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How a Hong Kong inventor conquered his demons to improve lives

David Cheung’s mind was a blank slate after electroshock therapy – yet he battled back to health and used his skills to make elderly people ‘more comfortable’

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David Cheung runs Living Technology with his wife, doing everything from designing to building and maintaining their products. Photo: Xiaomei Chen

David Cheung Wai-sun is not your typical engineer. As a child, he battled severe depression because of family violence and poverty. By the time he was 13, he had attempted suicide five times.

After his last attempt, doctors put him in the psychiatric ward at Queen Mary Hospital and forced him to undergo electroconvulsive therapy, more commonly known as electroshock therapy.

Proponents of the controversial procedure say it “cures” depression by inducing seizures that alter brain chemistry, but Cheung said he was among those who suffered the side effects of having memory loss.

“They wiped everything. Things I learned in primary school – maths, for example – I didn’t know how to do any of that.

“When I came out of hospital after two years, I was a blank slate. I tried looking for a school to go to, but none of them would take me. It was a total failure.”

Without an education, Cheung had no choice but to work in a factory. Although he worked in packaging, a colleague in electronics took Cheung under his wing. From there, he started teaching himself what he missed in school by reading at a bookstore every day after work.

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