Ouyang Xiangyu: depressed, insane or vindictive murderer?

I am sure quite a number of you have read about the Singaporean scholar Ouyang Xiangyu who has been arrested in California after attempting to poison her classmates at Stanford university. She has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. This story has once again put Singapore in the international spotlight. .There has also been an article in Asia One about how life abroad can be challenging for scholars, so as a former scholar myself, allow me to deal with some of the many questions that some Singaporeans have raised when discussing the case of Ms Ouyang Xiangyu.

Drama in the science labs at Stanford...

1. Can studying at a top university be so stressful that it can literally drive you insane? 

This is a complex issue because different people have different thresholds for stress - some people are much better at handling stressful situations whilst others crumble under pressure more easily. In the case of studying at a top university, a lot of this depends on what your expectations are. In an earlier post about universities, I had talked about students who have struggled with the transition from A levels to university. In that post, I told the story of Brad who came from a small town in Scotland where he was the top student, when Brad arrived at Cambridge, he went from being number one to being amongst the smartest students from all over the world. Brad struggled and was forced to switch courses by the end of his first year in Cambridge.

Like Brad, I found my first year quite a struggle because that was when you had to shift gears and adapt to a far more competitive environment. Don't forget, I had also just taken nearly three years out to serve national service in Singapore as well and whilst I was excited about becoming a student again, I had not been studying properly for a long time. In my case, I had set myself very sensible goals - back in VJC, I was quite used to coming top (or near the top) of my class. But at my university, I realized that was simply not going to be possible so I accepted that as long as I did well enough to keep my scholarship, I would be happy enough. Work life balance was important for me as I wanted to continue my gymnastics, do some part time work and have a social life - I wanted to enjoy my time at university.

Most undergraduates experience quite a lot of stress at university.

Some people set themselves very ambitious targets and put themselves under a lot of pressure to achieve their goals - I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but if you set yourself unrealistic targets, then all you are going to do is frustrate the hell out of yourself when you fall short of those goals. The goals hat we set ourselves need to be realistic enough to be achievable, yet their should be just on the upper limits of what we are actually capable of. It is up to the individual to get this balance right and to be prepared to adjust and adapt when necessary. And of course, if the stress gets just a bit too much, one should never be afraid to ask for help. 

I also believe that it takes a lot of self-confidence to be able to cope with a situation like that because you can never expect everything to go your way in life. When things go wrong, you should be able to learn from your mistakes and come back stronger, more determined to succeed - but that takes a lot of self-belief and self-confidence to have that kind of mindset. Cultivating this mindset starts from a very young age: many Asian parents often get this wrong. They would beat and punish their children when they perform badly in an exam or test. The right response would be to assure the child that s/he was capable of so much more and to encourage the child to study hard, rather than punish the child for doing badly in that test or exam. Ideally, we should be able to feel confident and believe in ourselves regardless of what we achieve. When the stakes are so high at an elite university, you must be prepared to take a few knocks and brush them off. Some can cope better than others when it comes to dealing with life's hard knocks.

Parents need to build self-confidence from a young age.

I do know of this very sad story of this scholar from Singapore who was from my former church in Singapore. He found life in his British university extremely stressful as he was trying to compete with the smartest students (many of them scholars) from around the world - this guy was quite used to being number one in Singapore which he achieved in his JC with ease. I heard that he was quite shy and reserved and wasn't the kind of person who would ask for help. When he turned to the members of his church, everyone just told him to pray about it, put his faith in Jesus or told him that they would pray for him - it was easy to use religious language to dance around the issue if you don't really have any good advice for this guy who simply couldn't accept that he couldn't get straight As at his university. He didn't let anyone at his university know that he needed help because he was afraid that his tutors may catch wind of the fact that he was struggling - perhaps it was his pride, perhaps he just couldn't accept that he needed help.

