China sees resurgence in psychiatric care for ‘trouble-makers’

We asked Professor Thomas G Schulze, president-elect of the World Psychiatric Association, to review these notes. He replied:

“For what is described here, no-one should be involuntarily admitted and treated against his will. It reeks of political abuse.”

Between 2013 and 2017, more than 200 people reported they had been wrongfully hospitalised by the authorities, according to a group of citizen journalists in China who documented abuses of the Mental Health Law.

Their reporting ended in 2017, because the group’s founder was arrested and subsequently jailed.

For victims seeking justice, the legal system appears stacked against them.

A man we are calling Mr Li, who was hospitalised in 2023 after protesting against the local police, tried to take legal action against the authorities for his incarceration.

Unlike Junjie, doctors told Mr Li he wasn’t ill but then the police arranged an external psychiatrist to assess him, who diagnosed him with bipolar disorder, and he was held for 45 days.

Once released, he decided to challenge the diagnosis.

“If I don’t sue the police it’s like I accept being mentally ill. This will have a big impact on my future and my freedom because police can use it as a reason to lock me up any time,” he says.

In China, the records of anyone ever diagnosed with a serious mental health disorder could be shared with the police, and even local residents’ committees.

But Mr Li was not successful – the courts rejected his appeal.

“We hear our leaders talking about the rule of law,” he told us. “We never dreamed one day we could be locked up in a mental hospital.”

The BBC has found 112 people listed on the official website for Chinese court decisions who, between 2013 and 2024, attempted to take legal action against police, local governments or hospitals for such treatment.

Some 40% of these plaintiffs had been involved in complaints about the authorities. Only two won their cases.

And the site appears to be censored – five other cases we have investigated are missing from the database.

The issue is that the police enjoy “considerable discretion” in dealing with “troublemakers,” according to Nicola MacBean from The Rights Practice, a human rights organisation in London.

“Sending someone to a psychiatric hospital, bypassing procedures, is too easy and too useful a tool for the local authorities.”