A recent study by researchers from the University of Manchester shows that Thirty-seven percent of parents who killed their children (called filicide) suffered from mental problems and 12 percent visited a mental health service within a year of the killing
Researchers from the Institute of Brain Behavior and Mental Health, studied as many as 297 cases of filicide and 45 cases of filicide-suicides in England and Wales. They collected the cases from January 1997 to December 2006 from the National Confidential Inquiry into Suicide and Homicide by People with Mental Illness (NCI).
The study revealed that 37 percent of filicide offenders suffered from mental illness. However, the most common problems found were mood disorders and personality disorders rather than psychosis.
The offenders suffering from psychosis were 15 percent, (18 percent mothers) compared to 6 percent of homicides in general population studies.
Twenty percent of the offenders were treated for the mental illness before the offence. Another important finding from the study was that 23 percent of females who killed their child were teenagers at the time of birth.
However, on the whole, fathers were more likely to kill their kids compared to mothers. The study also revealed that men used more violent methods than females in killing.
Of the total filicide cases studied by the researchers, 13 percent of the offenders killed themselves after they murdered their child, this condition is known as filicide-suicide. Also infants were found to be more vulnerable to filicide in the study.
"Our findings indicate that fathers with a history of substance misuse, violence or mood disorder, and mothers who were teenagers at the birth of their child, or with mood disorder may be appropriate targets for intervention. Parents with mental illness should be asked about violent thoughts toward their children, particularly if depressed," said Professor Kathryn Abel, lead author of the study.
Understanding the prevalence of child abuse and killing of children is far from complete, the researchers concluded.
