{"id":22060,"date":"2025-01-14T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-01-14T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/naturalwomanhood.org\/?p=22060"},"modified":"2025-01-14T13:15:19","modified_gmt":"2025-01-14T19:15:19","slug":"toxicidad-del-cobre-y-la-iud-depresion-psicosis-y-muerte","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/naturalwomanhood.org\/es\/copper-toxicity-and-the-iud-depression-psychosis-and-death\/","title":{"rendered":"El DIU de cobre y la tr\u00e1gica muerte de la matrona Krista Labbe"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As a certified nurse midwife (CNM) in the U.S. Army corps of nurses, Lieutenant Colonel Krista Labbe had a passion<\/a> for \u201cnurturing women and empowering them to understand their feminine genius and demand excellence in their healthcare.\u201d This was her life\u2019s mission until October 2023, when Krista unexpectedly took her own life, due to what her husband, Retired U.S. Army Master Sergeant Jamahl Labbe, believes was a mental breakdown brought on by the copper IUD. This is Krista\u2019s\u2014and Jamahl\u2019s\u2014story.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Krista\u2019s quest for better women\u2019s health solutions<\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

One of the great tragedies of Krista\u2019s story is that it is about a woman on a journey towards better care for her patients\u2014and herself. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, just a few years ago, Krista was looking for alternatives to synthetic hormones and their associated risks and side effects. As a midwife, Krista had an incredible heart for service and advocacy for her patients, and knew they deserved better care than what many were being offered. She was actively seeking out more information and training on better approaches to women\u2019s health, and as a result, had signed up for an innovative hormone coaching program<\/a>. In September 2023, she even attended an annual conference for medical professionals<\/a> looking to increase their knowledge of fertility awareness and restorative reproductive medicine, making many friends and connections in the authentic women\u2019s health space. Thus, it came as a shock to everyone who knew her when, tragically, Krista took her life just one month later in October 2023.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Krista\u2019s death<\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

By all accounts, Krista\u2019s death<\/a> was a complete surprise\u2014a horrifying event that her husband, Jamahl, worked for months trying to make sense of. It was only upon receiving Krista\u2019s military medical records several months after her passing, that Jamahl and Krista\u2019s best friend, Retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Sabrina Bowers (a certified nurse midwife, like Krista), connected the dots between Krista\u2019s mental breakdown and her on-and-off use of the copper IUD\u2014the most recent of which she had inserted exactly one month prior to taking her life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNo doubt she was experiencing a war within,\u201d says Krista\u2019s friend, Jamie Rathjen, about her repeated insertions and removals of the copper IUD, as evidenced by her medical records. \u201cShe would feel empowered to discontinue [the IUD], and then would get one placed again, and so on.\u201d But the repeated infections, bleeding, and displacements (with one IUD actually falling out after a run) Krista experienced also led her to have multiple removals and insertions of the device, long before their expected expiration dates (10 years, according to the manufacturer<\/a>). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Krista\u2019s story is perhaps all the more tragic because of the journey that preceded it\u2014evidenced by her search for better, non-hormonal options for both her patients and herself. Her turn towards the copper IUD for her own family planning was because of its promises as a non-hormonal form of contraception. After all, this is precisely the device\u2019s appeal for countless other women. But as Jamahl\u2019s subsequent discoveries about the copper IUD show, \u201chormone-free\u201d does not necessarily mean risk-free. And he believes more women need to be informed of these potential risks.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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More than depression: Krista\u2019s breakdown<\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSince my wife\u2019s death,\u201d wrote Jamahl<\/a> on the website he has dedicated to his late wife, \u201cI have insisted that her suicide was not solely a mental health crisis.\u201d Krista had struggled with depression throughout her life, but this, he says, was something different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Irrational thoughts and beliefs that could not be reasoned with<\/span><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

In the weeks following her last IUD insertion, Jamahl tells Natural Womanhood, \u201cKrista\u2019s fears and anxieties overwhelmed her completely, and these fears were not rooted in reality. I talked to her daily trying to help rationalize the thoughts she was having.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThoughts like how she was \u2018forgetting how to be a midwife\u2019 after a brief period taken off of her work, even though she had been a practitioner for 20 years,\u201d Jamahl continued. \u201cShe thought I would leave her after I continued to profess how much I loved her, how proud of her I was, and that I would always be next to her. She feared that she was pregnant with the IUD, even though she took several pregnancy tests showing negative results. And even with her strong relationship with Christ, she thought God was angry at her for providing women with birth control throughout her career.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI tried to ground her in the truth, and remind her of the enormous blessings we had in our lives, but she no longer could see it,\u201d said Jamahl. \u201cThere were never any suicidal ideations, only an overwhelming anxiety that controlled her and clouded her thoughts every day. She lost the vision of our future that we had been creating together for years; she could no longer see it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Concerning physical symptoms<\/span><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere were also physical manifestations,\u201d Jamahl continued. \u201cI would often notice Krista manipulating her wrist in an odd manner. At the time I thought it was related to an old injury, but it was both hands she would manipulate. I also once walked into our kitchen to find her standing in complete confusion. I had to get her attention and remind her of the day\u2019s agenda.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Krista\u2019s physical and mental symptoms were consistent with psychosis symptoms<\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Many of the symptoms Jamahl describes seeing in Krista fit within the behavioral changes that often precede psychosis, according to the National Institute of Mental Health<\/a> (NIMH), which include: <\/p>\n\n\n\n