In a sharp rebuttal to police, a health official yesterday said that a formal diagnosis is required before the mental status of a man suspected of beheading a girl in Taipei on Monday can be determined.
Ministry of Health and Welfare Department of Mental and Oral Health Director Shen Lih-jong (諶立中) said talking to oneself after using drugs or when depressed are only signs of mental health issues, which is very different from a formal diagnosis of mental illness.
He said there are many types of mental illness, each with a different definition, and whether a person has mental illness can only be determined through a formal diagnosis by psychiatrists.
Under current regulations, matters related to mandatory hospitalization due to mental illness are a complicated process, Shen said.
Someone allegedly suffering from mental illness needs to be assessed by two specialist physicians before a mandatory assessment when a community treatment review committee meets with the person to assess their condition, Shen said.
After the review, the person and their family members have to agree in writing to the person being hospitalized, he added.
However, Shen said he respects the opinions of the Taipei Police Department.
During a search of the suspect’s home on Monday, police said they found 29 notebooks that they claim are evidence of the man’s mental illness.
The suspect, 33-year-old Wang Ching-yu (王景玉), was sent to a hospital for treatment twice between October 2010 and October 2014 after physical conflicts with his family, police said in a statement on Tuesday.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching