Investigative Analysis of the Death of Caylee Anthony

Differential Diagnosis of Casey Anthony

Evidence of Mental Disorder:

Despite the fact that psychologists claim that Casey Anthony, mother of Caylee, has no mental illness, I still believe she does. The best indicator of mental illness is psychosocial and environmental impairment. I find Anthony’s behavior after Caylee’s disappearance to be conclusive evidence of mental disorder. For those of you who didn’t follow the case, she began partying immediately and witnesses claim she neither mentioned any concern for her missing daughter nor showed any disturbance stemming from her daughter’s disappearance. There are few bonds as intimate, unconditional, and undying as a mother’s love.This is a universal and innate characteristic of not only humans but also other mammals and birds even. In a healthy psyche, one’s child going missing is a parents worst nightmare. Most would be looking for the child relentlessly, and all would be a wreck. This evidence holds independently from whether or not she is guilty.

    For more evidence, I would consider her history of short term relationships evidence of psychosocial and environmental impairment. It’s fairly difficult to maintain a serious relationship with a person with a mental illness, whether sexual or platonic. Her friendships lacked the interpersonal intimacy that is fundamental to the social life of the mentally healthy. There are two main trains of thought I used to reach this conclusion. First, I compared that to typical social interactions. To do this I compared her to someone near her age who showed evidence of mental health. My sister is 25, and Casey Anthony is 22. Upon examining my sister’s social life, it was readily apparent that not only did she have friends, but she could trust them. Second, I determined that if everyone behaved this way then nobody would be able trust anybody, and as we are all aware having someone to trust keeps us sane.
    Her economic dependency on her parents is also evidence of mental disorder. While this seems very insubstantial in comparison to her other actions, it is vital to the differential diagnosis to examine the pervasiveness of her dysfunction. No matter what discipline you look at this behavior it is evidence of dysfunction. A biopsychological perspective may be that she isn’t fulfilling the natural human need to be independent. This perspective implies that our need for independence is a function of evolution. A sociological theory might indicate how deviant this behavior is with regards to the rest of society. This theory hinges upon comparing Casey with the norm of society. Since American society tends to value the individual, thereby emphasizing the need for independence, the fact that Anthony doesn’t support herself and has yet to attain a college degree is highly indicative of social deviance.

Psychotic Disorder:
    The use of the word “crazy” in typical vernacular drives me up a wall. It does not mean that a person does things that other people don’t understand. It means that a person does things that people can’t understand due to an inability to process fact vs fiction. Obviously this is not how it is described in the DSM-IV-TR, but that’s what it is in laymen’s terms. In diagnostic terms I would point out that there is absolutely no evidence of hallucinations. When a person is under public scrutiny, it would be highly difficult to conceal them ergo it is likely beyond a reasonable doubt that she hallucinates. Her behavior is too organized for delusions. When a person is operating under faulty thought processes, their behavior tends to reflect that. There is also no evidence of disorganized speech. Her speech is actually very coherent. Her behavior is neither catatonic nor disorganized. The 4 major indicators of psychosis are not present ergo she does not have a psychotic disorder not to mention the absence of structural abnormalities in her brain.

Dissociative Disorder:

This class of disorders is included, not because I find them likely, but because they are a very common criminal defense. With the absence of memory loss it is highly unlikely that any of these disorders occurred. If we look at the poster child of dissociative disorders, Dissociative Identity Disorder, one can note that the lack of multiple distinct personalities excludes the diagnosis. This typically does not stop a defendant from trying to use this defense (and typically failing). The M'Naghten is truly a beautiful thing in such cases.

Cognitive Disorder:

This class of mental disorder was brought up to me by a peer who also has studied psychology. She thought that this behavior could possibly be explainable by a cognitive disorder and should be ruled out. With the absence of memory loss, I again have difficulty finding any real way to consider any cognitive disorder as a plausible theory. The other bit that makes a cognitive disorder highly unlikely is that her behavior is consistent and organized. In cognitive disorders such as dementia behavior is typically far from.

Anxiety Disorder:

My peer also brought up the possibility of her being OCD. This theory hinged upon crime scene evidence which hinges upon the theory that she was the perpetrator. Given that those bits of evidence require lots of proof, I want to point out why I think there is no chance she had an anxiety disorder at all. When her daughter went missing, which we know now that Anthony knew that Caylee was dead, Anthony went out partying. There would have been a discernible change in Anthony’s behavior had she had an anxiety disorder. Even in the case of OCD, problems like that tend to send a person over the edge. In OCD, it’s a function of control. In a General Anxiety Disorder, it’s because of neuroticism and fear. There is no way one could ascribe an anxiety disorder to Casey Anthony's dysfunction

Mood Disorder:

This is one of two classes of mental disorders I see as a slight possibility. Only in that it is consistent with her psychosocial and environmental problems. People with mood disorders are emotionally unstable. Therefore their actions reflect that instability causing a pervasive dysfunction like what we can see in Anthony. However, her grandiosity remains constant through the entire trial. She never goes up or down she just stays at a normal level of self confidence. Her rebounds from remorse are also inconsistent with mood disorders, (especially bipolar disorder) as the changes in her emotions are based off of her environment.

Personality Disorder:

I find personality disorders to be a compelling class to ascribe to Anthony’s behavior. She meets the criteria of having affective impairment (in this case her rapid shifts in facial expressions or microexpressions). She also has a very pervasive amount of psychosocial and environmental impairment as indicated in the “Evidence of Mental Disorder” section. This pattern has even established itself. Her behavior is even in a pattern of behavior maladaptive to her environment. This manifested itself in her impulsivity of getting pregnant in her teens, having many different boyfriends, and never moving away from her dependency on her parents. This is also consistent with the fact that there are no structural abnormalities in the brain.

Psychopathic Personality Disorder:
    This is another diagnosis that is abused far too often. Psychopathy denotes a lack of empathy and remorse. It is irrelevant to homicide. Most psychopaths aren’t even criminals. Given that Anthony showed genuine shame when I examined trial footage, I can not consider psychopathic personality a reasonable consideration. Shame can be defined as being humiliated at other people’s disappointment or lack of acceptance. This both implies that the person feels connected to whoever disapproves, and feels guilty for it. Psychopaths can’t feel shame for those very reasons. They can’t connect to other people, because they have no empathy. They also can’t feel remorse, because they have no conscience. So obviously Casey Anthony did not meet these two vital criteria, ergo she is not a psychopath.

Histrionic Personality Disorder:
    Casey Anthony shows almost every symptom of Histrionic Personality Disorder. She shows her discomfort with situations in which she is not the center of attention in how she complained of being the victim, all her lies had the common element of victimizing her, and she was center stage in all of her pictures. Her interactions with people were almost undoubtedly  sexually seductive or provocative. First off, she wasn’t certain on the identity of Caylee’s birth father. That right there is a red flag. That means she gets around and engages in sexual activity enough to have multiple unprotected partners who are possible fathers. She also was doing drunken parties which makes it likely that her “inhibitions slipped” if you know what I’m saying. She displayed rapidly shifting displays of emotion in her constant changes in microexpressions. These were not shallow displays but they were rapid. Her body language was also fairly diminished which is a reliable indicator that she made the displays without feeling the emotion. Her self dramatization was readily apparent when she falsified a high degree of the facial expressions she showed at trial. Her suggestibility was indicated by her story that changed more often than her microexpressions. Her over-conceptualization of how close people were to her was apparent all through the conversation she had with her parents about how good of parents they were and how much she loved them after making claims that her father molested her.