Definition
A homicide-suicide is an act of lethal violence that involves the intentional or nonintentional killing of one or more persons followed by the perpetrator’s suicide.
Introduction
Homicide-suicide (HS) acts are rare forms of lethal violence. Estimates indicate that in the United States, only 4% of the homicides registered annually are followed by the perpetrator’s suicide and only 1.5% of the annual suicides are committed by individuals who killed someone else before killing themselves (Large et al., 2009). Despite their rarity, homicide-suicide acts can have damaging social and public health consequences. These acts can have long-term deleterious effects on the victims’ families and because they are highly publicized by the media (e.g., mass killings perpetrated by an offender who commits suicide before being apprehended),...
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
References
Aderibigbe, Y. A. (1997). Violence in America: A survey of suicide linked to homicides. Journal of Forensic Sciences, 42(4), 662–665.
Barber, C., Hemenway, D., Hargarten, S., Kellermann, A., Azrael, D., & Wilt, S. (2000). A ‘call to arms’ for a National Reporting System on firearm injuries. American Journal of Public Health, 90(8), 1191–1193. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.90.8.1191
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (n.d.). CDC’s National Violence Death Reporting System (NVDRS). https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/nvdrs/NVDRS-Overview_factsheet.pdf
Fridel, E. E., & Zimmerman, G. M. (2019a). Putting homicide followed by suicide in context: Do macro-environmental characteristics impact the odds of committing suicide after homicide? Criminology, 57(1), 34–73.
Fridel, E. E., & Zimmerman, G. M. (2019b). Examining homicide-suicide as a current in the stream analogy of lethal violence. Social Forces, 97(3), 1177–1204.
Gillespie, M., Hearn, V., & Silverman, R. A. (1998). Suicide following homicide in Canada. Homicide Studies, 2(1), 46–63.
Heider, F. (1958). The psychology of interpersonal relations. Wiley.
Large, M., Smith, G., & Nielssen, O. (2009). The epidemiology of homicide followed by suicide: A systematic and quantitative review. Suicide & Life-Threatening Behavior, 39, 294–306.
Liem, M. (2010). Homicide followed by suicide: A review. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 15(3), 153–161. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.avb.2009.10.001
Panczak, R., Geissbühler, M., Zwahlen, M., Killias, M., Tal, K., & Egger, M. (2013). Homicide-suicides compared to homicides and suicides: Systematic review and meta-analysis. Forensic Science International, 233, 28–36.
Rouchy, E., Germanaud, E., Garcia, M., & Michel, G. (2020). Characteristics of homicide-suicide offenders: A systematic review. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 55. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.avb.2020.101490
Towers, S., Gomez-Lievano, A., Khan, M., Mubayi, A., & Castillo-Chavez, C. (2015). Contagion in mass killings and school shootings. PLoS One, 10(7), 1–12.
Violence Policy Center. (2020). American roulette: Murder – suicide in the United States. Seventh edition. https://vpc.org/studies/amroul2020.pdf
Violence Policy Center. (n.d.). Murder-suicide. https://vpc.org/revealing-the-impacts-of-gun-violence/murder-suicide/
Zimmerman, G. M., & Fridel, E. E. (2020). Contextualizing homicide-suicide: Examining how ecological gun availability affects homicide-suicide at multiple levels of analysis. Homicide Studies, 24(2), 151–177. https://doi.org/10.1177/1088767919878478
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Section Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2023 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this entry
Cite this entry
Andreescu, V. (2023). Homicide-Suicide in the United States. In: Shackelford, T.K. (eds) Encyclopedia of Domestic Violence. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85493-5_1976-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85493-5_1976-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-85493-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-85493-5
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Behavioral Science and PsychologyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences