Young women tend to have low socioeconomic status, have antisocial personality disorder, and/or schizophrenia as psychiatric diagnoses and most likely kill their children, while mid-life women tend to have slightly higher socioeconomic status, suffer from affective disorder and alcoholism and have more frequent physical disorders and most likely murder their spouses. A significant finding noted among mid-life women is the high frequency of physical abuse by husbands who later become their homicide victims. Treatment implications of these findings are noted. (Publisher abstract)