Society

Compulsory mental commitments by police under fire

By Shan Juan (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-04-13 07:58

BEIJING - Mental patients who pose danger to others but are unable to consent to hospital admission should not be forced into mental hospitals by law enforcement officers, as the move may infringe upon the freedom of citizens, experts said.

Currently, police can send people they deem to be mentally ill or a threat to public security to psychiatric hospitals to receive compulsory treatment. According to official statistics, China has 18 million people suffering serious mental disorders.

However, cases in which law enforcement officers abuse their power to send someone who is healthy to an asylum for compulsory mental health treatment have made headlines from time to time. This tarnishes the image of the professional mental health sector, said a veteran clinical psychiatrist surnamed Tian.

"Police should be extremely careful when sending people to mental hospitals," he said.

However, given that police are not professionally trained, they may send the wrong person to mental health units unintentionally, he said.

People sent by police are usually admitted into mental hospitals called "An Kang" , meaning "peace and health" in Chinese. These hospitals are under the control of police departments.

Health and civil affairs authorities run most of the other mental hospitals across the country.

People can be forcefully committed to hospitals for treatment upon the request of their family.

"They would be cleared (to leave the hospital) once they pass a mental health screening," said Tian.

Given the lack of a national mental health law, problems abound in compulsory asylum admission and treatment, as well as the protection of the rights of patients.

China has had a series of high profile criminal cases committed by seriously mentally ill people, according to Zhuo Xiaoqin, professor with China University of Political Science and Law in Beijing.

Current laws on the management of mental health patients are not well defined and lack enforcement guidelines, he said.

More than 140 countries have enacted national laws on mental health.

Since the 1980s, mental health and law experts have proposed legislation on mental health to provide the mentally ill with legal protection and subsidized health care, but this has yet to happen.

Experts blame the huge funding that would be needed to facilitate law enforcement.

Only a few prosperous provinces and cities, such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong, have drafted regional regulations on mental health.

China Daily