A man, due to his girlfriend not being a virgin, developed a mental illness; he claims the reason for undergoing craniotomy treatment was to be able to marry his girlfriend.
At the age of 28, Zhao Tong (a pseudonym) lies in the hospital bed with a dazed expression. He mistakes morning for afternoon and has hallucinations that his junior high school classmates visited him, which leads to a big argument with his father. Yesterday marked the 18th day since Zhao Tong's second craniotomy surgery. Although his time orientation during recovery is still poor, Zhao Tong says he feels much lighter inside, "Now I can think about it much less." What made him uncontrollably obsessed was the fact that his girlfriend was not a virgin, a thought that once made him feel life was worse than death. After completing his second craniotomy surgery, he seems to have seen hope for a new life.
Upon first learning that his girlfriend was not a virgin, Zhao Tong almost went into shock.
After the surgery, Zhao Tong has a square wound on his head, with the stitches standing straight up among his hair. Speaking occasionally with furrowed brows, Zhao Tong looks handsome upon closer inspection.
Zhao Tong is from Fuzhou. During university, he fell in love with a girl who came to the school for further studies. "At the time, she had a boyfriend, and my classmate told me not to look at these girls because they might seem pretty but are actually very promiscuous and dirty."
This girl later became his first love. Zhao Tong's relationship with her was pure, just holding hands, and he didn't dwell on the word "dirty" mentioned by his classmate. Later, Zhao Tong broke up with his first girlfriend and started working at a traffic police detachment in Longyan, Fuzhou. In 2003, Zhao Tong began his second romance with another girl.
In the heat of their romance, Zhao Tong soon had sexual relations with his girlfriend, and her confession unintentionally triggered Zhao Tong's "virginity complex," plunging him into an unbearable psychological torment. "When she told me she wasn't a virgin, I nearly fainted!" Zhao Tong recalls this reaction while lying in the hospital bed, furrowing his brow.
From then on, whenever his girlfriend mentioned her college days, he would instantly recall her being with her ex-boyfriend. The fact that his girlfriend was not a virgin constantly tormented Zhao Tong, thinking about it every day, often until eleven or twelve o'clock at night. "Once, I got so angry that I shattered a glass on the roadside." Zhao Tong's condition continuously worsened, "Later, whenever I saw a man and woman talking together, I would imagine they were having an abnormal relationship, and it felt dirty!"
"That feeling was worse than death! I knew it was wrong to think like that, but I couldn't control myself." Later, Zhao Tong was almost unable to work normally, "I felt weak in my limbs, as if something inside me was rushing to my head."
When medication treatment proved ineffective, in October 2005, Zhao Tong rushed to Shanghai to undergo craniotomy surgery. However, the surgery did not improve his condition, "I thought about it even more intensely, hearing people talk seemed like they were discussing this matter."
"If it fails, I'll do it again."
At the beginning of this year, Zhao Tong sought out the Guangdong Sanjiu Brain Hospital, requesting a second craniotomy surgery. "My girlfriend strongly opposed the first one, and this time I didn't tell her," Zhao Tong said. Before the first surgery, he wrote many "I love you" notes to his girlfriend, saying that if he lost his memory after the surgery, they could help him remember past events.
Professor Guo Shenchang of the hospital's psychiatry department told reporters that craniotomy surgery can damage the lesions caused by mental disorders, "The failure of the first surgery may be related to inaccurate positioning." On February 14, the hospital's doctors performed stereotactic surgery on Zhao Tong. Currently, Zhao Tong is recovering. Due to two craniotomies, the brain edema around the surgical area has not subsided, and Zhao Tong's post-surgery reactions have been significant.
When asked if he worried about anything going wrong before the surgery, he said that if it failed, he would do it again. His girlfriend is his ideal marriage partner, and he wants to cure his illness to marry her.
Statement:
Craniotomy for treating mental illness is legally unregulated.
Director Pan Jiyang of the Psychology Department at Huaqiao Hospital pointed out that such severe virginity complexes are caused by biological factors. "The human brain is a complex circuit. Abnormalities in the brain's nuclei lead to what we commonly see as abnormal mental states and external behaviors." He said that if surgery is used to destroy abnormal nerve bodies in the brain, one must first determine the connection between a certain disease and a specific brain region. However, the medical field cannot yet achieve this.
Dean Zhao Zhenhuan of Guangzhou Brain Hospital and Director of the Guangdong Psychiatric Society told reporters that using craniotomy surgery to treat mental illness in China began in the late 1980s and is currently in a legal vacuum. It is reported that in the United States, surgery is only considered after all psychiatric medications have proven ineffective, and it requires the agreement of more than two attending physicians.