An Arizona mother with a history of mental illness was arrested for drowning her twin sons, both two years old, in a bathtub.  She was also in the process of trying to drown a 3-year-old relative when the boy’s mother stumbled upon what was going on and manged to fight her off.  He survived.

The woman, 22-year-old Mireya Lopez, has a history of mental illness.  she was diagnosed with schizophrenia and was on 8 different types of medication.  The Doctors had recently switched up her meds, and the last time that happened, the family says she became suicidal.

Police say Lopez confessed to the crime, stating that she drowned the kids because no one cared for them or her.  The family of the children, however, were heartbroken, including Lopez’s father, who was raising the twin boys as his own.  He was also father to the 3-year-old she tried to drown.  She also told police that she didn’t want the kids to go through the hard life that she had gone through, and that it would be better for the boys to “be at peace.”  She has been charged with two counts of premeditated murder, and 1 count of attempted murder.

The family says that they had been trying to get more help for Lopez, but that clinics kept turning them away, saying that they couldn’t hold her.  That doesn’t come as a shocker to those of us with knowledge of the broken mental health care system in this country.  It’s just a shame that we’re willing to spend more than 60 billion each year on prisons puss even more for a bloated justice system, but yet as a society we’re extremely stingy when it comes to offering the kind of supportive help that might have prevented such a tragedy in the first place.