More than a decade after China passed a groundbreaking mental health law, victims and activists say that involuntary hospitalisation remains common

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/35122987

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Zhang Youmiao was detained for seven days before being released, although they were later sectioned again for 15 days, without the consent of their parents. The doctors had been sympathetic, with one even quietly suggesting to Zhang that they could apply for political asylum in a foreign country. “That was something I’d never heard of,” Zhang says. “I didn’t view my behaviour as political, I was just protecting my rights.”

Chinese law states that if a person is hospitalised involuntarily, they should have a diagnosed psychiatric condition. Zhang says they didn’t receive a formal diagnosis in either of their spells in hospital. They do not have hospital records from that time, but provided documentary evidence to support other elements of their account.

Zhang never formally complained about their treatment. “I was frightened, I was afraid of being put into jail or a psychiatric ward again. I even doubted myself, I thought that maybe I was the root cause of the problem”.

Zhang left China in 2023 and is now applying for asylum overseas.

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Others have sought accountability from the Chinese system. More than 100 people attempted to bring legal cases related to involuntary hospitalisation against hospitals, police or local governments between 2013, when the mental health law was enacted, and 2024. Few succeed.

In 2024, Shenzhen-based lawyer Zeng Yuan sued her local public security bureau after she was sectioned for four days after a dispute with local police. Zeng had smashed a sign in the police station, venting her frustration at their failure to help her contact her estranged father and handle a barrage of online harassment she had been receiving in relation to her job. Zeng lost her case, despite the fact that the Shenzhen health commission ruled that her medical records and behaviour “did not fully support a diagnosis of severe mental disorder”.

Zeng represented herself in her legal case. “If you directly accuse the government of violating the law, it’s basically impossible to find a lawyer in the commercial field who will represent you,” she said. Huang’s NGO, the Equity and Justice Initiative, used to provide legal aid to people bringing civil rights complaints, often funded with the help of donations from overseas. But tightened laws on foreign funding “has severely impacted our ability to do these cases”, she said.

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