Danielle Johnson was worried about the eclipse.
The astrology influencer and “divine healer” who went by the name Danielle Ayoka online called the upcoming astronomical event “the epitome of spiritual warfare” and told people they needed to “pick a side,” in posts on X on April 4.
Less than three days later, in the early morning before the partial solar eclipse, Johnson left a trail of tragedy in her wake: her partner stabbed to death in the kitchen of the family apartment in Woodland Hills, her 8-month-old baby dead after being pushed from Johnson’s moving Porsche Cayenne on the 405, and Johnson herself dead after crashing her car on Pacific Coast Highway in Redondo Beach.
and I’ve seen more than enough people yell racist obscenities who never had any sort of manic episode or psychotic break or any other kind of mental illness to know that it’s not the cause of hatred.
In fact, it’s far more likely the opposite is true.
We’re talking on completely different wavelengths here. I’m not in any way saying hate as a human behavior is caused or excused by mental illness. I’m saying this specific person, with a pronounced decline in functioning and worsening paranoia, delusional thinking, and hyperreligiosity, is experiencing severe mania, and that what people say when they’re experiencing mania with psychosis is not based in reality or a reflection of who they actually are or what they believe. There are lots of people who are full of hate and who aren’t mentally ill, this person is clearly not in that category.
I’m so glad that an armchair psychologist is on hand to offer an internet diagnosis after reading a sensationalized headline.
She may well be mentally ill. She may also not be. I doubt very much that you’re in a position to speak with such authority in the matter.
She was by definition mentally ill. Nothing about this makes sense and she committed suicide and murdered her husband… You don’t have to be a professional to understand this.
Perfectly sane people commit murder and suicide, and yes, murder-suicide all the time.
Your “let’s blame mental illness” train is full of shit. You are right that it doesn’t make sense. It never does. That doesn’t mean she suffered from any mental illness that drove her to do this- and your blaming mental illness is perpetuating a stigma that is not helping anyone.
You “don’t have to be a professional” to understand that.
I read her direct quotes in the article, the headline is nonsense.
You could say this to yourself, too.
that I’m mentally ill? I have anxiety and depression issues.
that I’m not in a position of authority to say “I don’t know and you don’t either?”… Actually, if you had evaluated her… even tangentially… you wouldn’t be here pronouncing your diagnosis to global public. medical privacy laws are like that.
it takes multiple sessions to come to a full, accurate diagnosis of issues. usually multiple sessions across multiple weeks. any one telling you they can accurately diagnosis mental illness from a handful of statements… is full of shit.
Did it even occur to you that she might be faking it?
Diagnosis and identifying mental illness are 2 different things. Mental illness is a very low threshold and this person was clearly delusional and it lead to their death. That’s a mental illness… de facto. And you can’t fake suicide… she’s dead.
By saying “she’s mentally ill”… that is a diagnosis.
So in saying she’s delusional.
Saying suicide is proof of illness is also troublesome. Same goes for murder-suicide.
The fact is you don’t know, I don’t know. No one here knows.
What I do know is plenty of rational people with no diagnosable mental issues commit suicide, murder and even murder-suicide.
You can’t be diagnosed “mentally ill”. That is an adjective, not a condition. It would be completely different if they said “this person clearly has bipolar disorder and I am stating this solely from the contents of this article”. That is an unfounded diagnosis. Specificity is important here.
Delusional is a technical term used to describe a symptom present in a vast swath of mental illnesses. It’s also a common term used to describe a set of behaviors in an informal way. Suicide is an act that is (more often than not) proceeded by bouts of mental illness in some form or fashion, be it chronic or acute.
Take any one of the behaviors displayed by this person (delusions, antisocial behavior, suicide) in a vacuum, and sure, it’s not enough to make an educated guess on whether an individual is mentally ill or not. But when you have someone who quickly escalates their atypical behavior from going on anti semitic and conspiratorial rants(delusion), to thinking the eclipse is the beginning of a period of spiritual warfare(delusion), into killing their partner and infant child (antisocial behavior) in gruesome, erratic fashion, into committing suicide, it’s pretty easy to deduce that this person had some mental issues. Whether this illness was chronic, acute, substance induced, etc. her behavior shows a clear progression into a state of some significant mental illness. There’s enough here to make an educated, informed statement that this person was mentally ill.
You don’t have to be a psychologist to recognize this person wasn’t in a state of mind that could reasonably be called stable or “sane”.