Student sues parents over involuntary psychiatric ward lockup. It seems he told them that he is gay, and it was downhill from there.

From the PlanetOut Network Via Yahoo

A Taipei student accuses his parents of drugging his coffee, then committing him to a locked psychiatric ward after learning he was gay.

Su Ming-che, 22, was kept against his will in Shin Kong Memorial Hospital's psychiatric ward for 56 days, state the lawsuits against Su's parents and the hospital.

Su told reporters Monday in Taipei that he had breakfast with his parents April 29 -- soon after they learned he was gay. He got up to use the bathroom and on his return noticed some white powder on the rim of his coffee cup but, thinking nothing of it, drank his coffee. He quickly became drowsy. On his way to the hospital, feeling faint, he heard a doctor telling him: "Your father put drugs in your coffee, but it is all for your own good."

Earlier, he said, they had asked Taipei Municipal Wan Fang Hospital, where he had consulted a doctor for depression, to force him to undergo treatment.

The doctors refused, saying they did not believe Su needed inpatient care.

During the 56 days he was in Shin Kong Hospital, the doctor examined him but didn't make any diagnosis, Su said, adding that he refused to take medications while there.

"I pretended to take pills at 9 p.m. every night but then spit them out after the nurse left. I wanted to prove that I was not ill," he told reporters.

Huang Wei-cher, a lawmaker in Taiwan's Democratic Progressive Party who has taken up Su's case, called for the government to reflect on whether the process for hospitalizing psychiatric patients was flawed.

Huang told the News that Taipei health officials have promised to investigate whether Shin Kong Hospital violated the the Mental Health Act, which states that patients suffering from mental illness can be forced to undergo treatment only when there is a risk assessed by at least two psychiatrists that they might injure themselves or others.

Su's father told the Chinese-language Apple Daily that his son had mental problems and needed to be hospitalized, the Taiwan Times reported.

"I can't forgive him for suing a family member. Can he say that he is not sick after he has accused his family?" the Times quoted Su's father as saying.

This is very much tied up with the conflict between traditional and modern value systems and moral codes