Psychiatrists appeal for schizophrenic patient's pardon

Call for fresh examination of schizophrenic patient

PESHAWAR: The Pakistan Psychiatric Society has made a strong pitch for commuting the death sentence of a schizophrenic patient days after the apex court upheld his conviction and rejected an appeal against his execution.

In 2012, a panel of doctors certified Imdad Ali, 50, as being a paranoid schizophrenic, following his conviction and sentencing to death for the 2001 murder of a cleric.



The Supreme Court has ruled that schizophrenia, according the country’s law, is not a mental disorder and hence upheld his death sentence.

Pakistan Psychiatric Society’s president Dr Muhammad Sultan, who is also head of the Psychiatric Unit of Khyber Teaching Hospital, insists that schizophrenia is a qualified mental disorder.

“It is a serious disorder which affects how a person thinks, feels and acts,” Dr Sultan told The Express Tribune.  “Someone with schizophrenia may have difficulty distinguishing between what is real and what is imaginary; he or she may be unresponsive or withdrawn; and may have difficulty expressing normal emotions in social situations.”

In its most chronic form, schizophrenia can a life-long disease in which the patient does not feel normally or react like normal people, he said. Schizophrenia is now considered a neurological disease.



Speaking at a news conference flanked by other office-bearers of the Psychiatric Society in the Peshawar Press Club, Dr Sultan called upon President Mamnoon to provide relief to the schizophrenic patient who has been declared mentally ill by the Pakistan Psychiatric Board, as well as the Pakistan Medical Board, by commuting his death sentence.

He appealed to the government to constitute a new board of medical experts, examine the patient afresh and the convict’s fate be decided on that basis.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 25^th, 2016.