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May 7, 2011

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'Sane' man sent back to hospital

THE case of a man who was returned to a mental hospital after he'd escaped in a bid to prove his sanity, is to be investigated by the Hubei Province government.

Xu Wu, 43, fled from the hospital in Wuhan, the central China province's capital, and traveled to south China's Guangzhou City before he was caught by police.

The former worker with Wuhan Iron and Steel Group was dragged away by plainclothes police outside a TV station in Guangzhou after he was interviewed by reporters in the company of his father and a friend on April 27.

Before he was led away, Xu told Guangzhou-based New Express Daily that he had been institutionalized for four years after he protested to authorities in Wuhan and Beijing over a wage dispute with his former employer.

Xu said he was sent to a mental hospital in Wuhan for "paranoid psychosis."

Xu claimed he had been forced to take pills and received injections that made him numb and woozy. He was also given electric shocks during his confinement, the newspaper reported.

Xu escaped from the hospital on April 18 and said he traveled to Guangzhou to prove his sanity.

Guangzhou Psychiatric Hospital conducted tests on April 21 and found he was suffering from depression and had low self-esteem.

But doctors didn't find he had any other serious mental issues, the report said.

Xu was seized by Wuhan police on charges of "endangering social security" immediately after the television interview.

A legal expert called for legislation preventing individuals or organizations forcibly committing people to mental hospitals in order to achieve their own purposes. China doesn't have a national law concerning this area, he said.

"If we don't regulate and restrict the right to diagnose and commit people into psychiatric hospitals, everyone of us could end up being a patient," Wang Xixin told China Central Television.

The Hubei provincial government has organized a team to investigate Xu's case.




 

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