Those who kill their children are certainly not mentally healthy. According to The Daily Beast , no completely mentally healthy parent could kill a child. Sandra Wheatley, a British psychologist specializing in family psychology, pointed out the choice represents a conscious decision difficult to classify as healthy. In order to think that this could be a way to behave, you have got to say that somewhere in there, they were not quite well.
Resnick said social issues, such as the fear of being stigmatized, play a definitive role in neonaticides. In some contexts, the need to allocate resources can motivate killers. A case in France made headlines in , when Dominique Cottrez , then 45, confessed to killing eight of her newborn babies and hiding their bodies in the house she shared with her husband in a village near Lille. Why would she not bury them? As Broadly pointed out , several infamous cases still linger in the public consciousness.
Even though the crime occurred two decades ago, talk show host Nancy Grace still brings up Susan Smith. The South Carolina mother reportedly pushed her car into a lake with her two sons in the back seat. She had allegedly drugged her with chloroform and suffocated her by taping duct tape over her nose and mouth. In , the public became obsessed by Texas mother Andrea Yates. She reportedly drowned her five children in the bathtub in a religiously motivated postpartum psychosis.
The same year, Rebekah Amaya told investigators a spider told her to drown her two children. Courts found her not guilty by reason of insanity. Statistically speaking, fathers present the most danger to their family. According to an Australian study , the most violent of all parents who kill their children is the stepfather or de facto partner. The study, conducted by researchers at Swinburne University in Melbourne, found that this type of perpetrator will often throw or stomp a child, but usually only one.
Researchers said the coupled father represents the most deadly of all parents. He often kills not just his children but the mother, as well. The separated father often kills multiple children, usually in a revenge killing to punish their mother. In these cases, women often separated from them because of past abuse. Given what we know about parents killing their kids, experts wonder what we can do.
Something must be done to protect children in the future. A small New Zealand study that interviewed the mothers after their filicides found that psychotic mothers who had committed filicide often killed suddenly without much planning, whereas depressed mothers had contemplated killing their children for days to weeks prior to their crimes Many other mothers make non-fatal suicide attempts in association with their filicides. Filicide-suicides have much in common with filicides committed by severely mentally ill mothers Most frequently, these mothers have altruistic motives 15 , Similar to results of other studies 15 , 20 , 48 , our recent American study found that maternal filicide-suicide perpetrators killed older children more often than infants mean age of children killed was 6 years old.
The mothers often had evidence of depression or psychosis These mothers often take the lives of all their young children. A relatively high incidence of filicidal thoughts has been found in mentally ill women. Thirty-six percent of these women engaged in some type of infanticidal behavior. Their behavior was associated with negative maternal reaction to separation, psychotic beliefs about the infant, and female sex of the infant.
Our recent survey of psychiatrists at two American academic institutions found that many psychiatrists do not specifically ask their patients who are mothers about thoughts of harming their children, but rather they inquire generally about homicidal thoughts The surveyed psychiatrists frequently underestimated the prevalence of depressed mothers who have thoughts of harming their children. Infanticide laws often reduce the penalty for mothers who kill their children up to one year of age, based on the principle that a woman who commits infanticide does so because "the balance of her mind is disturbed by reason of her not having fully recovered from the effect of giving birth to the child" The British Infanticide Act of amended in allows mothers to be charged with manslaughter rather than murder if they are suffering from a mental disturbance.
The law was originally based on the outdated concept of lactational insanity, but the public's desire to excuse sympathetic women caused reluctance to alter the law after lactational insanity was discredited. Women convicted of infanticide often receive probation and referral to mental health treatment rather than incarceration The majority of nations that have infanticide laws have followed the British precedent and decrease the penalty for mothers killing children under one year old.
However, the legal definition of infanticide varies among countries. The murder of children up to age ten is included in New Zealand In practice, however, women convicted of infanticide in England sometimes do not have significant mental illness as technically required by the law Opponents of infanticide laws point out that fathers are granted far less leniency. A father who is equally psychotically depressed as a mother, who kills his month-old child in an altruistic psychotic belief with an associated suicide attempt, should not be treated differently than a similarly situated mother.
Some feminists criticize the infanticide laws for "pathologizing childbirth". They believe that making this exception for women denies them the same capacity for self-governance attributed to men An acutely psychotic mother who killed her 13 month old child would not qualify for the infanticide law in England though a mother who battered her 11 month old child might. Psychiatrists should assess filicide risk in a systematic way, as they do for suicide. First they must entertain the possibility of maternal filicide.
Psychiatrists should intervene to prevent potential filicides in which maternal mental illness plays a role. Mothers who have altruistic or acutely psychotic motives for filicide may be psychotic, depressed, manic, or delirious. Some mothers who come to psychiatric attention because of severe mental illnesses, personality disorders, or substance use disorders may be abusing or neglecting their children.
