Witnessing the pain of suffering: Exploring the relationship between media representations, public understandings and policy responses to filicide-suicide

Abstract

This paper is concerned to map the phenomenon of filicide-suicide as it has been reported in academic research and the newspapers. It is focused on the findings of an exploratory investigation of newspaper reporting on these events in Britain and Eire between 1991 and 2011 and is concerned to address the potential relationship between this reporting behaviour and wider public understanding of these events. In so doing the paper falls into three parts. The first part presents an analysis of what is known about filicide-suicide: the academic narrative. The second part presents the findings of the empirical investigation referred to above: the media narrative. The third part explores the possible interconnection between these two narratives and the policy and professional context of responding to child abuse in the United Kingdom: the policy narrative. In the light of this analysis the paper considers what can be done about such family tragedies and the way in which we witness and make sense of them.