IMH psychiatrist to COP: Raeesah Khan did not suffer from psychiatric disorder that might have made her lie

SINGAPORE - Former Workers' Party MP Raeesah Khan did not suffer from any significant psychiatric disorder that would have impaired her ability to speak truthfully in Parliament, a medical expert testified before the Committee of Privileges on Wednesday (Dec 22).

Instead, Ms Khan was assessed to be of "sound mind" and "mentally fit" and "present" to make the statements that she had in Parliament and before the committee between Aug 3 and Dec 3, said Dr Christopher Cheok, who is acting chief of the department of forensic psychiatry at the Institute of Mental Health (IMH).

In a sixth special report released by Parliament on Wednesday (Dec 22), Dr Cheok said Ms Khan did not suffer from any psychiatric disorder that would predispose her to telling untruths.

Dr Cheok, who is a senior consultant at IMH and a psychiatrist by training, assessed Ms Khan on Dec 17 and 20 with her agreement, after the committee invited her for a psychiatric assessment.

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This came after Leader of the Opposition and WP chief Pritam Singh suggested in his testimony last week that the committee call for a psychiatric evaluation of Ms Khan, whom he said may be predisposed towards lying due to her mental condition of "disassociation", and that important parts of her evidence before the committee might have been unreliable, the committee noted.

Other WP leaders — chairman Sylvia Lim and vice-chairman Faisal Manap — had also made several assertions with regards to Ms Khan's mental conditions in their evidence to the committee, said the report.

Thereafter, the committee decided to accede to Mr Singh's request for a psychiatric evaluation.

Ms Khan, who had in November admitted to lying in an anecdote raised in Parliament related to sexual assault, had shared that she herself had been a victim of sexual assault.

In his evidence, Dr Cheok said that it was a normal reaction for someone who had gone through a traumatic experience to continue to have some anxiety when speaking about the topic. This did not mean that the person would be mentally impaired or incapacitated.

In Ms Khan's case, while she might have continued to feel upset about some of these memories, her judgement and decision-making capacity was not impaired and she was of sound mind.

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Dr Cheok also said that Ms Khan did not have post-traumatic stress disorder and did not suffer from dissociation between Aug 3 and Dec 3.

Besides the two occasions when he assessed Ms Khan, Dr Cheok also interviewed her husband and reviewed the relevant recordings of Ms Khan speaking in Parliament on Aug 3, Oct 4 and Nov 1, as well as her testimony before the committee on Dec 2 and 3.

When asked about Ms Khan's mental state on Aug 3 when she first mentioned the anecdote that contained untruths in Parliament, Dr Cheok said the speech was neither delivered impulsively nor as a result of dissociation or any psychiatric disorder.

It was possible that such untruths could be told as a result of bad judgement rather than because of any mental illness, he added.

The report added that Dr Cheok testified that Ms Khan did not suffer from any psychiatric disorder that would predispose her to telling untruths.

"I have been in practice for more than 25 years and I found that actually many people with mental psychiatric disorders do not tell untruths more than any normal human being," said Dr Cheok.

In his assessment, Ms Khan also did not suffer from any significant or material dissociation between Aug 3 and Dec 3.

He explained that in layman terms, dissociation is a symptom, not a medical diagnosis. It refers to the loss of the integrative function of the human mind, and may also be experienced by normal persons in different situations.

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Ms Khan had told him that her psychotherapist said she had dissociation.

"Based on his conversations with Ms Khan, Dr Cheok did not believe that she fully understood what dissociation was," said the report.

When asked about dissociative identity disorder, Dr Cheok said that it is a different and very rare disorder.

Commonly called multiple identity disorder, those who suffer from this disorder would have typically gone through repeated childhood trauma, and would switch between different identities or even speak in different voices.

"In my career, I can't recall seeing any patient that fits dissociative identity disorder... So, this is a very rare condition, and certainly, Miss Khan does not fit this description," said Dr Cheok.

Asked by WP MP Dennis Tan how to reconcile his findings on Ms Khan's mental health with the evidence of WP leaders that she would get emotional whenever her sexual assault was mentioned, Dr Cheok said a sexual assault is "one of the most traumatic experiences someone would ever go through".

"It was very normal, and understandable for a survivor to show emotion when the topic came up. In fact, speaking about one's assault plainly, without emotion, is what would be abnormal (rather than being emotional when talking about one's assault)," stated the report.

While Dr Cheok did not deny that Ms Khan had some symptoms of being psychologically traumatised, he was of the view that the symptoms did not reach the threshold of a psychiatric disorder.

Asked by Mr Tan if it was nevertheless possible that Ms Khan's judgement could have been affected by the trauma — in a way that caused her to have "false memory creation" — Dr Cheok reiterated that Ms Khan did not suffer from dissociation. In his assessment, when Ms Khan spoke of her assault, she was not affected to an extent that caused her to lose her mental capacity.

He was also asked by Mr Tan whether a person who is suffering from trauma, while still generally high functioning, could be capable of sending out a message that selectively contained a lie.

WP leaders had, in their evidence, agreed that most of a message Ms Khan had sent to her aides following a meeting they all attended on Aug 8 was true but also contained an untruth — specifically that they had told her to take her lie in Parliament "to the grave".

Dr Cheok said that while possible, there also may be other explanations why a person may give a falsehood. In the specific context of Ms Khan, Dr Cheok disagreed with this possibility.

This article was first published in The Straits Times. Permission required for reproduction.