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The Homicide-Suicide Phenomenon

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In The Homicide-Suicide Phenomenon: Findings of Psychological Autopsies, the authors James Knoll M.D. and Susan Hatters-Friedman M.D. delve into psychological autopsies performed in cases of homicide-suicide to highlight the perpetrators, perpetrator-victim relationships, and the underlying motive and dynamics of this phenomenon. Homicide-suicide is a life altering violent outburst that is performed by a perpetrator on a one or several victims before killing themselves within a 24-hour period. Since the victim(s) and the perpetrator expire in these events, a psychological autopsy is performed to open a window into the psyche of the individuals to determine personality, behavior and motives. A psychological review of the perpetrator prior to …show more content…

Following the obtainment of the records the analysts interviewed relatives using the mini-international neuropsychiatric interview to gain insight into the psychiatric symptoms that were observed in the perpetrator prior to the homicide-suicide. The focus of the interview was that of previous domestic violence and if threats were made and how they were made prior to the event. This interview was used to classify the cases into the types listed above and to form new subtypes that have yet been discussed. Over the three years 26 cases were found but only 18 were available to undergo a psychological autopsy which is the biggest study to date. The study indicated that the perpetrators age on average was higher than the victims age by 13 years with the perpetrators age being 41. In the intimate-possessive cases the mean age of victims and perpetrators are closer together with perpetrators being 32 and the victims being 31. The majority of perpetrators were male while the majority of victims were females. For Intimate-possessive there were seven White individuals, three Black, and two Hispanic perpetrators while there were seven White, four Black and two Hispanic victims. A gun was the most widely used weapon in these 18 cases with a knife being added to one case and fire being used in another. Depression was diagnosed, after the interviews were conducted, in all three relationships with 100% witnessed in Intimate-Ailing and Filial-Revenge cases while only 92% reported to show symptoms of depression in intimate-possessive relationships. Substance abuse was found in at least half the cases reported in intimate-possessive and intimate-ailing relationships. However, less than half of the intimate-possessive and intimate-ailing relationships had a psychiatric history of being depressed. While 100% of the filial-revenge did. 75% of

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