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Infanticide in Women Who Are Victims of Domestic Violence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 April 2020

M. Kachaeva
M. Kachaeva*
Affiliation:
Forensic Psychiatric Department, Serbsky National Research Centre for Social and Forensic Psychiatry, Moscow, Russia

Abstract

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Infanticide is a worldwide troubling phenomenon as well as in Russia. Forensic psychiatrists found out that domestic abuse against women is often one of the main causes of crimes of violence in women.

Aims

To find out clinical and social factors contributing to specific female crime – infanticide.

Methods

clinical, psychological, statistical.

Results

A cohort of 12 females who had killed their children was examined. All women were victims of violence by their husbands or partners. Domestic abuse resulted in long-term mental problems of women. Clinical assessment has revealed depression, anxiety, fear, post traumatic stress disorder, alcohol abuse.

Women of the sample who had committed infanticide displayed pathological altruistic motivation of the crime. Alongside with clinical factors the research had revealed also social factors of infanticide. Women were often exposed to psychogenic situations with high level of stress (financial and housing problems, violence of the partner). In accordance with the Criminal Code of Russia the special article (106) governs infanticide. This law takes into account the psychogenic situation which caused the crime (battered women syndrome) and the fact that at the time of the child murder the mental state of mother was affected by childbirth.

Conclusion

In cases of infanticide the court is free to make verdict more lenient and its reflects more humane approach to such complicated phenomenon as child murder.

The study is supported by the grant 13-06-00127 of the Russian Humanitarian Scientific Fund

Type
Article: 0751
Information
European Psychiatry , Volume 30 , Issue S1: Abstracts of the 23rd European Congress of Psychiatry , March 2015 , pp. 1
Copyright
Copyright © European Psychiatric Association 2015
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