The Particularities of Tunisian Psychotic Parricide: Fourteen Cases

Abstract

Parricide is defined as “the act of killing one’s father or mother or any other legitimate ascendant”. In Tunisia
and according to article 203 of the Penal Code, the murderer is punished by death. In our country, there is no
precise epidemiological data concerning the frequency of this crime which represents between 1 and 5% of all
homicides, but it is quite frequent in psychotic murderers and in particular schizophrenics.
We propose, through a retrospective study done on 14 psychotic parricides, from the legal psychiatry ward of
the Razi hospital over a period of 26 years (1979-2004), to outline the profile of the psychotic parricide and to
address the clinical and forensic aspect of this crime with the objective of recognizing the parricide risk factors in
order to prevent this serious act from an increasing occurrence