Post-homicide suicides: review of literature

Suicide committed after the homicide, is a brutal form of aggressive behavior that is rarely observed in everyday life. In our opinion, in Russian, the term "post-homicide suicides" (PHS) is concise and inclusive. The present review of the literature is aimed at examining the main results of foreign research on PHS. Criteria for typology of PHS has been fluctuating over a wide time frame (hours and months), there is also a reasonable proposal to take into account the causal relationship between homicide and subsequent suicide. Spousal (intimate partner) PHS are the most common (40-70% of all cases), filicide-suicide (2.9-36%), familicide-suicide (2-31.9%) and extra-familial (2.9-40%) PHS. Prevalence of PHS in different countries of the world ranges from 0.4 to 8.9 cases per 1 million inhabitants. In Chuvashia (a region of Russia), the cases of PHS range from 1 to 6 (on average - 4.2±2.0 cases per year) or from 0,8 to 4,84 (on average - 3.33 cases) per 1 million inhabitants...