(Ecns.cn) -- As one of the few countries that have not enacted any legislation on mental healthcare, China is embracing a new page. On October 24, the Mental Health Law was finally submitted to the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress after a long 26 years of drafting.
The Minister of Health, Chen Zhu, said that the Mental Health Law will ensure that mentally ill people can enjoy the right to medical help, and at the same time, prevent the situation that healthy people are sent to psychiatric hospitals by force.
Liu Baiju, an expert from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that forcing someone to stay in a hospital is different from limiting one's freedom. Many mentally ill patients are incapable of deciding for themselves if they should seek treatment. In this case, having their families decide for them is reasonable.
Liu also expressed his concern about the possibility that some families may force their healthy relatives into psychiatric hospitals. In this regard, Liu said there are procedures that allow the patients to sue the people who forcibly sent them to psychiatric hospitals.
One aim of the Mental Health Law is to regulate the medical treatment of involuntary patients. Some mentally ill patients are voluntarily treated in psychiatric hospitals, but not all of them. For those who are aggressive or potentially dangerous, Liu referred to an idea from medical practitioners that once doctors consider medical treatment to be necessary, the patients should be sent to psychiatric hospitals even if they are reluctant.
Tang Hongyu, deputy director of the Mental Health Research Institute of Peking University, has joined in drafting the legislation of the Mental Health Law from the eleventh edition to the seventeenth. He said that to avoid wrongfully sending someone for treatment, many countries follow a principle of "strict entry," whereby there is an extremely strict assessment to send someone to a psychiatric hospital. In the US, due to the "strict entry" rule, some patients do not receive proper treatment in time. Thus, Tang said "strict entry" is not viable in China. He pointed out that for many years China's policy has been "easy in, easy out." Relatives, colleagues, and even neighbors are able to send mental patients to psychiatric hospitals, which causes a situation that some healthy people were forced in.
For these involuntary, yet nonviolent patients, Tang expressed his view that relatives should be allowed to decide if they want to send them to the hospital. Once the patient has harmed others, then police are allowed to take charge of the situation and make sure the patients are treated in psychiatric hospitals.
Qiu Renzong, a member of the medical ethics committee at the Ministry of Health, stated that the aim of the Mental Health Law is to protect the rights of people with mental disorders and to eradicate the power abuse over psychiatric patients. He suggested that the duty of psychiatric doctors is to conduct professional and correct diagnosis. As for whether the psychiatric patients should be sent to a hospital and cured forcefully, it depends on the relevant legislation.
China's General Rule of the Civil Law regulates that once arguments about a psychiatric patient's medical treatment has happened between a patient's guardian—including spouse, parents, and adult offspring—psychiatric doctors are supposed to give reasonable suggestions, and even make the final decisions. Hopefully the coming out of the Mental Health Law can improve China's current legislation to help the mentally ill.
