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Mental Disorders and Intimate Partner Femicide: Clinical Characteristics in Perpetrators of Intimate Partner Femicide and Male-to-Male Homicide

Intimate partner violence against women is a global and persistent public health issue. An extreme manifestation of this problem is intimate partner femicide (IPF), the killing of a woman by a male partner. While declining trends of homicide rates have been observed over decades, rates of femicide a...

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Autores principales: Caman, Shilan, Sturup, Joakim, Howner, Katarina
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8977448/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35386515
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2022.844807
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author Caman, Shilan
Sturup, Joakim
Howner, Katarina
author_facet Caman, Shilan
Sturup, Joakim
Howner, Katarina
author_sort Caman, Shilan
collection PubMed
description Intimate partner violence against women is a global and persistent public health issue. An extreme manifestation of this problem is intimate partner femicide (IPF), the killing of a woman by a male partner. While declining trends of homicide rates have been observed over decades, rates of femicide and IPF have remained stable. Yet, IPF as a phenomenon has until recently been fairly invisible in Europe, why research from the European countries on rates and characteristics of IPF has been relatively scarce. One area of research, particularly in need of further scrutiny, is to what degree perpetrators of IPF suffer from mental health conditions, and what the clinical features are. The objective of present study was to add to the existing literature by investigating prevalence and types of mental disorders in perpetrators of IPF, and to compare with male-to-male homicide (MMH) perpetrators. Our aim was also to examine life-time contact with psychiatric services, and, with missed opportunities in mind, contacts shortly preceding the homicide. With a retrospective design, this population-based study includes all solved cases of male-perpetrated homicides against intimate female partners (IPF) and other males (MMH) committed in Sweden between January 2007 and December 2009. Primary and secondary psychiatric diagnoses based on ICD, version 8, 9 or 10 from psychiatric inpatient as well as outpatient care have been retrieved. In order to identify mental disorders in perpetrators during commission of the homicidal offense, we also retrieved diagnoses from forensic psychiatric evaluations. Our results demonstrate that approximately one-third of the perpetrators, irrespective of homicide type, had been diagnosed with a mental disorder (excluding substance related disorders) at some point in life. Diagnosis of substance related disorders from psychiatric care was significantly more common in MMH perpetrators (37%) compared to IPF perpetrators (15%). Similarly low rates of major mental disorder were found in both groups (11%) when aggregating life-time diagnoses and diagnoses during commission of the crime. However, homicide-suicide in connection to the offense was relatively common in IPF perpetrators (20%). Thus, our study supports the notion that previous suicide attempts and suicide ideation are important indicators for predicting and possibly preventing IPF.
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spelling pubmed-89774482022-04-05 Mental Disorders and Intimate Partner Femicide: Clinical Characteristics in Perpetrators of Intimate Partner Femicide and Male-to-Male Homicide Caman, Shilan Sturup, Joakim Howner, Katarina Front Psychiatry Psychiatry Intimate partner violence against women is a global and persistent public health issue. An extreme manifestation of this problem is intimate partner femicide (IPF), the killing of a woman by a male partner. While declining trends of homicide rates have been observed over decades, rates of femicide and IPF have remained stable. Yet, IPF as a phenomenon has until recently been fairly invisible in Europe, why research from the European countries on rates and characteristics of IPF has been relatively scarce. One area of research, particularly in need of further scrutiny, is to what degree perpetrators of IPF suffer from mental health conditions, and what the clinical features are. The objective of present study was to add to the existing literature by investigating prevalence and types of mental disorders in perpetrators of IPF, and to compare with male-to-male homicide (MMH) perpetrators. Our aim was also to examine life-time contact with psychiatric services, and, with missed opportunities in mind, contacts shortly preceding the homicide. With a retrospective design, this population-based study includes all solved cases of male-perpetrated homicides against intimate female partners (IPF) and other males (MMH) committed in Sweden between January 2007 and December 2009. Primary and secondary psychiatric diagnoses based on ICD, version 8, 9 or 10 from psychiatric inpatient as well as outpatient care have been retrieved. In order to identify mental disorders in perpetrators during commission of the homicidal offense, we also retrieved diagnoses from forensic psychiatric evaluations. Our results demonstrate that approximately one-third of the perpetrators, irrespective of homicide type, had been diagnosed with a mental disorder (excluding substance related disorders) at some point in life. Diagnosis of substance related disorders from psychiatric care was significantly more common in MMH perpetrators (37%) compared to IPF perpetrators (15%). Similarly low rates of major mental disorder were found in both groups (11%) when aggregating life-time diagnoses and diagnoses during commission of the crime. However, homicide-suicide in connection to the offense was relatively common in IPF perpetrators (20%). Thus, our study supports the notion that previous suicide attempts and suicide ideation are important indicators for predicting and possibly preventing IPF. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-03-21 /pmc/articles/PMC8977448/ /pubmed/35386515 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2022.844807 Text en Copyright © 2022 Caman, Sturup and Howner. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychiatry
Caman, Shilan
Sturup, Joakim
Howner, Katarina
Mental Disorders and Intimate Partner Femicide: Clinical Characteristics in Perpetrators of Intimate Partner Femicide and Male-to-Male Homicide
title Mental Disorders and Intimate Partner Femicide: Clinical Characteristics in Perpetrators of Intimate Partner Femicide and Male-to-Male Homicide
title_full Mental Disorders and Intimate Partner Femicide: Clinical Characteristics in Perpetrators of Intimate Partner Femicide and Male-to-Male Homicide
title_fullStr Mental Disorders and Intimate Partner Femicide: Clinical Characteristics in Perpetrators of Intimate Partner Femicide and Male-to-Male Homicide
title_full_unstemmed Mental Disorders and Intimate Partner Femicide: Clinical Characteristics in Perpetrators of Intimate Partner Femicide and Male-to-Male Homicide
title_short Mental Disorders and Intimate Partner Femicide: Clinical Characteristics in Perpetrators of Intimate Partner Femicide and Male-to-Male Homicide
title_sort mental disorders and intimate partner femicide: clinical characteristics in perpetrators of intimate partner femicide and male-to-male homicide
topic Psychiatry
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8977448/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35386515
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2022.844807
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