In Re Amie M.

Statement of the Case and Facts

This is an appeal from a judgment granting a petition by the State Department of Social Services (respondent) to terminate appellant’s parental rights in her daughter, Amie M., pursuant to Civil Code section 232, subdivisions (a)(6) and (7).

Appellant has suffered an extensive history of mental illness, first diagnosed in 1978, and has been under a conservatorship periodically since 1979. She has been diagnosed as suffering from a schizophrenic disorder. Examples of her symptomatology abound in the record. For example, she refused to acknowledge her pregnancy with Amie, attributing her expanding abdomen to overeating or bathing, and apparently believed her abdomen contained a dog and cat; she accused her sister and brother-in-law of being ghosts; she appeared at her sister’s home late at night expressing fears that her son, then in her sister’s custody, had drowned in a canal; she believed she had set fire to the world with a cigarette; she thought sewer lines were connected to her kitchen sink. She has been hospitalized seven times since 1978 for her condition.

Appellant’s sister, Nancy M., visited appellant and her boyfriend at…