The Ministry of Health and Welfare (MOHW) yesterday said it is offering three free psychological counseling sessions to anyone who has been mentally affected by the random stabbing in Taipei on Friday evening.
Department of Mental Health Director-General Chen Po-hsi (陳柏熹) said the Taipei City Community Mental Health Center has stepped in to provide mental health support to the victims and their family members.
The ministry has also expanded its psychological counseling resources to help people who were affected by the incident, he said.
Photo: Chiu Chih-jou, Taipei Times
Just like the ministry’s “youth mental health support program,” three free counseling sessions would be offered to anyone who has been mentally affected by the incident, irrespective of their age, Chen said.
A “leniency principle” would be adopted for recognizing eligible recipients: As long as the person is able to subjectively state how they were mentally affected by the incident, they would be eligible for the service and would not need to go through other identity or qualification reviews, he said.
The free counseling program is to run until the end of next year, to ensure affected people do not miss their chance to ask for help, he added.
The funding for the service has been discussed with the local government and the budget has been secured, so mental health support measures can continue, Chen said.
The ministry said it is normal for people who have gone through sudden and violent ordeals to feel nervous or anxious, or repeatedly replay the incident in their mind.
It suggested a simple “five character formula” that could help people stabilize their emotions: secure, calm, self-efficacy, contact and hope (安, 靜, 能, 繫, 望).
People should find an environment that makes them feel “secure” and make good use of the ministry’s support resources, it said.
They could “calm” their emotions by taking deep breaths, doing stretches and avoiding images or information about the incident, it added.
People should maintain their daily routine and life, and regain self-confidence and “self-efficacy” by completing planned and controllable small tasks, and stay in “contact” with friends and family, such as by listening to each other, sharing their feelings and helping each other relieve stress, the ministry said.
To bring a sense of “hope,” they should approach warm and caring massages, remain flexible in the face of change, set achievable short-term goals and have an optimistic outlook, it said.
In related news, Taoyuan Psychiatric Center deputy-superintendent and psychiatrist Lee Chun-hung (李俊宏) on Facebook wrote that oversimplified attribution of a perpetrator’s motives should not be made before the facts are clarified.
The focus should be on reducing harm and subsequent risks, which includes not excessively revealing the perpetrator’s information to reduce the chances of a copycat crime, he said.
The priority should be offering integrated healthcare, mental and social support for the victims and their families, and reducing the risks of mental trauma or secondary trauma in witnesses and frontline workers.
Equally important is enhanced public safety, which not only includes increased security patrols, but also better self-safety awareness and capability to protect oneself, as well as reducing the risk of copycat crimes, he said.
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
RSS