Politics | 02/20/2009 7:53 am

Octomom's 7 Signs of a Criminal Mind: Top Crime Doctor

Distinguished criminal psychologist, Dr. Stanton E. Samenow, author of Inside the Criminal Mind, says Nadya Suleman’s irresponsible behavior mirrors some criminal mindsets

By The Staff at wowOwow.com

Octuplet mother Nadya Suleman’s quest to have a big family — even though she’s single, unemployed and financially inept to care for 14 children — has left us a bit bewildered. What on earth could have possessed this woman to act in such a manner. Looking for some answers, wOw reached out to the distinguished criminal psychologist, Dr. Stanton E. Samenow, author of Inside the Criminal Mind to shed some insight.

Dr. Samenow, who recently offered wOw his opinions on Bernie Madoff, observes that "Octomom" shares some similarities with a few of his criminally-inclined clients.

"I have never met Ms. Suleman and have only watched NBC’s Ann Curry interview her," says Dr. Samenow, who’s been evaluating and treating imbalanced patients for nearly 35 years."But there are aspects of Ms. Suleman’s responses to questions that seem to have featrures in common with people who are not arrestable but, nonetheless, are irresponsible in their character and behavior. This such behavior has an adverse, ripple effect upon others."

The seven features Suleman shares with the criminal mind are:

1) Unrealistic expectations of oneself
Ms. Suleman seems convinced that she can handle all aspects of being a single mother to 14 children. Thinking this seems to make it so and has quenched any internal doubt.

2) Placing herself at the center of the universe
What Suleman wants appears to be elevated over practical considerations.

3) A failure to consider the impact of her behavior on others
This includes the six children she already had.

4) Possible unrealistic expectations of other people as she speaks of all those from her family, church, and community — who, she anticipates, will help. There are reports that her mother has already reached a threshold in providing assistance. Additionally, mother Angela Suleman, identified as her main source of support, is facing foreclosure in the home they’ve all been living in due to her financial situation.

5) A lack of candor by first stating that she was receiving no government help
However, an investigation brought to light that two of her children have special needs and are receiving government help.

6) A failure to put herself in the place of others
This has to do with the impact of having more children upon the six that she already has — how they may be detrimentally affected by how thinly she will have to stretch her mothering, her finances, and other resources.

7) An apparent failure to fact find, suspend decision-making, weigh alternatives, and consider possible consequences of her actions
Just consider what is entailed in the basic aspects of caring for 14 children — e.g., just their feeding, getting dressed, transporting them wherever they need to go, and so forth.

58 Reader Comments (so far…) Sign In or Register to comment

Her behavior shows that she is unstable and she cannot even support herself let alone 14 children, those children should be taken away and her parental rights terminated. The government should give those children the chance to find good stable homes with parents than can give them the life they deserve instead of leaving them with the mother so they can continue living off the taxpayers. I am all for a woman’s right to choose, but when it comes to living off state aid, there needs to be more restrictions, because she currently has a right to have as many children as she wants, which she has done, and the cost is at "our" expensive that we have no choice in.

By L M on 02/20/2009 8:26 am

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Stamenow is a prosecutor’s hack, never ever evaluated a person who wasn’t a criminal. He has one answer for everything - criminal. Whoever chose him to be on this blog is ignoring thousands of excellent evaluators, many who are women. Get rid of him.

By brenda ellis on 02/21/2009 1:48 pm

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My sister in law is unable to have children. She and her husband would be more than happy to adopt one of the eight. That baby would have a loving, stable home and have everything a child could want.

It is such a pity that this woman chose to make her children about herself instead of making herself about her children. When you are a mom, your kids come first.

By Kashmir ____ on 02/20/2009 8:40 am

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Yikes! these seven factors could describe certain members of Congress and other malcontents that have cropped up in the news lately. I’d say Nadya is illusional or as Frank eloquently put it, "A nutcase." Criminal or not Family Services needs to intervene.

By phyllis Doyle Pepe on 02/20/2009 8:47 am

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Exactly what I was thinking-those seven factors fit so many other people in the public eye, much less among ordinary people we come in contact everyday.

By JJ GB on 02/20/2009 8:55 am

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well I can tell you I certainly thought so watching her interview and reading info about her. for one… when i worked as a child protection services investigator I met more than one parent who had their children on all kinds of psych meds claiming they were "disabled". Which frankly was a bunch of crap. and the parent knew it. they would take their child to the local community mental health facility and/or doc and claim the child had all these behaviors (that no one outside the home saw) and get them labeled as disabled in order to get state funds.

I saw that as "child abuse by the system" not just child abuse by the parent. our system is horrid. that we allow this. it’s the thing that I can hardly think of without getting incredibly angry. children should NOT be diagnosed by half assed qualified people who do nothing but take a parents word for their childs behaviors and then given dangerous psychiatric meds and money for it!

By Chrome Toe on 02/20/2009 9:02 am

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Chrome Toe, that is exactly what my ex’s former girlfriend did with their son. The sad part is that the kid eventually did prove to have all sorts of mental health issues, but they were all either a product of her involvement in his life or intensified by it. Essentially, she was claiming he had all sorts of problems, while refusing to have him treated for the ones that actually existed (because they were ones that could be blamed on her neglect and emotional abuse). Child protection authorities did what they could once they realized the real problem, but their hands were largely tied.

