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LEXINGTON, Ky. (WKYT) - A Lexington mother is accused of trying to kill her 7-month-old baby.

Aaliyah Walters is charged with criminal abuse and attempted murder.

Her arrest citation says she tried to suffocate her child with a pillow. When the child started crying, she tried to snap the child’s neck and pulled on the child’s arm. The citation says she admitted to trying to kill the child.

She was arraigned on Wednesday. A not guilty plea was entered on her behalf. Her bond is set at $100,000. She’s due back in court on May 3.

Dr. Dustin Wygant is the executive director of Integrated Behavioral Health at EKU. He’s also a forensic psychologist who’s worked on a number of criminal cases where a parent has killed their child.

“These are such complex matters,” said Wygant. “As you would imagine, they’re often really emotional and terrible cases.”

Dr. Wygant says they’re also very complex, making it hard to speculate. That’s why the courts often turn to mental health experts to conduct more in-depth investigations.

“The why, why did it happen, and a lot of times those things don’t come out in the initial police investigation, and it takes, you know, experts to go in and talk both for the defense for the prosecution side, for the court side, just to get more of an objective sense of what drove this type of behavior,” said Wygant.

While Dr. Wygant says mental health does often play a role in these cases, it is not solely to blame for these types of outcomes.

“It’s often the culmination of a number of situational factors that may be unique to each case, coupled with the individual makeup of that parent. Whether that’s mental health symptoms, personality traits, substance abuse, their own history of trauma,” said Wygant.

Dr. Wygant says in his experience, the parents who commit these types of crimes often try to harm themselves as they try to cope with the aftermath and realization of what they’ve done.

If you feel like you might hurt your child, Cigna Healthcare says there are steps you can take to protect them and yourself. They recommend putting your child in a safe place and going into another room.

They say you should call a friend or family member to come over, or for immediate help you can call the Childhelp hotline at 1-800-4-A-CHILD. For more tips and resources, click here.