Homicide combined with subsequent suicide of the perpetrator is a particular form of interpersonal violence and, at the same time, a manifestation of extreme aggression directed against oneself. Despite the relatively well-described individual acts of homicide and suicide, both in terms of psychopathology and law, acts of homicide and subsequent suicide committed by the same person are not well-studied phenomena. The importance of emotional factors, including the influence of mental state deviations (psychopathology), on this phenomenon, is discussed in the literature, but still there is relatively little data with which to attempt neuropathological assessments of the brains of suicide killers. This paper is dedicated to the issue based on the neuropathological studies performed.
We analyzed a group of murder-suicides using histochemical and immunohistochemical methods.
The results of our research indicate the presence of neurodegenerative changes including multiple deposits of ß-amyloid in the form of senile/amyloid plaques and perivascular diffuse plaques.
Neurodegenerative changes found in the analyzed brains of suicide killers may provide an interesting starting point for a number of analyses. The presence of neurodegenerative changes at such a young age in some murderers may suggest preclinical lesions that affect cognitive functions and are associated with depressed moods.

Maternal filicide has occurred throughout history and carries along with it, a host of paradoxical and complex clinical, legal and social dimensions. We present findings from a case series of four women inpatients, who were undergoing trials for filicide. All women reported severe marital discord and poor social support. Three had severe depressive episodes before and during the time of the alleged crime. The motive for the alleged act was \'altruistic\' in three of them. Early identification of psychiatric illness and risk assessment may help in early intervention and protect the mother and child.

OBJECTIVE: Familicide is a multiple-victim homicide incident in which the killer\'s spouse and one or more children are slain. A systematic review was conducted to reveal the background factors of western homicide perpetrators.
METHODS: The systematic search was performed in the Arto, Medic, Cinahl, Medline, EBSCOhost Academic Search Premier and Social Services abstracts databases. The keywords were familicide, family homicide, familicide-suicide, filicide-suicide, extended suicide, child, murder, family, filicide and infanticide. The searches revealed 4139 references from the databases. The references were filtered and 32 peer-reviewed research articles revealed in years 2004-2014 were selected as data. The articles were analysed using inductive content analysis, by finding all possible background factors related to homicide.
RESULTS: The factors were described as percentages of the range. The background factors of familicide perpetrators were categorised as follows: perpetrators who had committed homicide of a child and intimate partner and possibly committed suicide; a father had who killed a child; a mother who had killed a child; a father who had committed a filicide-suicide; and a mother who had committed a filicide-suicide.
CONCLUSIONS: Psychological instability, violence and crime were found in all these categories of familicides. Perpetrators who had committed a suicide in addition to the familicide had more often been diagnosed with depression, but they sought treatment for mental health problems less often and had violence and self-destructiveness less often in their background than in other familicide categories. Social and healthcare professionals should be more sensitive to emerging family problems and be prepared for intervention.