Murder–suicide: A reaction to interpersonal crises

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Abstract

The aim of this study was to examine the nature of homicide-suicides and determine the ways in which they differ from suicides without the perpetration of homicide in terms of their demographic characteristics, suicide, medical and psychiatric history, their psychological state leading up to the suicide, and their motives for their suicidal behavior. Cases of homicide-suicide from a 20-year period were extracted from the Coroner's inquest files and were matched to suicide-only cases on the basis of age and sex. The characteristics that predominantly distinguished the homicide-suicides were based on psychological state leading up to the act and motive for the act. It is proposed that homicide-suicides may be better understood within an expressive homicide framework.

Section snippets

Cases

The focus of this study was 44 cases of completed suicide. The information about these cases was obtained from the coroner's inquest files held at the Tasmanian Archives Office and the Tasmanian Department of Justice. All deaths had been identified by the coroner as being caused by suicide. In 22 of these cases, a homicide had been perpetrated immediately prior to the suicide and represented all cases of homicide-suicide in the 20-year study period. All of these individuals were male. These

Demographic variables

There was a trend for more of the suicide group (40.9%) in comparison with the homicide-suicide group (10.0%) to have never married (x2(2) = 5.57, p = .06). There were no significant variations between groups in relation to the living arrangements of the individuals. There was a trend for the homicide-suicide group (75.0%) to have a higher rate of employment at the time of death than the suicide group (47.6%) (x2(1) = 3.23, p = .07). Table 1 presents the percentage of each group in each marital status,

Discussion

The results of this study suggested a range of shared characteristics between the homicide-suicide and suicide-only groups. For example, a history of suicidal behavior and stated intention to commit suicide did not differentiate the two groups. Furthermore, there was no difference between the groups in relation to their psychiatric history. It was interesting to note that, despite evidence of depressive symptomatology in the time leading up to the suicide in both suicide-only and

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