A study of young-age and mid-life homicidal women admitted to a psychiatric hospital for pre-trial evaluation.
The authors compared a group of young female homicidal offenders with a group of middle-aged homicidal women as to demographic data, psychopathology, physical disorders and type of victims chosen. Young women tend to have low socioeconomic status, have antisocial personality disorder, and/or schizophrenia as psychiatric diagnoses and most likely kill their children, while mid-life women tend to have slightly higher socioeconomic status, suffer from affective disorder and alcoholism and have more frequent physical disorders and most likely murder their spouses. A significant finding noted among mid-life women is the high frequency of physical abuse by husbands who later become their homicide victims. Treatment implications of these findings are noted.
D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000437:Alcoholism / Q000523:psychology; D000987:Antisocial Personality Disorder / Q000523:psychology; D003417:Criminal Psychology; D005260:Female; D006708:Homicide; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D012565:Schizophrenic Psychology; D012923:Social Class; D013179:Spouse Abuse