The close link between altruistic and acute psychotic filicide: two case studies

Filicide is a rare and complex event with multiple causes and characteristics related to the circumstances in which it occurs. This article examines two cases of filicide in which a father (first case) and a mother (second case) stabbed their children, placing the analysis in the context of the relevant scientific and clinical literature. In these cases, there was contact with local health services prior to the offences, suggesting that the two concepts of altruistic filicide and filicide associated with severe psychiatric pathology should be considered interdependent and closely linked. It is of interest to examine how dyadic deaths are often significantly influenced by the sociodemographic characteristics of the perpetrators and their psychopathology. Over the years, there have been several classifications based primarily on the motivation for action of the impulse to kill. The scientific literature has found a significant correlation between filicide and pre-existing psychiatric pathology in the parents, with mood disorders having psychotic features being the most common. In addition, severe mental illness often occurs in cases of filicide-suicide. In both cases presented in this article, a psychiatric assessment was requested by the judicial authority: The parents were involved in extremely stressful life circumstances and events, and suffered from social isolation or a lack of relationship support. In the case of filicide, in which the protagonist was the mother (second case), there are reports of sexual abuse at a young age and a suicide attempt after her daughter was killed. Although in many classifications “compassionate” and purely “psychotic” filicide appear as two distinct nosographic entities, the present work suggests that it is important for professionals working in the forensic field to pay particular attention to the presence of psychiatric disorders in filicide, especially in the context of “delusional altruism”, which is a circumstance in which the psychotic category may also include compassionate homicidal motivations.