Murder-suicide – a brief systematic review

Abstract

Murder-suicide is a relatively rare event, but one with a very high emotional and social impact. Despite this, there is still a relative paucity of data on the association of homicide and suicide. Therefore, the present paper aims to review the latest scientific literature on murder-suicide. We conducted a PubMed search using “murder suicide” as search phrase and we included papers published between 2015 and 2020 that were focused specifically on murder-suicide. Most studies conducted so far were based on forensic data, thus our understanding of the psychological processes behind murder-suicide is extremely limited. Nevertheless, the evidence shows that any patient with suicidal ideation should also be evaluated for homicidal ideation. Furthermore, the data shows that homicide, suicide and murder-suicide are very different phenomena; therefore, they should be reported separately. Some authors go as far as to suggest that murder-suicide should be considered a form of murder, rather than a form of suicide.