Either way, the people at his church were not in a position to realistically do anything from Singapore, so things just got from bad to worse for this guy who had put so much pressure on himself to perform. He knew that he had to score above a certain benchmark to keep his scholarship at the end of his first year, so before the exam, he called his mother and she sensed that something wasn't quite right when she spoke to him. She tried to ask him what was wrong but he just said that he was worried about his exams. She offered the usual religious advice and he hung up. She then prayed about it but something in her gut told her that something was wrong, very wrong. She panicked and tried to call him back but failed to reach him. He had already taken his own life and that call he made was to say goodbye to his mother. He just couldn't face the possibility of losing his scholarship and letting down his family, so he killed himself.

Being a scholar can bring a lot more pressure to perform well.

Yes it was a very sad story but it is a far more typical story of a Singaporean student unable to cope with the pressure of being a scholar. Ms Ouyang didn't try to kill herself - she tried to poison her classmates instead. This makes me suspect that it may not be anything to do with stress per se, or that this wasn't simply a student going crazy because of stress. There may have been so much more that we don't know about why Ms Ouyang did what she did.

2. How could they have awarded a scholarship to someone who was mentally unstable?

Oh yes, many people asked the same question when my good friend Alvin Tan made the headlines with his Alvivi sex blog. It's simple really, the selection process is actually very shallow indeed. It really isn't all that different from a job interview - you are trying to identify the best possible candidate to receive the scholarship(s) and the discussions during the interview and application process usually revolve around professional issues rather than personal ones. Besides, nobody would knowingly say anything that would jeopardize their chances during an interview like that: so for example, if I were to go for such an interview today and the interviewer asked me about the relationship I have with my parents, I would simply highlight the more positive aspects of that relationship rather than spill the beans on the more dysfunctional aspects of my relationship with my parents. And I can easily sit here and tell you wonderful things about my parents for the next two or three hours if I knew that the outcome of that interview depended on it. Would I be lying? Would that make me a hypocrite? Do I really care if it does? I'll do whatever it takes to get that scholarship.

Remember Alvin Tan? He was a scholar too.

There is an art to performing well during interviews - some people know exactly how to handle them, others are nervous as hell and hate them. Despite the fact that Ms Ouyang has been described as shy, she clearly impressed her interviewers; it is not rocket science at the end of the day. The fact that her academic track record is excellent means that the odds for her are very good. Thus perhaps the focus should not be so much on the interview itself, but how candidates are selected earlier on in the process, before we even get to the interview. This then puts the gatekeepers in the spotlight and I do wonder if they are merely selecting applicants with the best results or if they are actually digging a bit deeper to find out more about these applicants.

On a more serious note, the recent Germanwings disaster comes to mind: how was it, that a pilot with so many mental health was allowed to continue working? How was his condition undetected by his employers? There is now a wider debate about the responsibilities of employers to pay far more attention to the mental health of their employees and we need to be a lot more aware of any possible problems arising from mental health issues. Will this new awareness of mental health issues expand to the interview process of scholars? Perhaps after it will, at the very least, it should prompt the panel to ask far more questions about the candidate's personal life rather than just focus on professional issues. At the very least, in the initial selection process, the gatekeepers ought to do a lot more research into the backgrounds of these candidates, rather than just default to their academic results or professional performance.

More attention should be paid to mental health issues.

3. Ms Ouyang suffered from insomnia and depression - is this common amongst university students?

The answer is no, I don't think it is common. Almost all students do suffer from some form of stress during their time at university, but few students allow this stress to affect them adversely for long periods. Many find ways to relax and combat the effects of stresses through social activities: simply taking a break from one's studies and hanging out with friends who can offer empathy and support usually does the trick. The peer support that one can find from other students is invaluable because your peers will understand exactly what you're going through. In Ms Ouyang's case, the problem stems from the fact that she was extremely shy and struggled to make friends - hence without this network of peer support, her stress consumed her, turning into insomnia and depression in the long run. That is why it is so important to make friends when at university, especially when you are a long way away from your family. 

