Experts: Cases Point to Rise in Violence

To kill one’s children--then take one’s own life--violates such powerful societal and moral taboos that such cases seldom occur. To see two murder-suicides within 15 miles of each other in the same week is extraordinary, say mental health experts.

Sadly, they say, the twin cases of fathers who apparently killed their offspring then themselves in Anaheim early Monday and in Huntington Beach early Friday is symptomatic of a steep rise in violence of all kinds--but particularly in child abuse, homicide and suicide--throughout the United States during the past several decades, in good times and bad.

“It’s an extreme manifestation of psychopathology that a parent would act out violently to his or her own young,” said Dr. Charles Grob, a professor of psychiatry at UC Irvine’s College of Medicine and director of child and adolescent inpatient psychiatry at UCI Medical Center. “But we also see that the apparent rates of very severe child abuse seems to be on the increase. There seems to be a real escalation of violence in our society.”

An individual who commits such horrific acts is often driven by a combination of depression and an inability to resolve problems that have grown deeper and deeper, according to Grob and other mental health professionals.

In some cases, when people are in such an emotional state over unresolved conflict, they act to end their troubles--and sometimes to pay back the person seen as the cause of those problems, said psychologist Steven L. Schandler, director of psychological research at Chapman University in Orange.

“This is speculation, but in these cases, it could be that they were saying: ‘I’m going to make you suffer; I’m going to kill your children--kill them and take what you love away from you so that you’ll suffer,’ ” Schandler said.

Relatives have said that 41-year-old machinist Duc Dang Luong was increasingly despondent over the breakup of his marriage before he and his four children burned to death in the bedroom of their ranch-style home in Anaheim early Monday. Anaheim police have said they are investigating the case as a possible murder-suicide.

And in Huntington Beach, police said 31-year-old John Craig Carlson was distraught over breaking up with his girlfriend when he wounded her early Friday morning, shot their infant son to death, then put a gun to his head and killed himself.

But it is unlikely that the breakup of a love relationship was the only problem.

“Suspending a relationship with another individual is serious enough, but by itself, given the rate of divorce in this country, can’t be producing this kind of behavior,” Schandler said.

“My feeling is that this is the final result of other problems--things just building and building and building up on the family unit. The male is held responsible for not providing for the family, whether rightly or wrongly, and when the wife is going to walk out with the kids, that’s the last straw.”

Grob noted, too, that many people who commit such desperate acts may well suffer from severe psychiatric disorders that have gone unrecognized and untreated for some time. And some also may have a dependence on alcohol or drugs, especially stimulants such as amphetamines.

The tragedy, Grob said, is that such mental illnesses, particularly the underlying depression, is “by and large preventable if there is early recognition and sufficient commitment by the family and society to intervene and get effective treatment.”

Yet even that help is increasingly unavailable to people as the economy has worsened and government funding has been decreased for mental health programs.

“Insurance companies are now increasingly refusing to subsidize adequate treatment for mental health,” Grob said. “And more and more people at risk for committing violent acts are not being provided with the psychiatric treatment they must have.”