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Kin: Houston Mom Had Troubled Past

Yates In And Out Of Hospitals Four Times

The mother accused of killing her five children last week remains in a catatonic state in a psychiatric unit of a jail in Houston. Meanwhile, Yates' brother and sister spoke with MSNBC Thursday about what may have drove her to allegedly drown her children, ages 6 months to 7 years old. Andrew Kennedy told MSNBC that he didn't want to speculate or make judgments, but he did say that he had made a lot of calls to his sister's home that were never returned. "We're trying to find out all that went on," Kennedy told MSNBC. Both Kennedy and Michelle Freeman said that Yates had become more reclusive in the past months, and it was becoming impossible to have a conversation with her. When they did call her home, they talked with Yates and very rarely spoke with her husband, Russell Yates, the report said. Kennedy pointed out in the interview that it seemed Russell Yates had been trying to get help for his wife. "He kept putting her in hospitals," Kennedy said in an interview from Houston. Kennedy said that Yates had been in four hospitals over the past two years for depression, and that she tried to commit suicide twice, not once as previously reported by many TV stations and media outlets. After having her fourth child, Yates was released from the hospital and tried to commit suicide, Freeman said. Russell Yates caught her going into a bathroom with a knife under a towel threatening to kill herself, Freeman told MSNBC. After Yates became pregnant with her fifth child, Mary, her family became worried. "We all were concerned about her being pregnant again because we wanted to see her get better after she had tried to commit suicide," Freeman said. "The increasing number of children just put more and more stress on her, I could tell," Kennedy said. "It was just too much for her." Freeman also blames the medical community. She told MSNBC that he thinks they failed Yates. "There are many factors to the situation, and the medical field, yes, I believe did not aggressively treat my sister," she said. Kennedy said that depression is something that runs in the family. Both Freeman and Kennedy acknowledged in the report that they had either been treated for depression in the past or are currently taking medication to treat the disease. The family said that they didn't realize the extent of Yates' depression. Kennedy and Freeman told MSNBC that Yates was receiving treatment for depression while she was a nurse, an occupation she held before she became a stay-at-home mom. Kennedy noticed a change in Yates months ago and realized that she had slipped into a deep depression. "We could tell that she wasn't doing fine," Kennedy said. "She'd lost weight. She hadn't laughed in at least a year. Not once." Freeman and Kennedy visited their sister in jail Wednesday after the funeral, where she is under an around-the-clock suicide watch. They described their sister as robotic and staring blankly. They told MSNBC that she was unaware of the seriousness of what has happened. "Several times we would look straight in her eyes," Freeman told MSNBC. "There was a body there, but it's like there was nothing inside. I don't believe she actually knows what she's done."

'She Was The Perfect Mother'

Yates' brother and sister said that in better times, she was a good mother and had always been admired for her parenting skills. Andrea's Brother and Sister

"She was the perfect mother," Freeman told MSNBC. "As a sister, I often admired and looked up to her as a mother of four myself." Kennedy and Freeman (pictured, left) said that Yates didn't share her thoughts about how many children her and Russell Yates would have, just that Yates' husband wanted as many as God wanted. "It was kind of a joke around here," Freeman said. "We'd say, 'When are you going to stop having kids?'" They said that Yates never talked about what she wanted. "She was trying to be a good wife," Freeman said. As the children's father eulogized each child intimately Wednesday in front of nearly 400 friends and family members, Yates remained in jail. She is charged with one count of capital murder, but more charges could follow. Previous Stories: