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-chicy (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
RESPONSE: The transit sends a message that China’s alignment with other countries would not deter the West from defending freedom of navigation, an academic said Canadian frigate the Ville de Quebec and Australian guided-missile destroyer the Brisbane transited the Taiwan Strait yesterday morning, the first time the two nations have conducted a joint freedom of navigation operation. The Canadian and Australian militaries did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The Ministry of National Defense declined to confirm the passage, saying only that Taiwan’s armed forces had deployed surveillance and reconnaissance assets, along with warships and combat aircraft, to safeguard security across the Strait. The two vessels were observed transiting northward along the eastern side of the Taiwan Strait’s median line, with Japan being their most likely destination,
GLOBAL ISSUE: If China annexes Taiwan, ‘it will not stop its expansion there, as it only becomes stronger and has more force to expand further,’ the president said China’s military and diplomatic expansion is not a sole issue for Taiwan, but one that risks world peace, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday, adding that Taiwan would stand with the alliance of democratic countries to preserve peace through deterrence. Lai made the remark in an exclusive interview with the Chinese-language Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times). “China is strategically pushing forward to change the international order,” Lai said, adding that China established the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank, launched the Belt and Road Initiative, and pushed for yuan internationalization, because it wants to replace the democratic rules-based international
ECONOMIC BOOST: Should the more than 23 million people eligible for the NT$10,000 handouts spend them the same way as in 2023, GDP could rise 0.5 percent, an official said Universal cash handouts of NT$10,000 (US$330) are to be disbursed late next month at the earliest — including to permanent residents and foreign residents married to Taiwanese — pending legislative approval, the Ministry of Finance said yesterday. The Executive Yuan yesterday approved the Special Act for Strengthening Economic, Social and National Security Resilience in Response to International Circumstances (因應國際情勢強化經濟社會及民生國安韌性特別條例). The NT$550 billion special budget includes NT$236 billion for the cash handouts, plus an additional NT$20 billion set aside as reserve funds, expected to be used to support industries. Handouts might begin one month after the bill is promulgated and would be completed within
The National Development Council (NDC) yesterday unveiled details of new regulations that ease restrictions on foreigners working or living in Taiwan, as part of a bid to attract skilled workers from abroad. The regulations, which could go into effect in the first quarter of next year, stem from amendments to the Act for the Recruitment and Employment of Foreign Professionals (外國專業人才延攬及僱用法) passed by lawmakers on Aug. 29. Students categorized as “overseas compatriots” would be allowed to stay and work in Taiwan in the two years after their graduation without obtaining additional permits, doing away with the evaluation process that is currently required,
RSS