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A murder-suicide is an act in which an individual kills one or more other persons immediately before, or at the same time as, killing him or herself.


Many spree killings have ended in suicide. Some cases of cult suicide
Cult suicide

A cult suicide is a term used to describe the mass suicide by the members of groups that have been considered cults. In some cases all, or nearly all members have committed suicide at the same time and place....
 may also involve murder.

According to the psychiatrist
Psychiatrist

A psychiatrist is a physician who specializes in psychiatry and is certified in treating mental disorders. All psychiatrists are trained in diagnostic evaluation and in psychotherapy....
 Karl A.






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A murder-suicide is an act in which an individual kills one or more other persons immediately before, or at the same time as, killing him or herself.

Combinations


The combination of murder
Murder

Murder as defined in common law countries, is the unlawful killing of another human being with intent , and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide....
 and suicide can take various forms, including:
  • Suicide to facilitate murder, as in suicide bombing
  • Suicide after murder to escape punishment
  • Suicide after murder as a form of self-punishment due to guilt
  • Having a combined objective of suicide and murder
    • Joint suicide
      Suicide pact

      A suicide pact describes the suicides of two or more individuals in an agreed-upon plan. The plan may be to die together, or separately and closely timed....
       in the form of killing the other with consent, and then killing oneself
    • Punishment - taking revenge on those deemed responsible and escaping the world seen as a terrible place, as in many school shootings.


Many spree killings have ended in suicide. Some cases of cult suicide
Cult suicide

A cult suicide is a term used to describe the mass suicide by the members of groups that have been considered cults. In some cases all, or nearly all members have committed suicide at the same time and place....
 may also involve murder.

Homicide and Suicide


Ajax Suicide
According to the psychiatrist
Psychiatrist

A psychiatrist is a physician who specializes in psychiatry and is certified in treating mental disorders. All psychiatrists are trained in diagnostic evaluation and in psychotherapy....
 Karl A. Menninger, murder and suicide are interchangeable acts - suicide sometimes forestalling murder, and vice versa. Following Freudian logic, severe repression of natural instincts due to early childhood abuse, may lead the death instinct
Death instinct

In classical Freudian psychoanalytic theory, the death drive is the Drive theory towards death, destruction and non-existence. It was first defined by Sigmund Freud in Beyond the Pleasure Principle as "an urge inherent in all organic life to restore an earlier state of things"....
 to emerge in a twisted form. The cultural anthropologist
Cultural anthropology

Cultural anthropology is one of four fields of anthropology as it developed in the United States. It is the branch of anthropology that has developed and promoted "culture" as a meaningful scientific concept, studied cultural variation among humans, and examined the impact of global economic and political processes on local cultural realiti...
 Ernest Becker
Ernest Becker

Dr. Ernest Becker was a cultural anthropology and interdisciplinary scientific thinker and writer.Becker was born into a Jewish family in Massachusetts....
, whose theories on the human notion of death is strongly influenced by Freud, views the fear of death as a universal phenomenon, a fear repressed in the unconscious and of which people are largely unaware. This fear can move individuals toward heroism, but also to scapegoating
Scapegoat

The scapegoat was a goat that was driven off into the wilderness as part of the ceremonies of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, in Judaism during the times of the Temple in Jerusalem....
. Failed attempts to achieve heroism, according to this view, can lead to mental illness
Mental illness

A mental disorder or mental illness is a psychological or behavioral pattern that occurs in an individual and is thought to cause distress or disability that is not expected as part of normal development or culture....
 and/or antisocial behavior.

In a research specifically related to murder-suicide, Milton Rosenbaum (1990) discovered the murder-suicide perpetrators to be vastly different from perpetrators of homicide alone. Whereas murderer-suicides were found to be highly depressed and overwhelmingly men, other murderers were not generally depressed and more likely to include women in their ranks. The only non-fiction book on domestic murder-suicide is Death by Domestic Violence: Preventing the Murders and Murder-Suicides by van Wormer and Roberts (2009)In the U.S. the overwhelming number of cases are male-on-female and involve guns. Around one-third of partner homicides end in the suicide of the perpetrator. From national and international data and interviews with family members of murder-suicide perpetrators, the following are the key predictors of murder-suicide:access to a gun, a history of substance abuse, the male partner some years older than the female partner, a break-up or pending break-up, a history of battering, suicidal ideation by the perpetrator. Psychologically perpetrators tend to be emotionally immature and highly possessive.

See also

  • Crime of passion
    Crime of passion

    A crime of passion, in popular usage, refers to a crime in which the perpetrator commits a crime, especially assault or murder, against a spouse or other loved one because of sudden strong impulse such as a jealous Rage or heartbreak rather than as a premeditated crime....


External links


  • statistics from a suicide prevention program