Psychiatric Aspects

Introduction

Various types of killings occur within family matrices. The news media highlight the dramatic components, and even novels now use it as a theme. 1 However, a psychiatric understanding remains elusive. Not all killings within a family are familicidal. For want of a better term, I have called the killing of more than one member of a family by another family member "familicide." The destruction of the family unit appears to be the goal. Such behavior comes within the category of "mass murders" where a number of victims are killed in a short period of time by one person. However, in mass murders the victims are not exclusively family members. The case of one person committing a series of homicides over an extended period of time, such as months or years, also differs from familicide. The latter can result in the perpetrator...