Article link: http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2010/12/30/2003492244
Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33Z52oY26y4&feature=related
This article talks about an incident that enraged the Taiwan public at the end of the year 2010. A 33 year old man of the last name of Hsiao was accused of deliberately stopping his car in the middle of the road to block an ambulance transporting an 86-year-old woman in critical conditions. The footage of his behavior taken by the in car camera of the ambulance can be seen from the link provided. Hsiao turned and stopped in a lane that was cleared for the passing of the ambulance, stayed where he was even when a passing motorcyclist told him to move out of the ambulance’s way, and gave the middle finger out the window. When he started driving, he stayed in front of the ambulance and pulled the emergency brakes, causing the ambulance to almost crash into his car. The woman in the ambulance shortly died after being rushed to the hospital. The next day, the hospital filed reports on his refusal to yield to an ambulance and an outcry from the public followed after the footage was uploaded onto the Internet. Hsiao was identified to be a doctoral candidate in National Taiwan University Institute of History, the top university in Taiwan.
The citizens of Taiwan were outraged by this act and demanded a public apology, and some ruthless Internet users even demanded his death. However, Hsiao and his father claimed that he “suffered an attack of manic-depressive psychosis when hearing the ambulance’s siren" and that he didn’t remember anything about that incident. Hsiao’s family insisted that the public was being too harsh on Hsiao and that his act should be excused considering his manic-depressive psychosis. The public did not response sympathetically immediately, questioning the validity of this diagnosis and to what extent of his actions is caused by this manic-depressive psychosis. The problem the public had with Hsiao claiming that his disorder was to blame for his actions was that he had already proven to be a functional man as he is a doctoral candidate in the best university in Taiwan, and that he has had his driver’s license for years. The public doesn’t see why he can blame his disorder for this if he has been able to function in the world.
This raises the question of how normal is defined and how psychological disorders are diagnosed and controlled. To be diagnosed with manic-depressive psychosis, to what extent should this mental disorder affect a person’s life? How can people determine how responsible a man is if he suffers from a mental disorder? How do we know if his actions were intentional or only symptoms of his disorder? The only person who can know how much a mental disorder affects his or her life is the person with the disorder. He or she is the only one who experiences firsthand the symptoms of the disorder. But even his or her own description of the experiences could not be reliable, because if all he or she has known is a life with the disorder, then there could be no comparison done with a normal life. Therefore, it is impossible to distinguish an action as a result from the disorder from an intentional action. It would be impossible to criticize that one action from a particular person is definitely out of self volition or definitely a result from the disorder.
In a sense, language is one of the limiting factors to being able to determine if one action is done out of sanity or not. Because everybody uses language differently and can describe one event in many ways, our knowledge of what has transpired cannot be compared through speech. If language was truly universal and standard, and so specific to the point that every event can only be described in one possible way, then experiences can be compared validly. If Hsiao could describe his feelings and emotions when he heard the sirens that supposedly initiated an attack of manic-depression psychosis, then this description can be compared to descriptions of others that suffer manic-depression psychosis and others that did not suffer manic-depression psychosis. If the description matches either side, then it can be said with a level of certainty that the action was a symptom of this psychosis or not. However, this cannot be done, as the use of language and possibly the type and degree of effect varies from one person to another.
If we can never know how much influence a mental disorder can have on a person, then should a court ever excuse or charge someone for a crime if the person claimed to be under the influence of a mental disorder? My own opinion is that a court should make the decision for whether or not a man is guilty or under influence of mental disorders based on the frequency of his previous attacks and how closely his accounts of this attack matches with the accounts of attacks of other people who suffer from the same mental disorder. So for the case of Hsiao, I would charge him as guilty for deliberately refusing to yield to an ambulance, as his success and functionality in life so far suggests that his mental disorder does not play a major role in his life. This case can be related to the ambiguity of the validity of the DSM. It is hard or nearly impossible to determine where one should draw the line between normal and abnormal, as language cannot adequately reflect the mental state and experiences.
