Parricides: Characteristics of offenders and victims, legal factors, and treatment issues

Parricides account for about 2 % of all homicides. Perpetrators are typical ly White middle-class males without a history of prior criminal convictions . Most parricides involve single-victim, single-offender situations, with f irearms more likely to be used against fathers than mothers. The popular li terature as well as much of the professional literature have presented yout hs who killed a parent as prosocial individuals who feared for their lives. Adults who killed a parent have typically been presented as suffering from a severe mental disorder. These two scenarios describe many parricides. Ho wever, major mental disorders among youthful parricidal offenders, conduct disorder and antisocial personality disorder as well as other psychiatric c omorbidities also occur in a significant proportion of parricides. Youthful and adult offenders experience different legal outcomes and receive mental health services in differing contexts. We review offender and victim chara cteristics, as well as legal and treatment issues, and outline needs for fu ture research. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd.