People killing their own families and then themselves

[Morrissey]

There seems to be a lot of this happening recently.
What do you think? Is it a new thing?
Or has it always happened? If so I can't remember it happening.

[ChrisGeorge]

There seems to be a lot of this happening recently.
What do you think? Is it a new thing?
Or has it always happened? If so I can't remember it happening.

It does happen a lot but I think especially so in hard economic times such as today.

Chris

[Errata]

Family annihilators is what they're called. Usually middle aged men with no history of violence and financially stable. Upon the loss of a job, he becomes extremely depressed, and begins obsessing about the future of his family without his income. Eventually he falls into the delusion that his family will become objects of ridicule while they starve to death or other such dire consequences, and murders his family and kills himself to protect them from that fate.

In women the same types of belief manifest differently, so the analog in women is typically a woman with children in an abusive relationship. She becomes convinced that she cannot escape the abuse, that she has exposed her children to a man (or another woman) who will kill them horribly, and murders her children (generally in their sleep or through gentler means, like an overdose of sedatives) and then kills herself. And sometimes it even happens after they have, through whatever means, escaped the abuse.

In these cases it's almost a form of PTSD. Delusions brought about by an intensely stressful event. But there are "types" of people this happens to, and sometimes the personality traits are noticed well before anything bad ever happens. For example, thank god my Dad never lost his job. He absolutely would have killed us all.

Most other types of familicide are products of simple abuse, though it seems inadequate to say that. People who think that they own people and have the right to determine whether they live or die. A very twisted playground mentality where no one else gets to play with their toys. Highly selfish people who believe that they have the right to do anything in order to get their way. And the most tragic kind of familicide comes from profound mental illness. A psychotic break in which the assailant becomes convinced that his family are enemy agents, or whatever.

When the economy is bad, this crime goes up across the board. Family annihilators become triggered by massive layoffs. Abuse goes way up. Stress is way up. People who lose control of such a basic thing as a job and money try to find it other ways. We're also at a point in history where economic status is almost inherited. Families can easily have been middle class for four generations or more. And the loss of that status can be traumatic. Not only do they have to worry about money and living expenses, but people feel that they have to worry about the regard of their families and their peers. They don't know how to be poor. They never have been, their parents never were, their friends never were... it can be overwhelming.

The surprise is not that this is happening more now, the surprise is that this didn't start spiking in 2001. Because the other major catalyst for this type of crime is war.

[louisa]

I'm in Britain - near London - and I've just seen the news on TV. A man has killed his wife and two tiny children - stabbed them to death and then he set fire to the house. We don't know the reasons yet.

I'm guessing that maybe his wife had told him she was leaving him for another man.