You make some solid points about language. I think that another way you could evaluate this current event is from an ethics perspective (area of knowing). Is it right to kill someone if your actions are justifiable? Hsiao essentially killed the woman when he denied her the chance to receive the proper treatment in time. However, he uses his mental disorder to justify blocking the ambulance. Is it right to accept this reason despite trauma he has indirectly caused the family of the victim? On the other hand, you could question whether it's ethical to punish a sick man. Should the intent to harm someone be considered? Hsiao may not have intended to harm the woman, but did so in a mental state that blocked his ability to reason well.
ReplyDeleteThe issue that Katie pointed out is how abnormality is defined, and how psychological disorders are diagnosed. A new way to understand the issue at hand is to incorporate one of the areas of knowing, human sciences. Specifically, an essential topic here is the attribution errors. Because there is no definite way to determine the presence of a psychological disorder, people generally determine abnormality and psychological disorders by looking for abnormal actions or symptoms. For example, person who keeps washing his hands and becomes unsettled when he doesn’t is susceptible to OCD. However, what if that person is just hygienic? Different people will attribute the hand washing to different reasons. Likewise, many actions aren’t reliable as indicators of mental disorders because the actions can be so common. In fact, as one flips through the DSM, one would often find oneself susceptible to numerous psychological disorders, because many of the listed symptoms seem applicable to self. As the protagonist, Susanna Kaysen, said in Girl, Interrupted, “Crazy isn't being broken or swallowing a dark secret. It's you or me amplified. If you ever told a lie and enjoyed it. If you ever wished you could be a child forever.” Therefore, it is important to acknowledge the possibility and likelihood of attribution errors when considering the definition of abnormality and the diagnosis of mental disorders. Relating back to the article, like Katie said, Hsia’s manic-depressive psychosis has to be compared with that of other people, and his previous attacks have to be reviewed to know if his behavior was really caused by manic-depressive psychosis.
ReplyDeleteThe main issue held here is whether a person is responsible for his/her actions if he/she has a mental disorder. I have to say that it is hard to distinguish to what extent is normal and to what extent is abnormal as mentioned in the post. However, the DSM has brought up that if the person's disorder interferes with the person's life. I think that there should be a limit to the extent to which a person with mental illness is responsible for their actions. If a person who has mental illness does something to affect other people such as harming them or even killing them, then they need to take responsible for that since the people being affected are innocent. However, this problem can be avoided if the people who have mental illness start to choose what environment is appropriate for them to be around since they can't control what they do or feel. Since Hsiao claimed that he couldn't control what he was doing in the car, this means that he actually doesn't have the right to drive at all. If a person has the right to do something, then the person should be in charge of his/her actions in all situations.
ReplyDeleteAlthough language may be considered as an issue in this case, I think that emotion also has to deal with this accident. This is because as Hsiao has manic-depression psychosis, he was most definitely in a state where he couldn't control his emotions at all. This leads to his lack of responsibility in processing in his own thoughts.
Although there are strong arguments on both sides, I think that Hsiao should be punishable by the authorities for a couple of reasons. Because the main AOK targeted in this case is the area of ethics, it is not difficult to find the fault in Hsiao's actions. For one, I don't believe that intentionally ruining the chances of another human being's survival is ever justifiable. I agree with many of the points you made about his mental condition. For example, if he could attend a top university in Taipei and obtain a drivers license, it is to say that his health is normal to some extent. I feel that for someone to act out as outrageously as he did and still be able to function in everyday life completely fine, cannot blame his actions on a mental disease. I think this issue all comes down to how a mental disease can be measured at all. Due to ethical issues (punishing a sick man, for something that was supposedly unintentional), they must find a way to measure his mental stability, because it seems to be the deciding point of the entire argument. Because it is nearly impossible to measure one’s mentality, I think that observing others who have the same condition as Hsiao would be a good solution. A flaw of this measurement though, would be that it is impossible to know the extent in which the mental illness influences Hsiao as opposed to the other victims of this illness. Also, because we cannot measure whether or not Hsiao’s illness has a great influence, we cannot tell if he even has the illness at all. Perhaps his family is planting this idea that Hsiao has a mental illness, in order to protect both his stance at his school and also his image to the public.
