As well as representing a technical breakthrough, good policy and accompanying legislation are the foundations of a new mental health law which could benefit not only the 100 million mental disease patients but the country's whole population.

Hao Ping, a doctor from Henan Province and Han Deyun, a lawyer from Chongqing, teamed up on proposing new mental health legislation during this year's National People's Conference (NPC) session in March.

A member of the national medical expert team, Hao's contribution was to offer free medical aid to impoverished farmers and urban residents every year. She highlighted the need to cater properly for mental patients, most of whom stay at home living empty lives. They also often suffer from discrimination from a biased public.
 
According to the National Center for Mental Health under the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC), over 100 million people suffer from mental disease in China but only 20 percent of the 16 million serious cases are treated in hospital. 

"For years, the NPC annual sessions have paid attention to mental health legislation, with dozens of motions tabled each year," noted Tang Hongyu, vice dean of Peking University Mental Health Research Institute. "A specific law would help to protect patients' rights and safeguard mental health at large."

As one of the NPC deputies backing such a law, Huo Jinhua wrote that China is lagging behind other nations in the area of mental health. Prevention and community surveillance are woeful given a lack of appropriate legislation, as is the level of care in remedial institutes.

While over 100 countries have passed mental health laws following France's example set in 1938, China tends to depend on clauses belonging to other laws. For example, civil law sets up custody systems for the protection and oversight of mental patients' lives and legal rights. A clause from criminal law waives judicial punishment for mental patients following medical examination.

"In fact, most of the stipulations can't meet the requirement of current situation," said Huo.

Back in 1985, the Ministry of Health (MOH) tasked health authorities in Sichuan and Hunan provinces to draft a mental health law but all 20 drafts were considered unsatisfactory.

According to Tang, a main reason exists for the delay in the law. Since local governments would be financially liable for all treatment, economic disparity between different regions would make this system unfair.

The richest areas, such as Shanghai, Ningbo and Beijing, naturally has the best care systems whereas China CDC stats for 2005 registered less than 30 psychiatrists in the poorer provinces of Qinghai and Ningxia while Tibet had absolutely no mental healthcare facilities.

Since 1980s, governments have focused on economic development, while overlooking the social burden that mental diseases are on society at large.

Liu Xiehe, a 78-year-old co-drafter of the law, put the delay down to a lack of awareness.

On March 14, the MOH put the mental health law on its annual legislation plan and should be submitted to the NPC 2008 session.

Experts have gone a step further in calling for more disease prevention. Thus, the law will require each school to provide an adequate proportion of psychological councilors to cater to their whole student body.

The absence of a law can also be felt in terms of the poor investments received by existing mental health projects. Even in Beijing, surveys have shone a light on the poor equipment and dilapidated facilities of psychiatric wards with many of the institutions built as late as the 1990s being forced to shut down.

One expert pointed to the success seen in other countries by the application of community treatment, enabling the patients to avoid leaving their normal social environment to be rehabilitated in a timely fashion. Thus, he called for the law to incorporate such a situation, which could be infinitely preferable to systematic hospitalization.

(China.org.cn by Huang Shan, April 18, 2007)