” Men, experts said, are often driven to murder their families by intense feelings of shame resulting from a job loss or a perceived inability to provide for family members. […]
Men and women who kill their children, forensic psychologists told ABC News, tend to be severally depressed or psychotic. […]
Experts said that women are often motivated to kill their children for different reasons than men are. Rather than feeling they have failed to adequately provide for their kids, women often kill their children out of a delusional sense of altruism. […]
Psychosis and severe depression can lead women to believe they are killing their children to end their suffering or because they believe they are demonically possessed.
"When you're psychotically depressed the whole world appears as if you're looking through dull gray glass. When you look at your children, you see them through your own suffering and emotional pain and believe they, too, are suffering. You begin to think they and you would be better off in heaven. This is an altruistic delusion. The results are horrific, but it's done in the hopes of stopping suffering," said Bradford at the University of Ottawa.”
Från ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=3307902