{"id":714,"date":"2009-04-22T07:43:15","date_gmt":"2009-04-22T13:43:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/crawler\/?p=714"},"modified":"2009-04-22T07:43:15","modified_gmt":"2009-04-22T13:43:15","slug":"when-do-people-turn-to-murder-suicide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/2009\/04\/22\/when-do-people-turn-to-murder-suicide\/","title":{"rendered":"when do people turn to murder-suicide?"},"content":{"rendered":"

This week, Newsday<\/a> ran a story about what might lead certain people to commit murder-suicide, drawing upon scholars’ expertise on identifying key traits of perpetrators. The article was specifically concerned with the practice of familicide, also referred to as ‘family annihilation,’ which is committed by men nearly 95% of the time according to the Violence Policy Center.<\/p>\n

The psychological perspective…<\/p>\n

Louis Schlesinger, forensic psychology professor at the John Jay<\/span> College of Criminal Justice in New York City, said there were two different types of familicidal offenders.<\/p>\n

One takes a proprietorial view of his wife, gets angry, and attacks her and everyone around her. The second type is “the despondent male,” who feels he must kill his family and himself to spare them the humiliation or pain of what life will bring, Schlesinger said.<\/p>\n

“It’s not rational, it’s not reasonable,” he said. “If he tries to kill himself and survives, he views the [slain] family with sympathy. . . . He feels tremendous regret.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The sociological perspective…<\/p>\n

But Jack Levin, a sociologist and criminologist at Northeastern University in Boston, said there is almost always a “catastrophic loss that precedes a family annihilation.”<\/p>\n

Triggers can be a loss of a job, money, a relationship or a loved one. Often, he said, there is a feeling of isolation.<\/p>\n

“Most family annihilators, and typically it’s the husband and father, have been frustrated and depressed over a long period of time,” he said. “But they, unlike other depressed individuals, blame everybody else for their miseries.”<\/p>\n

Or, he said, in cases when the man may be described as a dedicated husband and devoted father, the motive may be “a perverted sense of altruism that they’d be better off dead than live in this miserable existence.”<\/p>\n

In general, he said, most familicides are suicidal rampages, “but first the killer will take care of his loved ones.”<\/p>\n

If the person is religious, “He may feel he can reunite with loved ones in the hereafter, or wants to spare his loved ones the humiliation of his suicide.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read more. <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week, Newsday ran a story about what might lead certain people to commit murder-suicide, drawing upon scholars’ expertise on identifying key traits of perpetrators. The article was specifically concerned with the practice of familicide, also referred to as ‘family annihilation,’ which is committed by men nearly 95% of the time according to the Violence […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39074],"tags":[39116,70,39114,133],"class_list":["post-714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sightings","tag-crime","tag-family","tag-gender","tag-violence"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=714"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":716,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714\/revisions\/716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}