Psychiatrist says Carter verdict shows risk of ‘toying’ with the emotionally vulnerable

The guilty verdict in the trial of Michelle Carter, convicted Friday of involuntary manslaughter for encouraging her boyfriend to kill himself, was a welcome result for Dr. Paul S. Appelbaum, a specialist in psychiatry and the law who has been following the case.

“The guilty verdict would seem to support the idea that people who are depressed and suicidal are very vulnerable people, and toying with their lives for whatever reason is something that shouldn’t be acceptable,” said Appelbaum, professor of psychiatry, medicine, and law at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York.

The verdict, he said, affirms society’s disapproval of mistreating people who are suffering and often not thinking rationally.

Carter was convicted in a Bristol County court for sending texts urging Conrad Roy III to carry through with his plans for suicide. When Roy filled his truck with carbon monoxide, but then stepped outside to save himself, Carter texted him from 30 miles away with instructions to “get back in.” He complied, and she never summoned help.

Roy’s suicide wasn’t necessarily ordained to happen, despite his distress, Appelbaum said. Most suicides have multiple causes, but interactions with others play a role — either negatively by reinforcing a depressed person’s feelings of hopelessness, or in a lifesaving way by helping find reasons to keep living.

“Many people are quite ambivalent,” he said. “People will take an overdose of pills and then go out into a social setting where somebody is highly likely to notice that something’s wrong and get them help. That kind of behavior is often characterized as a cry for help.”

Like the judge in the case — who delivered the verdict after Carter waived her right to a jury trial — Appelbaum did not give much credence to the defense argument that Carter had been transformed by a prescription for the antidepressant Celexa.

“Antidepressants relieve depression, reduce anxiety, and can have other effects on people,” he said. “They don’t change who you are as a person. If you’re a kind person, they don’t make you mean. If you’re a mean person, they don’t make you kind.”

Carter and Roy communicated primarily by text. Appelbaum said he could not know how that form of communication affected the pair.

But in general, he said, texts, e-mails, and tweets tend to erase inhibitions, enabling people to make statements they would hesitate to utter in person. When Roy stepped out of his truck to escape the poisonous gas, would Carter have been able to instruct him to “get back in” if she had been there in person? That’s unknowable, Appelbaum said, but “in general it’s harder to advocate extreme actions face to face than it is using an impersonal medium like e-mail or text.”

Roy was 18 when he died. Carter was 17. Adolescents, whose brains are still developing, often have difficulty controlling their behavior and more readily succumb to impulses or peer pressure, Appelbaum said. They have trouble making decisions on the fly or planning for the future. But, he said, their ability to understand what they’re doing is the same as adults’.