When news broke that shots were fired outside the U.S. Capitol, a lot of people jumped to the usual conclusions and made the usual comments about the usual answers. It's beginning to look like this situation was far from ordinary (via the Associated Press):

"The mother of a Connecticut woman who was shot to death by police after trying to breach a barrier at the White House said her daughter was suffering from post-partum depression.

"Authorities said the woman set off a high-speed car chase that put the Capitol on lockdown Thursday and caused a fresh panic in a city where a gunman killed 12 people two weeks ago.

"Two law enforcement officials identified the driver as 34-year-old Miriam Carey, of Stamford, Conn. She was traveling with a 1-year-old girl who avoided serious injury and was taken into protective custody. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation.

"Carey's mother, Idella Carey, told ABC News Thursday night that her daughter began suffering from post-partum depression after giving birth to her daughter, Erica, last August.

" 'A few months later, she got sick,' she said. 'She was depressed. ... She was hospitalized.' "

She was also not carrying a firearm, though she was using her car as a deadly weapon (reportedly, one police officer was injured; he was treated and released from a hospital). The common thread between this incident and the shootings to which it was initially, breathlessly linked is mental health.

If you have known anyone who suffered from post-partum depression, as I have, you know it's all too real. You may also know that it's often marginalized, including by the women suffering it and the people around them, as simple sleep deprivation or "baby blues." If you know someone who might have the symptoms of PPD, please take it seriously and insist they do the same. One good resource, with links to lots of others, is Postpartum Progress.

It will be interesting to learn in the coming days how, or if, Carey was being treated for PPD. Our society has gotten better about not stigmatizing mental illness, or at least some forms of it. But treatments and the way authorities respond to mentally ill people can still leave much to be desired. As with the spate of shootings we've seen, this aspect still gets far too little attention and too little in the way of suggested solutions.