NPC passes first mental health law
After more than 25 years of talks, legislation approved that will end arbitrary forced confinement of people on grounds of mental illness
After more than a quarter century of discussion, the National People's Congress Standing Committee has passed the first national mental health law, including a ban on forced confinement.
Psychiatrists called the law, which also requires all full-service hospitals to set up psychiatric departments, a major step towards improving mental health care for millions of Chinese and ending human rights abuses in which thousands have been sent to hospitals against their will.
Human rights advocates have long complained that loopholes in regulations have allowed people to use the threat of confinement as a weapon against enemies, with some doctors locking up patients solely on the word of others.
Experts predicted that admissions to psychiatric wards would soon plummet while many already institutionalised will leave. The outflow could potentially create a new problem in trying making sure the truly ill still get care, psychiatrists said.
"I estimate that 80 per cent of patients are staying at the country's psychiatric hospitals against their will," Dr Michael Phillips, who heads Shanghai Mental Health's suicide prevention centre. "Most of them will choose to leave the hospitals."
No figures on the number of people in the nation's nearly 600 mental institutions are available, but it is estimated more than 100 million mainlanders suffer from mental illness. More than 16 million cases are believed severe.
Fewer than a tenth of people believed to be suffering from depression had been treated, said Professor Xiao Shuiyuan , dean of Central South University's School of Public Health in Changsha , Hunan .