I, too, wonder why spousal murder suicides are happening more frequently these days. Murder suicides are not unheard of but recently, cases after cases occurring in such short successions of each other in the Hmong community is a bit weird and alarming. I don't know if it's there's been a shift in people's perception towards murder suicides? What is happening in people's minds? Why do these men feel a need to take their spouses' lives and their own lives when faced with a difficult time in their marriages/relationships? It's like they lose sight of their children and of the positive sides to life, and their dark feelings about their marriages/relationships overpower them and take over their hearts and minds to make them murder their spouses and commit suicide.
I think there needs to be more advocacy for therapy within the Hmong community (and all communities). Also, within the Hmong community, there needs be a network of marriage support groups. People need to be taught/reminded that it's OK to talk things out with a therapist, with friends/family about their marriage issues. Talking things out is healing and can sometimes prevent such horrible things like murder suicides from happening. Sometimes people can't get out of their heads and feel like the only way they can break out of a bad place and out of the dark time they are in is to do the unimaginable: murder suicide. They forget about their children! People need to be reminded over and over again that murder suicide is not the answer. No one is ever worth killing for. Life is precious. Your children are precious.
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What I have learned through these murder suicides is that more people than we think have depression and mental illnesses. So many people do not know how to cope with their feelings (more so men than women as we have seen with the recent spousal killings). We need to find ways to give people help. I, too, have experienced dark times and felt hopeless but I've found that it's helped me to share my thoughts and feelings with others. Perhaps just checking in on each other every now and then. With technology at our fingertips, instant connection is there for us to connect with anyone at any time, but yet direct interaction with others happens less and less. We like each other's posts on facebook but how often do we actually call each other up on the phone anymore? How often do we hang out with each other anymore? Everyone has their own lives and we use the convenience of seeing each other's "posts" as a way to keep updated on each other but often the physical/human touch remains missing in our lives. We stay inside our own heads a lot of the times. We live inside our own little lives and bubbles a lot of the times. My point is, perhaps some murder suicides can be prevented if we just check up on each other more often and get people to start talking and get them out of their heads and give them a different perspective on things.
Often, people that have tried committing suicide state that a phone call was what saved their life... just a little food for thought and just one of many ways we can maybe help each other to prevent these horrible deaths from happening. There are many more ways to prevent 'murder suicides' and suicides. We need to have a bigger conversation about these issues and find solutions. We don't have all the answers today but I hope we can all start with thinking about how we can do better for each other. What tools/techniques can we give people that are depressed or that have marriage issues to see things in a better or different way?