After 24 years and 10 drafts, mental health legislation is another step closer to becoming law. With the latest draft issued for comments in May, the final version could be published this year, said Liu Xiehe, one of the drafters of the Mental Health Law who is also a doctor at West China Hospital of Sichuan University.

In March, the debate on mandatory treatment by mental hospitals came back into the spotlight when two cases went to trial in the district courts of Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong Province. Both plaintiffs accused the local psychiatric hospitals of mandatory hospitalization, saying the hospitals neglected their professional ethics for commercial benefits.

The new draft devotes its first three chapters to preventing mental illnesses before defining the responsibilities and needs of doctors, hospitals and patients, Liu told Huaxi Metropolis Newspaper earlier this week.

The draft will require doctors to review diagnoses before compelling patients to hospitalization. The draft also says doctors cannot compel patients to hospitalization unless they can't control their behavior and threaten to harm those around them.

The regulation was made to avoid getting a healthy person into the mental house for incorrect diagnoses or other aims, said Ma Li, a member of the mental health lawmaking research team in the National People's Congress.

'Latest draft is unwise'

Liu first initiated the mental health legislation in 1985, but despite numerous attempts, it has never been passed.

But lawyer Huang Xuetao, who has read the latest draft, said that such a law still wouldn't prevent healthy people from being sent to a mental hospital and that it would be unwise to ask doctors to review diagnoses by themselves.

"A doctor is not professional in judging conflicts of interest or distinguishing right from wrong behind the benefits, so it's unadvisable to ask a doctor to shoulder such a responsibility," Huang said.

Huang suggested letting the public security departments decide whether to take action of mandatory hospitalization through legal proceedings, which is similar to measures adopted by mandatory drug rehabilitation centers.

Lack of money

Some experts think passing legislation has been delayed so long not because regulations were difficult to constitute, but because the government couldn't guarantee enough money to enforce them.

"Against the background of new medical reform, the government should invest heavily in mental hospitals," Jia Fujun, one of the drafters for Guangdong provincial mental health regulations, told Nanfang Daily.

"We estimated that if the government invested 3 billion yuan (US$439 million) in three to five years, all the mental patients' problems would be settled," Jia said. "Guangdong has spent 15 million yuan (US$2.19 million) over the past few years on mental health, mainly assisting the mental houses outside the Pearl River Delta. The new medical reform will likely bring more investment."

Mental illness covers a wide range of ailments, from depression to schizophrenia. The affliction accounts for 20 percent of all diseases in the country and has become a serious threat to public health. The rate is expected to rise to 25 percent by 2020, according to the Ministry of Health.

Latest figures show there are 11 hospital beds and fewer than two psychiatrists for every 100,000 patients, far below the world's average of more than 43 beds and nearly four doctors for the same number of patients.

The country's health budget last year was 5.5 percent of gross domestic product, while the investment in mental health services took up 2.3 percent of the health budget in 2008, according to China Daily.

(China.org.cn by Zhou Jing June 17, 2009)