So um. Don't shoot your kids. It's so not cool, okay?
Part of my job is to follow media stories and journal articles pertaining to trends in mental health at the state, local, and national levels. Lately, there's been a lot of news coverage about the family murder-suicide that occurred in Porter Ranch last weekend--notable to our community because one of the six dead was a UCLA Rhodes Scholar. The wigged out father shot and killed five other family members before killing himself.
In 2008, researchers noted in the paper American Roulette: Murder Suicide in the United States that the amount of murder-suicides in America signal a growing epidemic. However, this research largely correlates to other domestic violence studies where murder-suicide usually follows a pattern of "boy meets girl, boy hits girl, girl tries to break up with boy, boy's all like: 'I can't live without you so we both can't live, I'm going to kill us!'" and largely contained to dysfunctional couples aka "Intimate Partner Murder Suicide". When a murder-suicide involves children, oftentimes it's the result of a husband or ex-husband wanting to "punish" his wife by destroying what is most dear to her and leaving her alive to live with her guilt. In situations like these the children are not seen as human beings but as property in scorched-earth vengeance.
In the Porter Ranch case, though, revenge was not the name of the game. I hate to admit it but once I heard that the entire family was dead--making it not a revenge case--I immediately profiled them in my mind: The dad did it. He was probably an immigrant from Asia. He was probably ashamed. He probably had control issues or felt he was losing control of his life and/or family. Kind of sucks for the kids... This type of murder-suicide is perpetrated by what the linked paper above calls male "family annihilators."
"In many cases, a family annihilator is suffering from depression and has financial or other problems and feels the family is better off dying with him than remaining alive to deal with the problems at hand."
Which in layman terms I take to mean characteristics of depression mixed with a butthurt ego. (I mean, people say that the act of suicide is inherently selfish--how selfish is taking out not only yourself but your family as well?)
Sensationalist media is blaming this most recent suicide on the economy, and since this news broke many people in dire financial straits or in foreclosure are calling in to help lines threatening to pull a "Porter Ranch" on their own families. But I think equal attention should be paid to cultural competency in our mental health system: why did this unsuccessful businessman think killing his entire family, including his brilliant son, was the best option?
How did I guess the dad was an Asian immigrant? Well, the simple explanation is that when family murder suicides pop up in the media, I take notice. I don't actively track them, but they embed pretty strongly in my consciousness. And there are patterns. For example, the most recent spate of Los Angeles family suicides took place in 2006. That year, there were five cases of "family annihilation," including three families in the span of one week--the week before Easter. All five families were members of the Korean American community and people did not make light of the cultural connection: the fact that each family was a part of the Asian/Pacific Islander immigrant community. Yup, when stuff like this happens, it's usually Asian American immigrant families.
Now, this is purely speculative but I think that recent, Asian, immigrants aren't as infused with the Judeo-Christian "sanctity of life" culture that tells you that if you kill yourself, you go to hell as the rest of mainstream America sees it. There's a greater tolerance of suicide--even concepts of "heroic suicide" that restores honor to the family name--in eastern cultures. Japan and South India have some of the highest rates of suicide in the world. There's also less of an emphasis of familial ties. In the United States, children are seen more as independent selves than extensions of their parents--as is more the case in collectivist cultures. There are also a lot of stressors that come with being an immigrant. This article about a teenage girl who survived her father's rampage is pretty horrifying to me and tries to explain a little of what her life was like with her father.
Beyond cultural shock, difficulty adapting may lead to feelings of cultural inferiority. Eastern cultures have more of an "automatic" respect set up where people are entitled to respect depending on what they are (social position, male gender, head of the household, etc) while American culture places a lot more emphasis on respect as something to be earned. As immigrant women are usually better at adapting to American lifestyles, the men may feel that their wives are making them look bad. Asian cultures also lack a mental health support system, especially for men, since mental health issues are associated with weakness. There we go again with the shame. In 2002 a study found that family suicides among immigrant Hmong were the result of "the changed economic status of some Hmong women and the violent backlash by men who feel they have 'lost control' of their women. ... Men use suicide killings as a weapon to keep their wives in line by ... threatening: 'If you don't behave, the whole family will die.' "
I don't remember when I first learned about the concept of "family suicide." Coming from a Taiwanese family I was raised to believe that this kind of behavior--a father taking out the entire family--was nothing out of the ordinary. According to this 2003 LA times article there were 78 reported incidents in Taiwan in the 1990s. Given that Taiwan was once occupied by Japan--and Japan is famous for um, seppuku I'm not surprised there was influence. Japan has common terms for the specific practice: muri shinju or oyako shinju. I've always been under the impression that in Asian cultures this is a common final solution.