Psychiatrists may ask about childrearing practices, parenting problems, and feelings of being overwhelmed. Strategies for prevention must be tailored to the different motivations of mothers who commit filicide. Depressed mothers who have the potential to kill in extended suicides should be identified early. Mothers contemplating suicide should be asked directly about the fate of their children if they were to take their own life. Some will say their husband is quite able to look after them and others will volunteer that they would take their children to heaven with them.
Thoughts or fears of harming their children should be queried. Threats must be taken seriously. A lesser threshold for hospitalization should be considered for mentally ill mothers of young children due to the possibility of multiple deaths from a filicide-suicide.
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Factors which potentially merit psychiatric hospitalization include maternal fears of harming their child, delusions of their child's suffering, improbable concerns about their child's health, and hostility toward a despised partner's favorite child Psychotic mothers who fear that their children may suffer a fate worse than death due to persecutory delusions should either be hospitalized or separated from their children. These mothers may be reluctant to share their delusional ideas.
Delusions may sometimes be elicited through a sympathetic exploration of their concerns for the safety of their children. In some cases, the only evidence of concern is frequent checking by the mother on the health and safety of her children. Though psychotic mothers may have less warning about filicide, psychiatrists can ask about hallucinations or delusional thoughts regarding the children.
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Among Indian mothers with postpartum severe mental illness, a recent study found that mothers with delusions about their infant engaged in more abuse Early screening and identification of mental illness both antenatally and postnatally is important. The Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale 68 , 69 is a validated tool that can be easily administered both in pregnancy and the postpartum. Because hospital length of stay after delivery is shorter now, many cases of postpartum psychosis could be undetected in the community. Therefore, community education is important.
Support services for mothers and accessible psychiatric services for at-risk populations are needed. More filicides occur due to fatal maltreatment than because of maternal psychiatric illness. Many cases of fatal maltreatment filicide never come to psychiatric attention. Mothers may kill their children who fail to respond to demands such as to stop crying Mothers who batter their children to death are likely to have abused their children more than once before 15 , Early intervention to protect these children is more likely to fall to child protective agencies than to psychiatrists.
All 50 states in the U. Parenting classes, emotional support, and emergency numbers to call when mothers are overwhelmed can be helpful in preventing fatal maltreatment filicides. Maternal substance abuse must also be treated.
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Child protective agencies must remove children who are at risk of serious abuse. Mothers who are diagnosed with Munchausen syndrome should be evaluated to see if they have engaged in Munchausen syndrome by proxy behaviors. Child protective agencies should be receptive to accepting children into their care who are unwanted, even if no abuse or neglect has yet occurred.
Spouse revenge filicide is difficult to prevent, because there is usually little warning. This behavior most often occurs after learning of spousal infidelity or in the course of child custody disputes. Sometimes a mother is so convinced that her child will be sexually abused if permanent custody is awarded to her ex-husband that she decides the child is better off in heaven. Evaluators of child custody disputes should be alert for this potential. Children under age 5 may have limited contacts outside of their household and have difficulty speaking out to others, while older children often attend school and can thus reveal child abuse.
Infanticide - Wikipedia
Infant and child factors such as colic 60 or autism 72 may increase risk. This suggests a potential role for pediatricians in prevention as well. A mother's motive for filicide may be altruistic, acutely psychotic, or due to fatal maltreatment, unwanted child, or spouse revenge. In addition, many mothers who do not attempt filicide experience thoughts of harming their child. Maternal filicide motives provide a framework for approaching filicide prevention. Suicidality, psychosis and depression elevate risk, as does a history of child abuse.
Mentally ill filicidal mothers have very different risk profiles than mothers who fatally batter their children. Prevention is difficult, because many risk factors, such as maternal depression and social disadvantage, are common among non-filicidal mothers. National Center for Biotechnology Information , U. Journal List World Psychiatry v.
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Author information Copyright and License information Disclaimer. Copyright World Psychiatric Association. This article has been cited by other articles in PMC. Abstract The tragedy of maternal filicide, or child murder by mothers, has occurred throughout history and throughout the world. Filicide, infanticide, child homicide. Infanticide An American macro-level study of infanticide victims in the first year of life found increased rates with economic stress General population studies of maternal filicide The mothers were often poor, socially isolated, full-time caregivers, who were victims of domestic violence or had other relationship problems.
Correctional samples of maternal filicide In the correctional population, filicidal mothers were frequently unmarried, unemployed abuse victims, who had limited education and social support 29 - 33 , 46 - 47 , 53 , Psychiatric samples of maternal filicide The filicidal mothers in psychiatric samples had frequently experienced psychosis, depression, suicidality, and prior mental health care 18 , 19 , 22 , 25 - 27 , 34 - 37 , 39 , 49 , 50 , Prevalence of filicidal thoughts A relatively high incidence of filicidal thoughts has been found in mentally ill women.
Homicide trends in the United States: Soc Psychiatry Psychiatr Epidemiol.
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