Concerning, Non-Specific, and Angry: Exploring Youth Homicidal Ideation in a Novel Dataset

Juvenile-perpetrated homicides exact a tremendous toll. Recent years have witnessed tragic events resulting in highly publicized accounts, sparking fear in parents, schools, and communities nationwide. Homicidal ideation is an important precursor for actual homicides, unfortunately research on homicidal ideation is limited in part because very little data about homicidal ideation exists. The current exploratory study utilizes unique self-report data from the website Psych Central’s “Ask The Therapist” feature to explore the experiences of young people expressing homicidal ideation specifically why young people were using the feature to discuss their homicidal ideation, who they thought about killing, and why. Most of the subjects reported some concern or distress regarding their thoughts, did not have a particular victim in mind as a homicide target, and indicated that anger was a leading motivator for their thoughts. These findings provide contextual information about homicidal thoughts among juveniles.