Two femicides within a short period of time — and a common element in how they unfolded. In Nea Smyrni, after murdering his 45-year-old former partner, the 48-year-old perpetrator took his own life. In Rodopi, just three days later, a 53-year-old estranged husband murdered his 44-year-old wife and then attempted suicide. The two cases inevitably raise a pressing question: is there a common “pattern” in cases where, following a femicide, the perpetrator turns violence against himself? Can suicidality be linked to the murder of a partner, or are these two distinct phenomena that occasionally intersect?
Psychiatrist and psychotherapist Antonis Kasimatis — a retired Major General and former Director of Health Services of the Hellenic Police — speaking to parapolitika.gr, is notably cautious about drawing such generalizations. “It cannot be characterized as a pattern in any way,” he stresses, explaining that the fact that similar incidents occur close together in time is not sufficient to prove they follow the same underlying mechanism.
“We cannot correlate femicides with suicidality”
Mr. Kasimatis draws a clear distinction between suicidality and femicide, emphasizing that the two cannot automatically be treated as two expressions of the same phenomenon. “We cannot correlate femicides with suicidality in the general population. These are different phenomena that may become intertwined,” he states plainly.
This distinction carries significant weight. The fact that a perpetrator dies by suicide or attempts to do so immediately after murdering a woman may create the impression of a direct link between the two acts. According to the psychiatrist, however, the chronological sequence alone is not enough to establish a shared psychopathological mechanism.
The “you won’t live without me” logic and the trap of easy interpretations
In many such cases, a near-automatic assumption emerges — that the perpetrator operates under the logic: “If I’m not going to live, you won’t live without me either.”
Mr. Kasimatis regards such a generalization as a misconception. As he explains, suicidality alone is not sufficient to explain why a person first directs violence outward against someone else.
In his view, the perpetrator’s personality and the way aggression manifests are distinct variables that must be examined separately. In some cases, self-destructive behavior is directed exclusively inward, while in others it may coexist with violence toward people in the individual’s immediate environment.
This, however, does not mean that suicidality leads to violence against a partner — nor that a person with suicidal ideation is, by definition, a danger to those around them.
Can extreme behavior be predicted?
Another critical question concerns prevention. Can a specialist, a family member, or the authorities recognize early enough that a person may be heading toward an extreme act?
Mr. Kasimatis points out that reliably predicting suicidal behavior at the individual level is extremely difficult, and that it is simply not possible to know with certainty who will act on such impulses in the future.
“It doesn’t matter if I see something. What matters is whether I can prove it or substantiate it,” he notes, highlighting the difficulty of drawing firm conclusions — particularly when there is a tendency to impose a single, definitive explanation on an extreme act after the fact.
The difficulty of prediction, however, does not mean that mental health concerns or warning signs of imminent danger should be dismissed. On the contrary, he underscores the complexity of the phenomenon and the impossibility of applying a one-size-fits-all explanation to every case.
What happens when there is a prior history of abusive behavior?
The picture changes when there are already clear indicators or a documented history of abusive behavior. In such cases, the discussion is not only about whether a future act of self-harm can be predicted, but also about how the person facing the abuser can be protected in time.
When addressing what can be done when someone has already displayed serious abusive behavior, Mr. Kasimatis raises the practical challenge of managing such cases and the limitations of available interventions.
This point is crucial: mental illness, suicidality, and abusive behavior are not interchangeable concepts and must not be conflated. The presence of a mental disorder does not imply violent behavior, just as the exercise of violence cannot automatically be attributed to mental illness.
Why we cannot speak of a single unified “pattern”
The two recent cases share one visible characteristic: after killing the women, the perpetrators turned violence against themselves — in one case with fatal consequences, in the other as an attempt.
This, however, according to Mr. Kasimatis, is not sufficient to establish the existence of a single, scientifically validated pattern.
Suicidality, abusive behavior, and extreme violence against a partner may coexist in the same case without constituting the same phenomenon — and without one being able to fully explain the other.
The cases from Rodopi and Nea Smyrni do not lend themselves to easy generalizations. Instead, they reveal just how complex it is to interpret a perpetrator’s behavior — and, above all, how essential it is to distinguish suicidality from abusive and lethal violence.
