Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2020 Nov;46(6):516-522.
doi: 10.1002/ab.21906. Epub 2020 Jul 29.

The typology of parricide and the role of mental illness: Data-driven approach

Lana Bojanić  1 , Sandra Flynn  1 , Myrsini Gianatsi  1 , Navneet Kapur  1   2 , Louis Appleby  1   2 , Jenny Shaw  1   2
Affiliations

The typology of parricide and the role of mental illness: Data-driven approach

Lana Bojanić et al. Aggress Behav. 2020 Nov.

Abstract

Parricide is a rare type of homicide in which mental illness is often an important factor. The aims of this study were (a) to describe the characteristics of parricide offenders with a focus on mental illness and clinical care and (b) to examine Heide's widely used typology of parricide through a data-driven approach. We analyzed all homicides in England and Wales between 1997 and 2014. Parricide offenders in our sample were most often male, unmarried, and unemployed, with a third of offenders diagnosed with schizophrenia; 28% had been in contact with mental health services before the offense. The latent class analysis resulted in three types of parricide offenders: middle-aged with affective disorder, previously abused, and seriously mentally Ill, which confirmed, to an extent, Heide's typology. Health and social care services should actively engage with carers of people with mental illness and support to those caring for older relatives and victims of abuse.

Keywords: latent class analysis; mental health services; mental illness; parricide; typology.

PubMed Disclaimer

References

REFERENCES

    1. Adinkrah, M. (2017). Patricides and step-patricides in Ghana: Victims, offenders, and offense characteristics. Journal of Family Violence, 32(8), 817-829. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10896-017-9939-y
    1. Adinkrah, M. (2018). Matricide in Ghana: Victims, offenders, and offense characteristics. International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, 62(7), 1925-1946. https://doi.org/10.1177/0306624X17706891
    1. Baxter, H., Duggan, C., Larkin, E., Cordess, C., & Page, K. (2001). Mentally disordered parricide and stranger killers admitted to high-security care. 1: A descriptive comparison. Journal of Forensic Psychiatry, 12(2), 287-299. https://doi.org/10.1080/09585180110056821
    1. Bourget, D., Gagné, P., & Labelle, M. E. (2007). Parricide: A comparative study of matricide versus patricide. Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law Online, 35(3), 306-312.
    1. van Buuren, S., & Groothuis-Oudshoorn, K. (2011). Mice: Multivariate imputation by chained equations in R. Journal of Statistical Software, 45(3), 1-68. https://doi.org/10.18637/jss.v045.i03

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources