I never answered Gitana's question from the previous thread -- oops! Here it is:
Strictly, strictly my own opinion, here.....but I believe JB likely has a personality disorder in addition to an extreme anxiety disorder (which fuels her OCD). Which one? I couldn't say for certain but antisocial personality disorder rings a bell with her. It is characterized by lack of empathy, manipulativeness, deceitfulness, callousness (lack of concern for the feelings or problems of others), hostility, use of dominance or intimidation to control others, and impulsivity/risk-taking.
Of course, many murderers/criminals will engage in deceitful behavior as part of their self-preservation after the crime but that does not mean they have a personality disorder. A personality disorder is something fixed about that person that is long-term and unchanging (i.e. their fundamental personality). I'm guessing JB does have a PD based on the totality of what we know about her -- going back years and coming from numerous sources, including her own mother and police reports. Her mother refers to "abuse" at the hands of JB long before Sky went missing. Leave your newborn son in a parking lot and get paged that the police want to speak with you? Uh, wait a minute officer, I need to finish shopping and then I'll be right there. She was also extremely crafty at manipulating doctors and the court system into believing her to be the victim and was cunning enough to get the kids returned to her care with a psychiatrist telling the courts she was a fit mother. Aside from the heinous things we know she did to SM (which involved a great deal of hostility, manipulativeness, callousness, and use of dominance), we can also see evidence of a PD in JB's post-Sky's disappearance behavior: the flurry of flickr uploads, the ongoing seeking of a sugar daddy, etc. This is the totality I'm speaking of: we can match up the diagnostic criteria for antisocial PD with JB's behavior before, during, and after Sky's disappearance. Again, these are only my opinions and I'm not seeking to diagnose JB over the internet -- just drawing parallels.
For someone like JB, the kids would have (so sadly) been pawns. They would have been a means to an end, a way to get what she wanted. She would have seen Sky and M as currency, almost.
I think what we need clarity on is what JB's "mental problems" actually are. In my opinion, they are an anxiety disorder and a personality disorder (statistically, many domestic batterers and serial killers also have antisocial personality disorder). Anxiety disorders are known to have a high co-occurance with antisocial personality disorder in specific, which also bolsters this conclusion.
So, to answer your question, I think it would be very different if we were talking about "mental problems" involving depression, PTSD, an anxiety disorder without the co-occurance of a personality disorder, or any other type of mood or trauma-based disorder. JB would need to have the capacity for empathy (i.e. concern for the feelings, needs, and suffering of another person and a sense of remorse or guilt after hurting or killing someone). JB, if you ask me, does not have the capacity for empathy and, therefore, would not have "broken down" the way a mother without a personality disorder might have. I'm pretty certain her only concern once Sky was dead was how to save her own butt -- that's how someone with antisocial personality disorder would think: what does this have to do with me?