Killing One's Own Baby: A Psychodynamic Overview with Clinical Approach to Filicide Cases

OBJECTIVE This review article discusses the multi-dimensional and complex pattern of filicide from a psychodynamic perspective with reference to the recent publications. Creating awareness to filicide among professionals will help to the correct assessment of the cases, recognition of and intervention on filicide before the act, and the development of preventive mechanisms. METHOD Published articles between January 1960 and March 2020 were searched using the keywords 'filicide, infanticide, neonaticide, mother/ parent/ maternal/ paternal, psychodynamics' in the Google Scholar, EBSCHO-HOST, Science-Direct, PubMed and Web of Science databases. RESULTS The term filicide refers to the murder of the offspring by the parent. Although it is a common belief that the children are murdered boy strangers, the reported figures may not be representing the truth. No families are detected in one fourth of all murdered infants within the first 24 hours. The death of abondoned children are classified as 'due to natural causes'. Some murders might not be reported properly and therefore, actual murders by own parents might have been missed on the records. It is known that filicide is a heterogeneous phenomenon requiring a multidimensional evaluation in being affected by cultural values, belief systems of the society as well as the bio-psycho-social and developmental variables. It is reported in the literature that filicide cases have a common profile and that training clinicians on this complex phenomenon would be effective on prevention strategies. CONCLUSION The concept of filicide is controversial in many aspects and mental health professionals tend to distance themselves since the concept is associated with 'crime'. However it is crucial to elucidate the psychodinamic background on violence and discuss the risk factors, triggers, background dynamics and psychopathologies underlying this phenomenon.