Wang Yu-min, an executive at Taiwan's Children Welfare Assn., said some suicidal parents kill their children because of an Asian view that parents own their children.
"Many of our parents consider children their own property or subordinates," Wang said. "They will live and die together with the children. It is a different way of showing parental love than in the West."
Experts in Hong Kong, where 20% of murder-suicides involve children, say that parents are driven to kill their kids out of "delusional altruism."
I guess it's not surprising that these cultural attitudes also surface under the pressures of adapting to life in the United States. I really do believe it is all about control--that in situations like these the man feels that he has lost control of his family, or his life situation-- and that murdering the family--or even just threatening to murder the family--is a certain way to control outcome. I mean, killing yourself leaves problems for the survivors. But if you kill everyone then you're no longer inconveniencing them because they are dead! There's a sense of entitlement, too--that you're entitled to control your family's fate.
I'm not sure if this is a common Asian American experience or not, but when I was a kid, I was raised to believe that at any time, if enough bad shit went down, my parents could and would snap and kill all of us. From what I've heard from other Asian American friends, it's really not uncommon for parents to say things like, "Are you trying to drive me to suicide?" (amirite you guys?)
From as early as kindergarten, whenever family murder-suicides were reported in the Chinese paper my mother would clip the articles and read them to me as a cautionary tales and then reassure me that this would not happen to our family as long as I was a good daughter. In my formative years, my father would regularly ytell me that if I did not start to behave and respect him I would drive him to the brink and one day he'd just snap and something bad like this would happen. When I was a pre-teen whenever my family was in bad sorts--financial problems, domestic squabbles, you name it--I used to sleep with a box cutter under my pillow. I know that's ridiculous (box cutter vs. gun. right.) but it was quite easy for my parents, especially my father, to use this threat to control me.
In any case, I am baffled that the American people are so surprised when acts like this happen, because I grew up thinking it could easily happen to me. I am a proponent of gun control because I strongly believe that if there were not the current significant barriers in place it likely would have happened in my family. Asian American families can be pretty socially isolated so it's important for them to receive mental health outreach and occasionally a bitchy smackdown telling them that killing their kids is like, so totally not appropriate. Or something like that.
In 2008, researchers noted in the paper American Roulette: Murder Suicide in the United States that the amount of murder-suicides in America signal a growing epidemic. However, this research largely correlates to other domestic violence studies where murder-suicide usually follows a pattern of "boy meets girl, boy hits girl, girl tries to break up with boy, boy's all like: 'I can't live without you so we both can't live, I'm going to kill us!'" and largely contained to dysfunctional couples aka "Intimate Partner Murder Suicide". When a murder-suicide involves children, oftentimes it's the result of a husband or ex-husband wanting to "punish" his wife by destroying what is most dear to her and leaving her alive to live with her guilt. In situations like these the children are not seen as human beings but as property in scorched-earth vengeance.
In the Porter Ranch case, though, revenge was not the name of the game. I hate to admit it but once I heard that the entire family was dead--making it not a revenge case--I immediately profiled them in my mind: The dad did it. He was probably an immigrant from Asia. He was probably ashamed. He probably had control issues or felt he was losing control of his life and/or family. Kind of sucks for the kids... This type of murder-suicide is perpetrated by what the linked paper above calls male "family annihilators."
"In many cases, a family annihilator is suffering from depression and has financial or other problems and feels the family is better off dying with him than remaining alive to deal with the problems at hand."
Which in layman terms I take to mean characteristics of depression mixed with a butthurt ego. (I mean, people say that the act of suicide is inherently selfish--how selfish is taking out not only yourself but your family as well?)
Sensationalist media is blaming this most recent suicide on the economy, and since this news broke many people in dire financial straits or in foreclosure are calling in to help lines threatening to pull a "Porter Ranch" on their own families. But I think equal attention should be paid to cultural competency in our mental health system: why did this unsuccessful businessman think killing his entire family, including his brilliant son, was the best option?
