Premium
Maternal Filicide in Turkey
Author(s) -
Eke Salih Murat,
Basoglu Saba,
Bakar Bulent,
Oral Gokhan
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
journal of forensic sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.715
H-Index - 96
eISSN - 1556-4029
pISSN - 0022-1198
DOI - 10.1111/1556-4029.12560
Subject(s) - neglect , psychology , poison control , harm , psychopathology , suicide prevention , psychiatry , injury prevention , human factors and ergonomics , pity , socioeconomic status , developmental psychology , medical emergency , medicine , social psychology , population , environmental health
Filicide occurs in every socioeconomic stratum around the world. This study was conducted to evaluate motives, psychopathological aspects, and socio‐demographic factors of 74 filicide cases of women in Turkey. Mean age of mothers, most of whom committed infanticide, was 26 years, and breakdown of criminal offenses are as follows: “to get rid of unwanted babies” (24.3%), “acute psychotic‐type filicide” (21.6%), “fatal child abuse and neglect” (17.6%), “to get revenge” (12.2%), “protect the lonely child from the harm and badness after suicide” (10.8%), and “pity” (9.5%) motives. Results showed that maternal filicide cannot be reduced to only mental instability or environmental factors and indicates deficiencies in the capacity of the mothers' role in connecting with their child and with parenting skills. Finally, with regard to defendants' motives, similar factors that contribute to committing maternal filicide should be considered while making an assessment of the data and determining employee risk groups.