Suicide Among Murderers

SEVERAL years ago I treated a young woman who had mur- ~ dered her baby boy by stabbing him ten times. She killed him after a number of personally distressing experiences which began with another beating from her psychotic husband. She had been trying to get her husband into an emergency psychiatric hospital, and had requested help from social workers, Salvation Army staff, YMCA housing personnel, the police and local prosecuting attorney, to no avail. Even the husband’s psychiatrist had refused to inter-vene, as his Veterans ’ Administration Mental Hygiene Clinic was about to close for the evening. Her older son then developed a fever of 105 ° and although the hospital pediatrician expressed fears that the boy might have menin-gitis, his condition turned out to be measles; he was hospitalized. The young woman took her other baby back home and, after a call to her father resulted in only another rejection of her urgent cry for help, she killed the child.