ReplyDeleteThe man in this case states that he suffers from manic-depressive psychosis; therefore what the people could have done was bring in others that suffer from this disorder and test their reactions to see whether the reaction of the man is similar to the reactions of others. They could have also questioned these people that suffer from the disorder to get a better understanding of how these types of people function. Of course, before bringing in patients, they must make sure that the level of severity of the disorder matches that of the man. However, although this might give the public a better understanding on the brain processing and functioning of people who suffer from this disorder, they are still unable know exactly what the man was thinking. They can only assume some of his reactions to the situation, but only the man himself knows how his brain was processing during the incident, therefore it is hard to judge whether he is innocent or not.
ReplyDeleteSense perception plays a role in this case. The public are judging from what they saw outside of the car, therefore they do not know what actually happened to the man inside the car, so they can’t be sure that he wasn’t suffering from his disorder, and that his reaction to the ambulance wasn’t due to his disorder. Therefore, the public is bias to what they detected from their sense perceptions. Also, they are making conclusions to what seems to make sense to them. For example, they see that the man is a college professor at a high leveled university, and there is also evidence that the man has been driving for many years, therefore what makes sense to the public is that the man is able to function properly even with his disorder. So the public is making conclusions by making sense of the evidences that are shown to them.
This article reminded me of the Caster Semenya example we discussed in class, in the sense that one can approach figuring out how Hsiao's mental disorder affected him when he was in his vehicle. From a historical point of view, one can look up on Hsiao's records and see if similar incidents in the past occurred. If yes, then this raises questions on Taiwan's government because they are allowing a mentally unstable person to drive. Another approach is to use technologies such as PET scans and determine how Hsiao's mind is working under manic-depressive psychosis. Other medical test can be conducted such as looking at the chemical imbalance in Hsiao's brain and classify that as manic-depressive psychosis or normal. As the article points out, language is the main problem as there's no perfect definition in describing what's normal or conscious. Instead, ideas revolving around these words can be grasped, but some are lost in the process. The information provided by Hsiao's father don't seem very reliable and can be biased in many different ways. Personally, I think Hsiao is guilty with the evidence provided by the article above and also that even with manic-depressive psychosis, one shouldn’t lose all memory and instead only have impaired memory, according to online medical sources.
ReplyDeleteI like how you bring in the issue of language, as well as the definition of abnormality. The line between normality and abnormality is often hard to distinguish. The DSM attempts to eliminate this ambiguity. Using the DSM, one can try to determine whether or not Hsiao possesses a mental disorder, as well as the extent to which the disorder affects Hsiao. As the DSM also relies on biological as well as human sciences, we can see the use of different areas of knowledge already. I also agree with Mika that the ethical area of knowledge can also be used. Also, speaking of language, you mentioned that Hsiao is to be seen as a “functional man as he is a doctoral candidate in the best university in Taiwan”. What defines “functional”? Where is the border between dysfunctional and functional? And, if you have a mental disorder, does this immediately label you as dysfunctional? Or can those with disorders be functional as well?
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, perhaps the family’s defense is emotional biased, due to their relationship with Hsiao. However, there is also the idea that no one would know Hsiao better than his own family. The accounts of the eyewitnesses should be questioned as well. As research has shown, memory can be influenced by emotional factors as well as sensory prompts. This is shown through Loftus and Palmer’s experiment, as well as the existence of flash memories. Is the account provided really what happened, or only what the witness think happened? Were their own opinions influenced by the opinions of others? Also, there is the question of visual perception. How accurate were their perceptions? Did they only see what others saw, as a form of group observation?
Also I agree with Anna’s idea of comparing Hsiao with others with the same condition. Would they be prone to making the same accidents as well? Another good idea was suggested by Chris, by approaching this from a historical point of view, and seeing past transgressions that Hsiao might have committed.