Hallucinations, a refusal to make eye contact, suicidal thoughts and self-inflicted cigarette burns.

That is what Dr. Christine Martone, a psychiatrist at the Allegheny County Office of Behavioral Health, observed in Amber Brewington, the Tennessee mother charged with poisoning her infant with salt water at Children's Hospital.

At a hearing yesterday, Dr. Martone testified that Ms. Brewington is mentally unfit to stand trial, and Common Pleas Judge Jeffrey A. Manning agreed. Ms. Brewington will be transferred from Allegheny County Jail to Mayview State Hospital and re-evaluated within 90 days.

Amber Brewington

Dr. Martone said Ms. Brewington has severe depression and has lost her desire to live, so she would not be able to defend herself in court.

After detectives questioned her in the poisoning of her son, 4-month-old Noah King, Ms. Brewington burned her left forearm and hand with cigarettes, in a symmetrical pattern, Dr. Martone testified.

"I've seen burn marks that were self-inflicted before," said Dr. Martone, who has conducted these assessments for Allegheny County for more than three decades.

"But never quite like these."

Ms. Brewington, 21, of Duck River, Tenn., admitted to police that she injected salt water into Noah's feeding tube. She was discovered when a nurse at Children's noticed Ms. Brewington tampering with the feeding tube. Inside her backpack, police found a plastic syringe, a container of Morton's salt and two bottles of children's Pedialyte filled with salt water.

Noah had been hospitalized with dangerously high sodium levels, moving from Maury Regional Hospital in Columbia, Tenn., to Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville and finally to Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh. He remains there in critical but stable condition, a hospital spokesman said yesterday.

Ms. Brewington's husband, Terry King, has a history of assault, but he has not been charged in this case. Her other two children -- one from a previous marriage -- are with other relatives in Tennessee. Child protection officials there told investigators there had been no prior problems with those children.

Ms. Brewington has a history of psychiatric problems. She had been hospitalized before, Dr. Martone said, and was prescribed lithium and Zoloft. She admitted to cutting herself in the past.

In this case, Ms. Brewington told police she wanted to "speed up" her son's death, according to a criminal complaint, because he had been suffering from seizures and possible brain damage. She said she didn't want to see him suffer.

Ms. Brewington appeared before Judge Manning via closed-circuit television from the jail yesterday. She gazed toward the floor during the hearing and was not asked to speak.

In Dr. Martone's two visits with Ms. Brewington, she spoke very softly and slowly, never making eye contact. The jail had taken suicide precautions with her.

Deputy District Attorney Laura Ditka argued that "depression does not in and of itself make someone incompetent."

But Ms. Brewington's depression was so severe, Dr. Martone said, that she would have no desire to work with her defense lawyer -- a requirement in declaring a defendant fit to stand trial.

Dr. Martone said Ms. Brewington's stay at Mayview will help better diagnose her depression.

She also has borderline personality disorder, Dr. Martone said.

Doctors have not determined whether Ms. Brewington suffers from Munchausen syndrome by proxy, which causes a parent to lie about or cause a child's illness, frequently as a way of gaining attention.