BREAKING: David Widjaja & NTU second suicide victim Zhou Zheng worked in same laboratory S2-B3a-06!!!

By Eugene Yeo and Shawn Tay

They say lightning doesn’t hit twice on the same spot. In less than a week after the unfortunate suicide of Mr David Widjaja, NTU staff and students are put through the same traumatic experience again.

24-year-old Zhou Zheng, a Chinese national, was an Infocomm Project Officer at the university’s School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering.

He was found hanging in the balcony in his apartment at Block 101C Nanyang Heights, where staff and graduate students reside.

Two suicides occur one after another within a week at the same campus. Is this a mere coincidence or a joke played by heavens?

It appears that the lightning did strike on the same spot after all. Both David Widjaja and Zhou Zheng were from the Division of Electrical and Electronics Engineering and what’s more, Zhou Zheng worked in the same lab, S2-B3a-06.

These were the project details of David Widjaja under Professor Chan Kup Luk which had been taken down already from the NTU website:

Click here to see bigger image.

Though David’s name was not printed, the project described was his FYP according to his friends and newspaper reports.

Mr Zhou Zheng, a staff of NTU, worked as a Infocomm Project Officer at the SAME LAB as David Widjaja:

 

 

 

Click here to see bigger image.

An Info Comm Project Officer is involved in research work. According to latest reprots from Lianhe Wanbao, Zhou Zheng is one year the senior of Widjaja.

Zhou Zheng might have known Widjaja in person and it is not inconceivable that his suicide has something to do with Widjaja.

Zhou Zheng may have severe post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD from the untimely death of Widjaja, the closer the relationship he has with the deceased, the bigger the blow.

(As one reader has rightly pointed out, the symptoms must be of more than one month’s duration to qualify as PTSD. A more appropriate clinical term is “acute stress disorder”. I am bringing PTSD up for the purpose of discussion. I hope NTU has contingency plans in mind to avert this easily treatable condition in its students and staff who were traumatized by two suicides.)

According to this landmark study on PTSD in the United States which was published in the March issue of the journal Archives of General Psychiatry this year (read article here), PTSD leads to increased suicide risk in young adults especially in the early weeks.

In my opinion, NTU should suspend classes at the Division of EEE for a week and organized counselling sessions for all students and staff by psychiatrists and trained psychologists.

Do not underestimate the psychological impact on these two suicide cases on the students and staff. Under a pressure cooker school environment, this additional stress will be sufficient to tip some over.

PTSD patients often have recurring vivid nightmares of the traumatic event or in this instance, the images of the deceased when he is still alive. Though most will resolve within half a year with appropriate counselling, 10% of the patients may go on to develop chronic depression and anxiety disorders if the symptoms persist for half a year or more.

NTU should place the welfare of its students and staff above mundane administrative and academic concerns. No amount of degrees, honors and bonuses will suffice to bring back the two lives lost. Even if the temporary disruption of classes may delay the school term by a few weeks, NTU has a moral responsibility to ensure that such tragedies do not happen again.

NOTE: Another NTU student, Gabriel has a different perspective of what happened here