[Psychotic parricide: clinical and analytic study: about 16 cases]

ABSTRACT

The parricide is defined as "murder of the father or the mother or any other legitimate ascendant.'>It represents I to 5%of all homicides and 20 to 30%of psychotic homicides. In Tunisia, few studies have focused on this issue. We propose its this work to describe the profile of psychotic parricide. We tried to identify risk factors in order to prevent this acting out. Our study is retrospective we observed 16 male patients diagnosed with schizophrenia hospitalized between June 1979 and March 2008 in the forensic psychiatry department at the psychiatric hospital-in Tunis, discharged for no ground for prosecution following parricide. They accounted for 20.8%of psychotic homicides hospitalized during the same period [16/77] and approximately 30%of homicides committed by schizophrenic patients. We found as many as patricide as matricide. The main factors that have emerged through our study are an early age [28 years], being single [70%], the socio-cultural. Poverty, unemployment, .paranoid delusions hallucinations and recent treatment interruption. All these factors have been cited by many authors including Millaud et al, they also cited history o violence and violent behavior and alcohol or drug, abuse. One important point is that some signs of this imminent gesture are often present but misunderstood, such a sense of situational impasse, a request fur help, or reluctance during interview. It is essential to identify risk factors, even to actively seek some warning signs, which often are not spontaneously reported by the psychotic patient. Hospitalization under constraint in psychiatry should be the appropriate response if these dangrousness signals are noticed by the psychiatrist