World Journal, News Report, Posted: Jun 08, 2010

TAIPEI, Taiwan -- According to suicide experts in Taiwan, three of the Foxconn workers in China who committed suicide were suspected to be mentally ill, and eight of them suffered emotional disorders.

World Journal reports that experts from the Taiwanese Society of Suicidology (TSOS) were  invited to investigate the 12 suicides that occurred in the Foxconn’s factory located in southern China.

TSOS’s director Lee Ming-been told the paper that experts on his team believed three of the suicidal workers had suffered severe mental illness such as paranoia and hallucination, with one of them taking psychiatric medicine. Eight of the other nine workers also suffered emotional disorders related to family issues, relationships and financial difficulties, but Lee said there was no apparent indication that showed that the suicides were connected to work pressure.

However, researcher Cheng Tai-Ann at the Academia Sinica said the incident has become politicized so the accuracy and objectivity of investigations were questionable. He said the 3-day investigation period was too short to determine the  causes of the suicides, and being mentally ill did not directly translate into suicidal behavior.