Taiwanese parents are three times more likely than Americans to kill their children along with themselves when they commit suicide, because Asians traditionally see their children as their personal possession, according to a study released yesterday.
The report, conducted by the Dr. Sun Yat-sen University Hospital, said that between 1992 and 2001, there were 78 cases of parents also killing their children when they committed suicide.
"In 2001, 2,500 Taiwanese committed suicide. Of those, there were 18 parent-child suicides, accounting for 0.72 per cent of the total number of suicides," it said.
"This is three times higher than the number of parent-[child] suicides in the US," the report said.
Most of the Taiwanese parents were middle-aged when they killed their children and committed suicide, the report said. They ended their lives for reasons of unemployment, debt, marital troubles or mental problems.
The children they killed were mainly infants.
Taiwan mothers are twice as likely as fathers to kill their children when they commit suicide.
The high number of parent-child suicides results from Asian traditions, in which adults are seen as having the right to decide their children's life and death.
When the parents want to commit suicide, they take along their children under the excuse that if they left their children behind, no one would care for them, the report said.
Taiwan has one of the highest suicide rates in Asia. Last year, 3,053 Taiwanese committed suicide, an average of eight suicides per day or one suicide every three hours. The suicide rate was 14.1 suicides for every 100,000 people.
Lithuania has the world's highest suicide rate, with 44 suicides per 100,000 people.
In Asia, Japan has the highest suicide rate with 25 suicides for every 100,000 people.
Last year, 32,082 Japanese committed suicide, averaging 87 suicides per day or one suicide every 15 minutes.
Police have issued warnings against traveling to Cambodia or Thailand when others have paid for the travel fare in light of increasing cases of teenagers, middle-aged and elderly people being tricked into traveling to these countries and then being held for ransom. Recounting their ordeal, one victim on Monday said she was asked by a friend to visit Thailand and help set up a bank account there, for which they would be paid NT$70,000 to NT$100,000 (US$2,136 to US$3,051). The victim said she had not found it strange that her friend was not coming along on the trip, adding that when she
TRAGEDY: An expert said that the incident was uncommon as the chance of a ground crew member being sucked into an IDF engine was ‘minuscule’ A master sergeant yesterday morning died after she was sucked into an engine during a routine inspection of a fighter jet at an air base in Taichung, the Air Force Command Headquarters said. The officer, surnamed Hu (胡), was conducting final landing checks at Ching Chuan Kang (清泉崗) Air Base when she was pulled into the jet’s engine for unknown reasons, the air force said in a news release. She was transported to a hospital for emergency treatment, but could not be revived, it said. The air force expressed its deepest sympathies over the incident, and vowed to work with authorities as they
A tourist who was struck and injured by a train in a scenic area of New Taipei City’s Pingsi District (平溪) on Monday might be fined for trespassing on the tracks, the Railway Police Bureau said yesterday. The New Taipei City Fire Department said it received a call at 4:37pm on Monday about an incident in Shifen (十分), a tourist destination on the Pingsi Railway Line. After arriving on the scene, paramedics treated a woman in her 30s for a 3cm to 5cm laceration on her head, the department said. She was taken to a hospital in Keelung, it said. Surveillance footage from a
INFRASTRUCTURE: Work on the second segment, from Kaohsiung to Pingtung, is expected to begin in 2028 and be completed by 2039, the railway bureau said Planned high-speed rail (HSR) extensions would blanket Taiwan proper in four 90-minute commute blocs to facilitate regional economic and livelihood integration, Railway Bureau Deputy Director-General Yang Cheng-chun (楊正君) said in an interview published yesterday. A project to extend the high-speed rail from Zuoying Station in Kaohsiung to Pingtung County’s Lioukuaicuo Township (六塊厝) is the first part of the bureau’s greater plan to expand rail coverage, he told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times). The bureau’s long-term plan is to build a loop to circle Taiwan proper that would consist of four sections running from Taipei to Hualien, Hualien to
RSS