Homicide-suicide in the United States, 1968-1975.

This paper describes for the first time the epidemiology of homicide-suicide events in the whole of the United States using archival data. From 1968 to 1975, there were 2215 homicide-suicide events out of 123,467 homicides. The mean rate of homicide-suicide events was 0.134 per 100,000 per year. The murderers in these events differ from the typical murderer and the typical suicide in socio-demographic characteristics. Details of the characteristics of this population may be valuable for understanding the circumstances of homicide-suicide events and planning preventive measures.