By: Ethan Trinh

This autohistoria, or “a personal essay that theorizes,” is a special piece to me. It is spiritual, poetic, political, and dialogic. This essay thus delves deeper into the mourning, the fear, the tears, the pain, the loneliness, the strength of a Vietnamese queer immigrant in a state of Nepantla in order to relate with other queers of color in the dark (i.e., in suicidal process). “Living in Nepantla, the overlapping space between different perceptions and belief systems, you are aware of the changeability of racial, gender, sexual, and other categories rendering the conventional label-ling obsolete.” In this space, I attempt to use the concept of Nepantla to describe and understand stages of pre- and post-suicide attempt that I experienced. Then, I will conclude with a call for policy change to ask for attention to those who live in the life-death margins and in between and among worlds as mine.

LGBTQ Policy Journal

By: Ecaterina Balica

Objective. The present paper analyses the relation between the number of blows, location of wounds and the length between homicide and suicide in homicide-suicide (HS) cases committed in Romania in the timeframe 2002-2013. At the same time, the study presents the correlation between three types of HS (intimate partner homicide-suicide (IPH-S), filicide- suicides (FS), familicides-suicides (Fam-S) and the above mentioned variables.

Method. The data regarding the number of blows, location of wounds and length between homicide and suicide were extracted from the Homicide-suicides in Romania 2002-2013 database (N=132). The database includes information regarding all HS committed in Romania and the data were collected from the recordings of the Criminal Investigations Services, from criminal files in prosecutors’ custody and from articles published in online newspapers. The data analysis was done by using SPSS 22.0.

Results. More than a half of the suicides occurred immediately after the aggressor committed the homicide (N=71; 53.8%). In approximately two thirds of the cases (N=56; 57.1%), the death of the victim resulted from a great number of blows. Many aggressors preferred to hit their victims in the head area (21.5%) or neck area (22.3%) only. The most common suicide method recorded in HS cases was by hanging (34.8%).

Conclusions. The prevention of the HS seems to be a difficult task after the aggressor initiated the first act of aggression (the homicide). Therefore, prevention and intervention have to be focused on the initial phases of the acts of violence that precede HS.

Rom J Leg Med [26] 308-313 [2018]

By Thomas Joiner

Of the approximately 38,500 deaths by suicide in the U.S. annually, about two percent--between 750 and 800--are murder-suicides. The horror of murder-suicides looms large in the public consciousness--they are reported in the media with more frequency and far more sensationalism than most suicides, and yet we have little understanding of this grave form of violence.

In The Perversion of Virtue, leading suicide researcher Thomas Joiner explores the nature of murder-suicide and offers a unique new theory to explain this nearly unexplainable act: that murder-suicides always involve the wrongheaded invocation of one of four interpersonal virtues: mercy, justice, duty, and glory. The parent who murders his child and then himself seeks to save his child from a fatherless life of hardship; the wife who murders her husband and then herself seeks to right the wrongs he committed against her, and so on. Murder-suicides involve the gross misperception of when and how these four virtues should be applied.

Drawing from extensive research as well as real examples from the media, Joiner meticulously examines, deconstructs, and finally rebuilds our understanding of murder-suicide in such a way that brings tragic reason to what may seem an unfathomable act of violence. Along the way, he dispels some of the most enduring myths of suicide--for instance, that suicide is usually an impulsive act (it is almost always pre-meditated), or that alcohol or drugs are involved in most suicides (usually they are not).

Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2014. 264p.