Journal international sur la santé mentale d'urgence et la résilience humaine

Abstrait

Parricide: Children and Adolescents who Murder their Parents ? New Theoretical Insights

Arnon Edelstein

Parricide is a form of familicide, constituting 2-4% of all murders in the U.S. and Europe. Although the phenomenon is not new, academic interest in it began only in the 1990s. While most cases of parricide are perpetrated by adult children, this article addresses killing by minor sons. Most of the cases are those of boys killing their father. Academic literature has generally cited mental illness as a risk factor in the murder of a parent. I suggest a new insight according to which parental abuse and child neglect are the main motives in killing a parent, resulting from the fact that the child can no longer tolerate abuse towards himself or another family member. Because of the differences in physical strength between father and son, most of the cases of parricide occur when the father is distracted and the child uses the father’s gun to do the deed. After viewing risk factors and the results of research, I propose a new model that enables us to view the paths to parricide as well as non-violent alternatives, such as substance abuse and flight