The cross-examination of psychiatrist Dr Simone McLeavey, who is a Crown witness, has continued at the start of the fourth week of Lauren Dickason's murder trial.
The 42-year-old denies murdering her three girls Liane, Maya and Karla, and is using the defences of infanticide and insanity.
Late last week, the expert witness, who interviewed Dickason six days after she killed the children, said it was her opinion that neither defence is available to her, based on her assessments.
Defence lawyer Kerryn Beaton has questioned the psychiatrist about the process she followed to determine that the defendant wasn’t insane at the time of the killings in September 2021.
She was appointed by the court to prepare a report, and to do so, she interviewed the defendant five times over three weeks, for a total of eight hours.
The lawyer asked why she hadn’t looked at ongoing clinical assessments of Dickason for her final report in 2023, which was also requested by the court.
"Are you drawing a firm line on the fact you've made an assessment on October 12 2021... about insanity and there's nothing that could have changed in the way that she was presenting or appearing or living in hospital that could possibly change that?"
McLeavey replied: “If the report had been submitted within a week, for example, of the alleged index offending then I do not think that that would have been sufficient time to have a grasp of the diagnostic formulation to base the opinion of insanity upon, but because I had four weeks I felt that that was a requisite period of time upon which I could feel confident in the opinion that I'd formed and what happened thereafter did not necessary influence the opinion that had been formed at the time."
Beaton continued: “You saw her on five occasions over that three week period when she'd killed her children, was in acute shock, severely depressed in hospital, and you didn’t think any kind of longitudinal, even a few weeks later for example, or in 2023, a review of her notes would assist you?"
McLeavey told the court: “I felt that the time period that was available to me was sufficient for me to make an opinion I felt comfortable and confident in."
"And might I add that through that period of three weeks that I was daily perusing the clinical file information, not only that of the treating clinician but the nursing team and the wider multidisciplinary team."
The lawyer then moved on to the expert's opinion that the defendant is not able to use infanticide as a defence, pointing out to McCleavey that in her initial report, she did allude to the presence of postpartum depression.
However the expert clarified: "I had no reasonable doubt in my mind that the defendant's balance of mind was not disturbed as a result of a consequence of childbirth or lactation or a disorder thereof. But correct, I felt there was a recurrent, an independent, unrelated recurrent major depressive disorder."
In relation to any postpartum depression she re-emphasised that "I was of the opinion that there had been a personal recovery".
Beaton proceeded to read McLeavey part of her early notes, pointing to a different opinion.
“On 16 September 2021, your view was that she was suffering most likely from a postpartum major depressive episode with onset during her last pregnancy, exhibited enduring depressive symptoms of severe intensity, and a remission from those symptoms in her case had remained elusive on anti-depressant medication.”
McLeavey admitted “that was the opinion formed at that point in time".
But she was adamant that she had not yet considered the infanticide defence.
“Are you really telling us you had not already reached an opinion?” Beaton asked.
“I had not,” McLeavey replied.
The cross-examination continues.
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