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Updated Thursday, March 20, 2008 0:00 am TWN, The China Post news staff

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Some patients going crazy over the elections

TAIPEI, Taiwan -- In politics-mad Taiwan, some of its voters are literally going crazy about Saturday’s presidential poll, with psychiatrists reporting an increase in election-related cases and cancer patients asking for leave to return home to vote, a newspaper reported yesterday.

A psychiatrist at the Taipei Municipal Hospital, Liu Chung-hsien, said a woman with bipolar disorder painted herself all in green and solicited votes at the clinic, according to United Evening News.

The paper did not indicate which presidential candidate the woman was supporting, but the color is associated with the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, and its candidate Frank Hsieh.

Liu said one of his patients suffered depression because she and her husband supported different parties.

She was unable to gain control of the TV remote from her husband, so she could not watch the political talk shows that backed her side. Her husband also called her an “idiot.”

The paper said some pro-opposition patients had been deeply troubled by Hsieh’s allegations against Kuomintang hopeful Ma Ying-jeou.

Each new allegations would leave them sleepless a few days worrying that Ma would lose, the paper said.

Another psychiatrist said some patients were eager to know whom their doctors supported. They would keep trying to convince the doctors that it would the end of Taiwan if their favored hopefuls failed.

The hospital has seen a few incidents where supporters from the opposing sides quarreled with each other while canvassing there.

Other patients are asking for hospital leave so they can go home to vote, while many pregnant women are trying not to deliver on Saturday, the paper said.

Some cancer patients are on aspirators and can hardly walk, but are still asking for permission to go home to vote.

Many who are from central and southern Taiwan are eager to leave the hospital by Friday so they can make it to the polls on Saturday.

Hospital registration staff were cited by the paper as saying they have an unusually high workload processing patient leave applications.

One obstetrician said pregnant women are refusing to have caesarean sections on Saturday. Other patients are asking that their operations not be scheduled for that day.

It is not just the patients who are going election-mad, the paper said.

Some nurses are asking doctors not to schedule operations for Saturday, so they too can go home to vote.

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