Hallucinating mother killed and ate her sons thinking they were pigs

A Thai woman accused of butchering, cooking and eating her two sons last week is believed to have done so because she hallucinated that they were pigs, Mental Health Department deputy director general Kiattiphum Wongrachit said on Tuesday.

"The woman killed her children because she didn't continue her treatment and didn't take her medication," Dr Kiattiphum said. Police last week received a complaint that a Musur woman butchered her two sons, aged one and five, in Chiang Mai's Mae Ai district.

Police said they found her asleep at her home, with several body parts apparently from children near her. They took her in for questioning, but she did not respond to any of their questions. They did a background check on her and found that she had been treated for a mental illness in 2007.

The woman, a member of the Musur hilltribe whose name was withheld, will be kept under close watch in the hospital for a long time, he said. The hospital will check whether she is a drug addict and if she will need to keep her calm when she realizes that she killed her children, he said. She has been charged with murder, but being deemed mentally unfit to fight her case she was sent to Suan Prung Hospital for treatment.