So if he is on meds and they are helpful for him, why can't he be made to understand that he committed a terrible crime so therefore he must pay for it. Why wasn't he treated before this crime, I guess too...
Many/most of the Chinese cultures see mental illness as a huge stigma and so seeking out psychological treatment is not an obvious response to them. Another barrier would have been that, as I recall, he did not have high level English skills. He was capable of working in a custodial job but the language skills required for such positions are typically very low.
One of the insidious things about schizophrenia is that victims often are not clearly aware that there is something wrong with their perceptions. It is often the family members of schizophrenics that get them into treatment because the person with schizophrenia often does not realise they need help. Pile that on top of being from a culture where mental illness is even more shameful and stigmatised than it is in the US and Canada and it would have surprised me had he sought out psychiatric care.
As for being punished for something he did when in a state that he could not distinguish right from wrong...
In 2005, I had necrotising fasciitis twice (colloquially called 'galloping gangrene'). I was in ICU for a total of 5 weeks, went through kidney and liver failure, and was then on the burn unit for over 4 months. At the beginning of the ordeal I was on a whole bunch of different drugs--antibiotics, anti-fungals, pain control meds, meds to raise my blood pressure and heart rate to the minimum needed to sustain life and probably some other stuff I cannot remember. One of the side effects was that I was hallucinating.
It helped somewhat that my first hallucinations involved seeing animals wandering in and out of my room and the rest of the hospitals. I was in a major teaching and research hospital and logic told me that if there really were deer, raccoons, fox, dogs, cats, etc, roaming free, other people would notice them. I promptly let the nursing staff know because it may have affected what meds they were giving me.
During this period of my illness, I did several things that could have harmed me without realising they arose out of the messed up state of my mind. For instance, one night I was in ICU being scolded while the staff re-established my 3 IV lines, and re-installed the naso-gastric tube (which was an ordeal every time). My room looked like a bloodbath had occurred.
I was utterly confused because to me, it seemed like I was asleep and woke up in the middle of a conversation. Apparently I had been talking, responding to questions and moving my arms and head around as directed without regaining consciousness for about 15 minutes before I gained consciousness.
After I explained to the nursing staff that I had just awakened and asked what had happened, the nursing staff was great. They were very reassuring, told me that some of the meds I was on did cause some people to have unusually vivid dreams or to talk in their sleep or sleepwalk but now that they knew this was happening to me, they'd make sure the doctors knew and changed my medications to try to keep it from happening again. And that I was not at fault for what had happened, nobody was because nobody knew I would be having this reaction.
The doctor (a resident) was a jerk about it. Even after I told him that I had just woken up and had no memory of what happened, he continued to scold me, said things like "didn't I realise I should not attempt to get out of bed without asking the nursing staff? Do you realise you should never, ever try to remove your lines and if they are uncomfortable to tell the nursing staff?" etc. He just would not let it go, I was in a psychologically fragile condition and the ongoing harangue was more than I could bear. I started crying and couldn't stop crying for hours after he left and spent about 3 days apologising to everyone who came into my room for being such a nuisance, including the maintenance staff (because my room had to be deep cleaned due to all the blood I'd spattered).
I felt especially guilty the next day when I had to have a transfusion because I'd lost so much blood--I kept thinking that the blood they were giving me could have gone to save someone else, someone who hadn't caused their own blood loss.
Was that a fair way to treat me? None of the nurses felt so--they apologised after the resident left, assured me they were not angry with me and suggested that the resident may have been tired and grumpy from being awakened to suture me, so he was taking it out on me.
I now feel the resident was highly unfair to me. I was on meds known to cause people to take action in their sleep, they knew I was hallucinating when I was awake, it should have been crystal clear to that resident that I was not responsible for my own actions. I'm sorry he had to wake up to suture me but that's one of the drawbacks of a surgeon's life that he had to have known about before he decided on a residency. Didn't he realise that I would much rather not have gone through the ordeal of having the 3 IVs re-established and the naso-gastric line re-intalled? And that I was on so many drugs that no one could predict what kinds of psychological reaction might happen?
And he was right there when I suddenly woke up and was confused about what was going on.
Should I have endured more scolding for something I did not consciously choose to do and was unaware that I was doing it?
And now, after so many words, I have no more words.