How did I guess the dad was an Asian immigrant? Well, the simple explanation is that when family murder suicides pop up in the media, I take notice. I don't actively track them, but they embed pretty strongly in my consciousness. And there are patterns. For example, the most recent spate of Los Angeles family suicides took place in 2006. That year, there were five cases of "family annihilation," including three families in the span of one week--the week before Easter. All five families were members of the Korean American community and people did not make light of the cultural connection: the fact that each family was a part of the Asian/Pacific Islander immigrant community. Yup, when stuff like this happens, it's usually Asian American immigrant families.
Now, this is purely speculative but I think that recent, Asian, immigrants aren't as infused with the Judeo-Christian "sanctity of life" culture that tells you that if you kill yourself, you go to hell as the rest of mainstream America sees it. There's a greater tolerance of suicide--even concepts of "heroic suicide" that restores honor to the family name--in eastern cultures. Japan and South India have some of the highest rates of suicide in the world. There's also less of an emphasis of familial ties. In the United States, children are seen more as independent selves than extensions of their parents--as is more the case in collectivist cultures. There are also a lot of stressors that come with being an immigrant. This article about a teenage girl who survived her father's rampage is pretty horrifying to me and tries to explain a little of what her life was like with her father.
Beyond cultural shock, difficulty adapting may lead to feelings of cultural inferiority. Eastern cultures have more of an "automatic" respect set up where people are entitled to respect depending on what they are (social position, male gender, head of the household, etc) while American culture places a lot more emphasis on respect as something to be earned. As immigrant women are usually better at adapting to American lifestyles, the men may feel that their wives are making them look bad. Asian cultures also lack a mental health support system, especially for men, since mental health issues are associated with weakness. There we go again with the shame. In 2002 a study found that family suicides among immigrant Hmong were the result of "the changed economic status of some Hmong women and the violent backlash by men who feel they have 'lost control' of their women. ... Men use suicide killings as a weapon to keep their wives in line by ... threatening: 'If you don't behave, the whole family will die.' "
I don't remember when I first learned about the concept of "family suicide." Coming from a Taiwanese family I was raised to believe that this kind of behavior--a father taking out the entire family--was nothing out of the ordinary. According to this 2003 LA times article there were 78 reported incidents in Taiwan in the 1990s. Given that Taiwan was once occupied by Japan--and Japan is famous for um, seppuku I'm not surprised there was influence. Japan has common terms for the specific practice: muri shinju or oyako shinju. I've always been under the impression that in Asian cultures this is a common final solution.
Wang Yu-min, an executive at Taiwan's Children Welfare Assn., said some suicidal parents kill their children because of an Asian view that parents own their children.
"Many of our parents consider children their own property or subordinates," Wang said. "They will live and die together with the children. It is a different way of showing parental love than in the West."
Experts in Hong Kong, where 20% of murder-suicides involve children, say that parents are driven to kill their kids out of "delusional altruism."
I guess it's not surprising that these cultural attitudes also surface under the pressures of adapting to life in the United States. I really do believe it is all about control--that in situations like these the man feels that he has lost control of his family, or his life situation-- and that murdering the family--or even just threatening to murder the family--is a certain way to control outcome. I mean, killing yourself leaves problems for the survivors. But if you kill everyone then you're no longer inconveniencing them because they are dead! There's a sense of entitlement, too--that you're entitled to control your family's fate.
I'm not sure if this is a common Asian American experience or not, but when I was a kid, I was raised to believe that at any time, if enough bad shit went down, my parents could and would snap and kill all of us. From what I've heard from other Asian American friends, it's really not uncommon for parents to say things like, "Are you trying to drive me to suicide?" (amirite you guys?)
From as early as kindergarten, whenever family murder-suicides were reported in the Chinese paper my mother would clip the articles and read them to me as a cautionary tales and then reassure me that this would not happen to our family as long as I was a good daughter. In my formative years, my father would regularly ytell me that if I did not start to behave and respect him I would drive him to the brink and one day he'd just snap and something bad like this would happen. When I was a pre-teen whenever my family was in bad sorts--financial problems, domestic squabbles, you name it--I used to sleep with a box cutter under my pillow. I know that's ridiculous (box cutter vs. gun. right.) but it was quite easy for my parents, especially my father, to use this threat to control me.
In any case, I am baffled that the American people are so surprised when acts like this happen, because I grew up thinking it could easily happen to me. I am a proponent of gun control because I strongly believe that if there were not the current significant barriers in place it likely would have happened in my family. Asian American families can be pretty socially isolated so it's important for them to receive mental health outreach and occasionally a bitchy smackdown telling them that killing their kids is like, so totally not appropriate. Or something like that.