A year ago, 503 mentally ill people at the Buddhist-run Longfatang (龍發堂) psychiatric care facility in Kaohsiung were transferred to state-run psychiatric sanatoriums. Some patients’ relatives on Wednesday last week held a news conference, at which they voiced two main complaints.
First, they said that the sanatoriums had been pressing them for treatment fees, while the Ministry of Health and Welfare appeared to be phasing out subsidies, thus increasing the burden on patients’ families.
Second, they said that Longfatang never called them when their relatives were there, but that, since the transfer, the state sanatoriums had been “harassing” families with frequent calls that were making them “depressed.”
The first of the families’ concerns has to do with care resources. Having intervened to dissolve Longfatang, the government must at least provide patients with follow-up care that equals what was received at the facility.
From a humanitarian and legal point of view, the patients’ relatives should not have to bear a heavier financial burden.
Longfatang’s existence was a tragic result of insufficient mental healthcare. Skimping on funding is not a fair solution, because the government owes the patients for several decades of neglect.
As to the sanatoriums’ alleged “harassment” of patients’ families, that is clearly a misunderstanding.
From a psychiatric point of view, the role of the families is to comfort and console patients, which helps significantly to improve their mental condition and functional abilities.
When sanatoriums contact patients’ families, it is to urge them to visit the patients more often or to have a say in treatment decisions.
Family involvement shows patients that they have not been abandoned: that someone still loves them. This is true for the patients from Longfatang, as well as for all psychiatric inpatients as part of the standard treatment that sanatoriums provide.
One relative complained that after being transferred to a mental hospital, a patient had to take medicine every day — so much that they felt dizzy and got swollen feet, and the more medicine they took, the worse it got. The relative said that the patient was not as lively as when they were staying at Longfatang.
This is another misunderstanding.
Psychiatric patients who stop taking their medicine do have temporary relief from any side effects, but their mental condition is like a forest fire, which, if left untreated for a long time, can burn out their brain functions and leave them in a state similar to dementia. In cases where a patient suffers side effects from a psychiatric drug, this can usually be fixed by adjusting the dosage or changing to a different medicine.
The transfer of the Longfatang patients to other institutions was a major event in mental healthcare in the nation. Sanatoriums should regularly assess the mental condition and functional abilities of the transferred patients. If, one year after their initial assessment, the patients’ symptoms are less severe, the sanatoriums should inform the patients’ relatives and the public to ease people’s minds.
Apart from drugs, sanatoriums should also provide non-drug treatments and rehabilitation. Patients’ families would then be convinced that they are much better off receiving orthodox psychiatric treatment than they would have been if they had stayed at Longfatang.
Shen Cheng-nan is a physician.
Translated by Julian Clegg
The US Department of Defense recently released this year’s “Report on Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China.” This annual report provides a comprehensive overview of China’s military capabilities, strategic objectives and evolving global ambitions. Taiwan features prominently in this year’s report, as capturing the nation remains central to Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) vision of the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” a goal he has set for 2049. The report underscores Taiwan’s critical role in China’s long-term strategy, highlighting its significance as a geopolitical flashpoint and a key target in China’s quest to assert dominance
The National Development Council (NDC) on Wednesday last week launched a six-month “digital nomad visitor visa” program, the Central News Agency (CNA) reported on Monday. The new visa is for foreign nationals from Taiwan’s list of visa-exempt countries who meet financial eligibility criteria and provide proof of work contracts, but it is not clear how it differs from other visitor visas for nationals of those countries, CNA wrote. The NDC last year said that it hoped to attract 100,000 “digital nomads,” according to the report. Interest in working remotely from abroad has significantly increased in recent years following improvements in
The Legislative Yuan passed legislation on Tuesday aimed at supporting the middle-aged generation — defined as people aged 55 or older willing and able to work — in a law initially proposed by Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Legislator Wu Chun-cheng (吳春城) to help the nation transition from an aged society to a super-aged society. The law’s passage was celebrated by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the TPP. The brief show of unity was welcome news, especially after 10 months of political fighting and unconstitutional amendments that are damaging democracy and the constitutional order, eliciting concern
Following a series of suspected sabotage attacks by Chinese vessels on undersea cables in the Baltic Sea last year, which impacted Europe’s communications and energy infrastructure, an international undersea cable off the coast of Yehliu (野柳) near Keelung was on Friday last week cut by a Chinese freighter. Four cores of the international submarine communication cable connecting Taiwan and the US were damaged. The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) dispatched a ship to the site after receiving a report from Chunghwa Telecom and located the Shunxin-39, a Cameroon-flagged cargo ship operated by a Hong Kong-registered company and owned by a Chinese
RSS