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Article Excerpt
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Mental health professionals have a legal, ethical, and moral duty to warn when they suspect clients may be a danger to themselves or others. An individual's risk of violence is based on a synergistic combination of certain historical experiences and behaviors, environmental and situational conditions, as well as personality traits and trends. It is a determination that is difficult to make, and is especially challenging when attempting to identify the propensity of a parent for filicide-suicide (F-S).
Filicide: the killing of one's son or daughter
Assessing for F-S is not merely a matter of determining the propensity for fatal violence and the likelihood of suicide. This is due to the fact that some of the most reliable risk and protective factors of violence and of suicide are not indicative of F-S (Stroud & Pritchard, 2001; Beck & Weishaar, 1990; Blumenthal, 1990). For example, a few of the most reliable risk factors for general, serious violence include being a young adult, substance abuse, and impulsivity. With F-S, the parents are comparatively older and typically do not have past or present problems with substance abuse or impulsivity. Two of the most notable protective factors for suicide--being married and parenting--are actually characteristic of perpetrators of F-S (Marzuk, Tardiff, & Hirsch, 1992). Of note, it appears that maternal F-S does parallel the suicide rate in any given country (World Health Organization, 2008).
Characteristics of the Crime
Over the past four decades, approximately 50% of parents who murdered their children also made a nonfatal or fatal attempt at suicide (Bourger & Gagne, 2002; Alder & Polk, 2001; Haapasalo & Petaejae, 1999; Alder & Baker, 1997; Adelson, 1961, 1991). When filicide occurs without the subsequent parental suicide, the victims are typically younger than victims of filicide followed by suicide (Bourget, Grace, & W-hitehurst, 2007; Christoffel, Liu, & Stamler, 1981). Most acts of infanticide (and filicide without parental suicide) occur during the first 12 months of the child's life. By definition, victims of neonaticide are less than 25 hours old, while victims of post-partum filicide are younger than 12 months. According to the most recently available data, victims of fatal child abuse in the United States are under the age of 2; this average varies between countries and across time (Child Welfare Information Gateway, 2008; McClain, Sacks, Froehlke, & Ewigman, 1993; Christoffel et al.). In contrast with these figures, approximately 60% of the child victims of F-S are between 1 and 6 years old and, unlike fatal child abuse, this figure tends to be stable across time and countries (Byard, Knight, James, & Gilbert, 1999; McKee & Shea, 1998).
Not only is there a difference in the age of the child victim of fatal abuse and F-S, there is also a difference in the average age of the parent perpetrator. Fatally abusive mothers tend to be in their late teens or early 20s, whereas mothers who commit F-S are generally between 27 and 35 years old. Beyond demographic characteristics, there is a significant difference in the mental state of the perpetrator. Although death from child abuse is accidental, a child's death from F-S is the result of deliberately executed acts that were pre-planned and in no way impulsive (Bourget et al., 2007; Bourget & Gagne, 2002; Alder & Polk, 2001; Meszaros &...
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