Homicide followed by suicide: a comparison with homicide and suicide.

Homicide-suicides are a rare yet very serious form of lethal violence which mainly occurs in partnerships and families. The extent to which homicide-suicide can be understood as being primarily a homicide or a suicide event, or rather a category of its own is examined. In total, 103 homicide-suicides were compared to 3,203 homicides and 17,751 suicides. These are all events that took place in the Netherlands in the period 1992 to 2006. Logistic regression analyses show that homicide-suicides significantly differ from both homicides and suicides with regard to sociodemographic and event characteristics. The findings suggest that homicide-suicide might be considered as a distinct phenomenon from both homicide and suicide.