By Lavender Blossom on 02/20/2009 9:13 am

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The reality is that proving this kind of abuse is almost impossible. largely becasue the mental health or medical professionals who are prescribing to these kids are going to self protect. so the fact that a CPS worker thinks this is out of line or abusive doesn’t mean anything when a mental health "proffessional" will get up in court and say the kid was "diagnosed" by them and therefore prescribed meds. As a society we have all these psych meds we’re handing out without any real idea as to long term consequences for ADULTS much less for kids. i just can’t believe we’re allowing it. it’s amazing. the process that exists to get these kids diagnosed and on these dangerous meds is incredibly lax. I liken it in my mind to being able to lock someone up in a psych ward years ago… like they did with Francis Farmer. your mom or your boss or your husband could SAY your nuts and all it took was one lazy or simply incompetent doc to sign off on it. and wa la you’re locked up. that’s how it is with kids and psych diagnosis. and the meds… you’re kidding? depakote? Clonindine? Prozac? WTF? Look up depakote and clonindine… I had a FIVE YEAR OLD whose crazy mom had docs prescribing twice the adult levels of these things to this kid. TWICE the levels. and those were only two of FIVE meds this kid was on.

i better quit writing before my blood pressure causes my head to explode lol…

By Chrome Toe on 02/20/2009 9:21 am

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Chrome, baby:

Hopefully the head is still intact. We need you here!

As the mother of a teenage daughter, I have seen some of my daughter’s friends doped up since early childhood for ADD/ADHD/Whatever the disease of the moment is without any cognitive therapy. This always angers me. I believe that family doctors should not be allowed to prescribe these drugs without proof of emotional therapy.

One of these girls, drugged from age 7 on, no therapy, is WAY out of hand. She is no longer friends with my daughter, has had to change high school three times, posted nude pictures of herself on the internet, had sex with men in their 30s.. the list goes on and on. I only wish her Mom had taken a look at the root of her problems, maybe then she wouldn’t be looking at such a bleak next few years.

Now my head is ready to explode… I’d better go back to the post about the bathrooms!

By nanchan u on 02/21/2009 8:16 pm

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An ex of mine had a child in a relationship with a sociopath before I met him. The heartbreak that the woman caused everyone involved was massive, particularly on her eldest child, my ex’s son. Her rather self-destructive death was sad, but a relief, because it meant she could no longer harm anyone in the pursuit of her interests. She left behind three children, none of whom she had custody of. Nadya Suleman is simply a more attractive, more educated and less abrasive version of my ex’s former girlfriend - the similarities were apparent to me right from the time this story broke. She is not harmlessly delusional - she is a self-centered narcissist who will damage all who become involved with her, especially her 14 children. Honestly, the best thing that could happen to those kids right now would be for her to lose custody. She will ALWAYS put her interests before theirs.

By Lavender Blossom on 02/20/2009 9:08 am

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And of course, none of these problems could possibly be the fault of your "ex"? Everyone in that scenario sounds dysfunctional to me.

I see a great deal of misogyny in the comments to this post, and in the post itself, in the tendency to absolve men of blame and place it all on the women.

By Et cetera on 02/20/2009 7:54 pm

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Well, Et cetera, there is a reason he is an "ex." He was very dysfunctional and ultimately ill-equipped to deal with a special needs child, and he was the one of course who had the relationship with her in the first place. He was also pretty selfish as a human being, and I walked away in the end without looking back (but God, I miss his kid). I don’t "absolve" him by any means - he could have fought harder for his kid than he did. However, he did his best by his son as he knew how and I must say that he really did try. My venom is mainly for the mother who was actively abusing her child and exploiting him to get all the government money she could. She told him horrendous things to keep him in line, wrapping him in a web of fear, deliberately neglected his physical health if there was no benefit for herself (causing some rather tragic and easily preventable problems), deliberately tried to keep him from going to school, let drug dealers operate in her home and God knows what else. She knew she was harming her son, and she didn’t care; instead she was very calculated, which is what I could not forgive. One one occasion she actually laughed about it, so perhaps that intensified my fury. And she was actually given quite a bit "benefit of the doubt" by government agencies originally BECAUSE she was a woman. And I approached her with a great deal of neutrality initially because I am suspicious of people’s characterizations of former relationships. But I soon found there was no defense on her behalf. This is not a gender-related issue for me - I believe the (male) doctor in the Suleman case is the more guilty party, personally. There may be misogyny cropping up (and sexist comments have certainly abounded), but that doesn’t obscure the fact that Nadya Suleman displays sociopathic tendencies. And her kids will pay the price. Is she a monster? I don’t know. But she purposefully set out to have as many kids as she could without regard for the welfare of those children, and that raises a lot of red flags for me. I’d be just as disgusted by a man who hired surrogates to churn out children that he couldn’t take care of, btw.

By Lavender Blossom on 02/22/2009 9:07 pm

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The seven features Suleman shares with the criminal mind are

Now you have gone just too far. It is clear she needs lots of help but saying she shares "features with the criminal mind" is outrageous. It’s like Dr. Phil telling some parents that their kid is on the road to becoming a serial killer.

Not only is it outrageous but irresponsible. Dr. Samenow’s "evaluation" is no better than Bill Frist’s "evaluation" of Terry Schiavo’s condition on videotape.

By Corinne M. on 02/20/2009 9:12 am

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I must agree Corinne; to evaluate a person based on television interviews over a few days, when a responsible psychiatrist would take years shows an irresponsibility.

Here’s the ‘but’: However, it does appear that she thinks she is the center of the universe and guilty of her own irresponsibility to family. Having children for profit…..in what way is this different than putting them on the market and prostituting them?

By Andy C on 02/21/2009 8:05 am