Poor mental health often plays a role in adults killing children. But it is primarily about violence

Recently, two babies died on opposite sides of the country. The first was a seven-month-old boy, found dead after being retrieved from a lake in rural Queensland.

A second baby, a six-month-old girl was found dead in Perth, Western Australia.

Both cases are being reported as family violence incidents. The boy was allegedly killed by “a man known to the child”, and the girl allegedly died at the hands of her mother.

Infanticide, neonaticide and filicide is the killing of one’s child. In Australia, one child per fortnight is killed by a parent, and each case is deeply confronting and tragic.

In the past, reporting on parents who kill their kids has frequently linked these crimes to mental illness. But now, reporting is making a link to family violence instead.

While this prompts very uncomfortable conversations, the shift in language is crucial to improve efforts to understand and curb family violence. By calling violence out for what it is, we can better protect children from harm.

‘Deadly state of mind’

We’ve researched how mental illness has been reported on in Australian media.

In our study of 1,532 mental health-related newspaper articles published between 2000 and 2014, 40% contained stories of violence.

The vast majority of this violence was attributed, at least in part, to mental ill-health.

Using mental illness to explain infanticide has been especially common when the perpetrator was a mother. This reinforces mental illness as an explanation for unimaginable crimes.

For instance, in 2001, Andrea Yates drowned her five children in their bathtub in Texas. The Australian called this “Mama’s deadly state of mind”.

When Christine Gifford took the life of her ten-year-old daughter, this was described by news media as “the worst excess of psychotic disorder”.

The same narrative is not generally employed for fathers, who are more often described as “wilful and deliberate” killers.

This was the case for Greg Anderson, who killed his son Luke Batty at a sports oval following cricket practice. Luke’s mother, Rosie Batty, saw her son’s death as a family violence matter.

Arthur Freeman, who threw his daughter Darcey off Melbourne’s West Gate Bridge in 2009, was depicted in news media as “cold” and “motivated by spousal revenge”.

Differences in how we explain and report on family violence perpetrated by men and women are complex, but both require attention.

Reducing mental health stigma

Reports on the recent deaths of two babies killed within hours of each other have not sought to link these crimes to mental illness. Domestic violence has been cited in both cases, suggesting a shift towards calling violence out for what it is: violence.

These shifts in language and reporting are important in reducing the stigma regularly associated with mental illness. People with mental illness are not inherently violent.

Research shows these crimes occur within contexts of poverty, abusive relationships, family breakdown, and poor family and social supports.

That’s not to say poor mental health doesn’t play a role in individual cases, but it’s far from the only contributor in most crimes.

Factors contributing to mental illness are themselves regularly related to childhood mistreatment, neglect and intimate partner violence.

As a result, changes in the ways family violence is reported connects to a growing body of research about how we understand the drivers of it.

Keeping children safe

Challenging explanations of infanticide as a product of mental illness also help dispel traditional views of women with tendencies for emotional hysteria and irrationality. This perception of women is a deeply rooted gender stereotype that lacks scientific basis and reinforces inequality.

Furthermore, this perception obscures the truth: women play a central and fundamental role in caring for children in the home, in the workplace and throughout our community. This is important to remember at a time when child protection issues are of national concern.

It creates an opportunity to examine the social conditions and societal factors linked to intimate partner violence, child mistreatment and violent crime.

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These conversations are uncomfortable because they require us to accept that babies, toddlers and children might not always be safe with their primary carers, or in early childhood settings.

Past media reporting elevated mental illness as an explanation for violent crime. In doing so, we could avoid conversations about family and domestic violence.

At a time when Australia is asking such important questions about levels of care for our children both inside and outside the home, these shifts in language sit equally alongside research, funding and policy in our collective pursuit of a safer community.