible.

[ Related: Alberta fights deportation of killer mom Allyson McConnell while it appeals for stiffer sentence ]

"If not, she should be looking at life in prison, not 15 months as the remainder of a six-year sentence," the Sun said.

Mississauga, Ont., mother Corinne Platonov was charged last year with first-degree murder in the death of her four-month-old son, Alexander. The Toronto Star reported in January that Platonov was found not criminally responsible.

The court heard she drugged and smothered he youngest son after her husband left for work because she believed she was saving him from future physical and sexual abuse. The woman had herself been sexually abused before she met her husband and could not shake fears the same people would track her down and assault her children, the Star said.