Recession to Fuel More Family Murder, Suicide

The dramatic murder-suicides last month involving a family in Ohio and another in California might be the tip of a deadly domestic-violence iceberg, a sociologist says.

The topic, of course, is highly complex. In a nutshell, however, several studies have found that suicides as well as domestic violence spike for the unemployed. While family murder-suicides are relatively uncommon, such events can be tied to poor economic situations such as the current recession, said Sampson Blair, a sociologist at University of Buffalo. "I expect an increase in such incidents over the next few years because economic strain on families provokes depression and desperation," Blair said.

A 2003 study led by Jacquelyn Campbell at the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing found that unemployment is the single strongest predictor in cases where men murder their wives. An abuser's lack of a job increased the risk of femicide fourfold, Campbell's team reported in the American Journal of Public Health.