Homicide-Suicide in Older Persons

Donna Cohén · Maria D. Llorente · Carl Eisdorfer

159 citations0/0 files storedAmerican Journal of Psychiatry

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Homicide, Infanticide, and Child Abuse Intimate Partner and Family Violence Elder Abuse and Neglect

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study was to determine the annual incidence of homicide-suicide and to compare patterns and antecedents in old and young spousal/consortial cases. METHODS: Homicide-suicide cases were ascertained in four medical examiner districts covering seven entire Florida counties from 1988 to 1994. The districts were chosen to determine rates in two regions of Florida, comparable in size of the total population and proportion of older persons. Annual homicide-suicide incidence rates per 100,000 population and homicide-suicides as a percentage of total homicides and total suicides separately were calculated by age group and Florida region. Complete medical examiner files were obtained, and 160 variables were coded from medical examiner reports to compare features and clinical characteristics by age and region. RESULTS: Annual incidence rates ranged from 0.3 to 0.7 per 100,000 for persons under age 55 and from 0.4 to 0.9 per 100,000 for persons age 55 and older, with higher rates in the older group every year but two. Cases of spousal/consortial homicide-suicide were the most common in both age groups. The younger couples in both regions were comparable, except for racial composition, but the older couples differed. West central Florida couples were in their seventies, Caucasian, usually married, and both in poor health; and there were indications of depression or alcohol abuse in half the perpetrators. Two-thirds of the southeastern Florida couples were Hispanic; there was a mean age difference of 18 years between perpetrators and victims; and verbal discord, physical violence, and separation were prominent antecedents. CONCLUSIONS: The base rate for homicide-suicide in both age groups was higher than that reported in previous studies. Spousal/consortial homicide-suicides were the dominant form, and although psychopathology was strongly implicated, homicide-suicides are violent lethal acts resulting from additive or multiplicative effects of diathesis, including culture, and stressful experiences.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 159 citations exist upstream.

References

1996Relationships of age and axis I diagnoses in victims of completed suicide: a psychological autopsy study 1992Violence Against Women 1992The Epidemiology of Murder-Suicide 1992Assessment and prediction of suicide 1989Fatal violence among spouses in the United States, 1976-85.1990The role of depression in couples involved in murder-suicide and homicide 1983The epidemiology of abnormal homicide and murder followed by suicide 1995Combined Homicide-Suicides: A Review

Cited by

2008Characteristics of Perpetrators in Homicide-Followed-by-Suicide Incidents: National Violent Death Reporting System--17 US States, 2003-2005 2016Lethal intimate partner violence in later life: Understanding measurements, strengths, and limitations of research 2016Violence against women: A series of autopsy studies from Istanbul, Turkey

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.