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A-bian has mental
breakdown: doctor
‘QUITE DIFFICULT’: A psychiatrist on the former
president’s medical team was quoted as saying Chen had tried to kill himself
three times and that his recovery would be hard
By Chris Wang / Staff reporter
Hospitalized former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) has suffered a nervous
breakdown and should be removed from his current environment, which lacks the
support mechanisms that patients with mental illnesses need to recover, a
psychiatrist on Chen’s medical team said yesterday.
“The most ideal environment for Chen to make a full recovery would be his home,
not the Taipei Veterans General Hospital (TVGH), where he is currently staying
to receive treatment … and definitely not Taipei Prison,” Mackay Memorial
Hospital psychiatrist Chen Chiao-chi (陳喬琪) told the Taipei Times.
It would be “quite difficult” for the former president, who is serving an
18-and-a-half-year sentence for corruption and being treated for various
complications in the TVGH, to recover fully from his mental breakdown, the
psychiatrist said.
“We can only hope to improve his condition by transferring him to his home to
convalesce with his family. Sending him back to prison would worsen his mental
illness and eventually kill him,” he said.
In an interview published by the Chinese-language China Times yesterday, Chen
Chiao-chi recommended granting the former president medical parole, saying Chen
Shui-bian had tried to kill himself at least three times and could keep trying
if his health did not improve.
Chen Shui-bian is suffering from sleep apnea, brain damage, severe depression
and paranoid delusions of persecution, among other things, the psychiatrist
said.
Chen Chiao-chi said he suspected that the former president had also suffered a
nervous breakdown in 2008 when he was handcuffed and detained not long after
leaving office, and that his mental health had worsened as he underwent a series
of trials.
“Chen [Shui-bian] told me that being handcuffed was the most humiliating
experience of his life,” the China Times quoted Chen Chiao-Chi as saying.
Chen Chiao-chi has been visiting Chen Shui-bian weekly since September last year
and said he was having a nervous breakdown when they first met in May last year.
Judging from his long-term observation, the former president was not capable of
making political assessments, organizing a political party or escaping if he
were to be granted parole, Chen Chiao-chi said.
“It seems to me that Taipei Prison officials did not realize the dire mental
condition Chen Shui-bian was in when they talked about putting him back in his
cell before the Lunar New Year holiday next month,” Chen Chiao-chi said.
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has repeatedly ruled out releasing Chen Shui-bian
on medical parole, but several pan-blue politicians, such as Taipei Mayor Hau
Lung-bin (郝龍斌), and many pan-green politicians have called for a parole.
The TVGH yesterday said the claim that Chen Shui-bian had suffered a nervous
breakdown was one person’s opinion, adding that the former president’s physical
and mental condition was being monitored by doctors who had not reported any
unusual emotional displays.
Additional reporting by staff writer
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