FACTORS ASSOCIATED WITH WEAPON USE IN MATERNAL FILICIDE

The objective of this study was to identify factors associated with we apon use in a group of filicidal women. Clinical data were gathered fr om the charts of sixty filicidal women evaluated at Michigan's Center for Forensic Psychiatry or through Connecticut's Psychiatric Security Review Board from 1970 to 1996. Factors associated with weapon use wer e determined using chi squares, ANCOVAS, and a logistic regression. Re sults were compared to national statistics for child homicide from the Department of Justice Uniform Crime Reports (UCR). Weapon was defined as knife or gun for the study. Weapons were used by one of four women in our study. Guns were used by 13% of filicidal women and knives by 12%. Odds ratio showed that psychotic women were eleven times more lik ely to kill their child with a weapon than their non-psychotic counter parts (11.2; p = .008). Psychosis was present in every mother who kill ed her child with a knife and in seven of eight women who killed their children with a gun. Younger children were less likely to be killed w ith weapons (ANCOVA; F = 8.28; p = .006). This finding was independent of presence or absence of maternal psychosis. These results show that psychotic women are more likely than non-psychotic women to kill thei r children with weapons. They also show that mothers are more likely t o use weapons to kill older children than younger children.