Child Murder and Insanity

Hopwood, Julian

doi:10.1192/bjp.73.300.95

Cited by 35 publications

(6 citation statements)

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“…Early in the 20th century, the tide turned yet again. In 1927, Hopwood defined ''lactational psychosis'' as the strong relationship between maternal filicide and the effect of childbirth and nursing on the mother's mental state (5). England established the Infanticide Acts of 1922 and 1938, which outlawed the death penalty for mothers who killed their children within the first 12 months of life, instead making their punishment similar to that for manslaughter (6).…”

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Fathers Who Kill Their Children: An Analysis of the Literature

West

Friedman

Resnick

2009

Journal of Forensic Sciences

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Roughly half of filicidal acts are committed by fathers, though the majority of the literature focuses on maternal filicide. This paper reviews the existing literature on paternal filicide with the goal of identifying characteristics common among these fathers. Fathers who killed their children were, on average, in their mid thirties. The mean age of their victims was five. They may have multiple victims. Sons and daughters were killed in equal numbers. Reasons included death related to abuse, mental illness (including psychosis and depression), and revenge against a spouse. The method often involved wounding violence. Suicide following the act occurred frequently. After being tried for their crimes, filicidal fathers were more frequently incarcerated than hospitalized. Given the range of those capable of this act, mental health professionals must be alert to the possibility of filicide in a variety of fathers. Considering this risk, clinicians should inquire about thoughts of harming children, partners, and themselves.

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confidence: 99%

Fathers Who Kill Their Children: An Analysis of the Literature

West

Friedman

Resnick

2009

Journal of Forensic Sciences

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“…Thus Hopwood (10) applies the term infanticide to those cases where a mother kills her own child before the end of the lactation period and also includes the killing of older children while still nursing. McDermaid and Winkler (11) refer to infanticide as a homicidal action committed on infants, and they employ the term filicide only to refer to the killing of older children.…”

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Child Murder by Depressed Parents^*

Rodenburg

1971

Canadian Psychiatric Association Journal

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Although it is common practice to try to assess the risk of suicide in depressed patients the possibility of homicidal tendencies is often overlooked. Homicidal acts are frequently directed towards children by either parents or strangers and there is also a risk that children may be killed by parents suffering from severe depressive illness. It is proposed that early recognition might lead to the prevention of this type of crime. The terms infanticide, filicide, and neonaticide are used idiosyncratically by the different authors and may therefore be confusing. Infanticide in Canada is a medicolegal term; it indicates a relationship between child murder and child birth. All other cases of child killings are designated as murder. In Canada there were 1,276 incidents of homicide over a period of five years, (19641968). Of these 141 (11 per cent) were incidents of child murder - child murder being defined as the killing of a person 16 years and under. Seventy-six (54 per cent) of these were caused by parents, 41 were mothers and 35 were fathers. The mothers killed their children only, but 40 per cent of the fathers also murdered their wives. Suicide or attempted suicide following the crime was more likely to occur in those cases where the father was the assailant. Most children killed by their parents are between one and five years of age. Sixty-five (46 per cent) of child murders were caused by non-relatives and 32 per cent of these assaulted their victims sexually, the crime occurring most frequently in the evening. The dynamics of child murder by depressed parents has been reviewed. It is proposed that a child is particularly vulnerable when a depressive illness is superimposed upon a constellation of parental factors which can be recognized and specified.

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“…By this time, lactational insanity and exhaustion psychosis, their socio-economic aetiology strongly emphasized, dominated the literature as the sort of mental derangement likely to account for infanticide. J. Stanley Hopwood (1927), Junior Deputy Medical Superintendent of the State Criminal Lunatic Asylum at Broadmoor, discussed the characteristics of women confined at Broadmoor who, between 1 January 1900 and 31 December 1924, had either killed their own children (not over one year of age except when lactation was extended beyond that period) or killed older children (sometimes more than one child) following childbirth and while still breastfeeding, collectively 166 of the 388 women admitted to Broadmoor during this period (pp. 94-6).…”

Section: Developing Psychiatric Discourses: Puerperal Lactational and Exhaustion Psychosesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Insanities of Reproduction: Medico-legal Knowledge and the Development of Infanticide Law

Kramar

Watson

2006

Social & Legal Studies

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Drawing on autopoiesis theory, Ward (1999) challenges the established view that the adoption of the English infanticide law in 1922 (amended 1938) is an example of the medicalization of law, insisting that the 1922 Act embodied a lay biological theory and that contemporary psychiatric theories of the ‘insanities of reproduction’ focused on socio-economic, rather than biological, stressors. Both the medicalization and autopoiesis interpretations of infanticide law are misplaced. A broader review of the medical literature discussed by Ward, and of a related anthropological literature he does not treat, reveals a more complex picture: while Ward’s critique of the medicalization thesis is broadly apposite, and an associated anthropological literature was also more socio-economic than bio-racist (Reekie, 1998), there was a bio-medical strand of thought, as well as an equally biological atavistic line of theory regarding infanticide, which ran alongside the socio-economic model. In addition, the expressed biologism of infanticide law, whatever its origins, can still be thought of as contributing to the medicalization of law subsequent to its passage and amendment, especially given the dominance of the bio-medical model in psychiatry since the 1960s.

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Child Murder and Insanity

Cited by 35 publications

References 1 publication

Fathers Who Kill Their Children: An Analysis of the Literature

Fathers Who Kill Their Children: An Analysis of the Literature

Child Murder by Depressed Parents^*

The Insanities of Reproduction: Medico-legal Knowledge and the Development of Infanticide Law

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Child Murder and Insanity

Cited by 35 publications

References 1 publication

Fathers Who Kill Their Children: An Analysis of the Literature

Fathers Who Kill Their Children: An Analysis of the Literature

Child Murder by Depressed Parents*

The Insanities of Reproduction: Medico-legal Knowledge and the Development of Infanticide Law

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Child Murder by Depressed Parents^*