4. If Ms Ouyang was depressed, why did she try to kill or hurt her classmates by poisoning them?

This is an interesting question. After all, there are times when people with depression get suicidal and feel like they just can't go on with life. Ms Ouyang not only tried to poison her classmates, but she also tried to sabotage a lab mate's work. This does sound like she had an axe to grind with these people, that she didn't get along with them and she was trying to make them suffer. Of course, without having any more details about the case, I can only speculate as to why she wished to inflict harm on her classmates but I simply do not buy the story that she had cracked under pressure one day and went mad. There is a very good story on the Straits Times detailing Ms Ouyang's every move and it was clear that this wasn't one random episode of madness, but a carefully calculated series of actions designed to sabotage and harm the people she worked with - that was what made it so scary as someone could have died.

Ms Ouyang suffered from depression.

If Ms Ouyang is trying to plead insanity (which was brought on by severe depression), then I just don't buy it. There is a big leap from suffering from depression to trying repeatedly to poison your classmates - why did she want to hurt those people by poisoning them? What kind of working relationship did they have? Why was Ms Ouyang motivated to poison them? Hence the comparison to Andreas Lubitz: if the Germanwings pilot Lubitz was depressed and wanted to kill himself, then why did he have to crash a plane and kill everyone on board as well? Couldn't he have just killed himself - why did he want to kill people he didn't even know? Such a drastic act of mass murder suggests a dispute between Lubitz and his employer and that Lubitz was trying to punish Germanwings by causing such a horrific tragedy.

I suppose the counter argument would be that if Ms Ouyang really wanted to murder her classmates, she could have done it more subtly and administered a lethal dose of a poison that would have been odourless and tasteless. That way, the victims would not even realize that they had ingested a lethal dose of poison. She chose to use paraformaldehyde (PFA), which was an odd choice given that her victims realized they were poisoned the moment they drank the water as it left them a burning sensation in their throats. Tsk tsk, Ms Ouyang, haven't you ever watched CSI before? If you wanted to murder someone, you plan well, strike once and get the job done. You don't keep poisoning them again and again over a period of a few weeks until you get caught. She just doesn't strike me as someone who is capable of cold blooded murder as she wasn't even trying to get away with it, it was almost as if she wanted to get caught. She claimed that this was her cry for help - perhaps, or was she just an incompetent killer?

Should Ms Ouyang be treated as a murderer?

5. I feel sorry for Ms Ouyang, can Stanford or A*Star give her another chance? 

No that's not how it works. Ms Ouyang has been arrested because she has broken the law in America - she has been charged, she is now out on bail and she is awaiting trail. Ms Ouyang faces between 2 to 5 years in prison if convicted - up to 8 years if the courts deem the poisons involved can cause 'great bodily harm or death'. Her fate now lies in the hands of the American justice system and it is not a matter for her university or for A*Star to deal with, this is a criminal matter and she now needs the best defence lawyer her parents' money can buy. Her best case scenario is that the judge shows leniency for her mental condition and she gets a light sentence, before being deported from America. But then, would she be labeled insane for the rest of her life? Or if they throw the book at her, she could end up spending up to 8 years in jail in America - that is a very long time indeed. Upon her return to Singapore, she would be dumped by A*Star (for ending up in jail instead of completing her doctorate) and as for her future? Who knows. Who would give someone like her a second chance in a place like Singapore? Are Singaporeans the forgiving sort? 

Don't get me wrong, I feel sorry for her (and her parents). After all, she is undoubtedly a very intelligent person but clearly something had gone very wrong along the way. It was sad that nothing had been done to prevent this from happening (could more have been done by Stanford university?), but then again, at the age of 26, Ms Ouyang is an adult responsible for herself (unlike Amos Yee, whom at 16, is still very much a child). Her future is bleak and her fate is in the hands of the American authorities - what will happen to her? Let's just be grateful that she actually didn't manage to kill anyone despite her numerous attempts. That's it from me on this topic. Many thanks for reading.