FREE CONSULTING: Psychiatrists from Hebei Medical University volunteer to spread mental healthcare knowledge to seniors in Shijiazhuang, north China's Hebei Province, on October 10 (ZHU XUDONG)

Huang listed the other reasons including social discrimination on people with mental problems and the lack of well-trained psychiatrists.

"Mental problems haven't received as much attention as physical problems. Inevitably some people working in this field are not so qualified. This cannot be changed within a short period," Huang said.

Many people claiming to have been forcibly treated for nonexistent mental illnesses are institutionalized by family members. Li Renbing, a lawyer at the Sino Promise Law Firm in Beijing, revealed that in many cases, they do this over financial disputes.

Chen Guoming, a former gold store owner, was forced into a mental hospital in 2011 by his wife and locked up for 56 days. When he was released, he found his wife had transferred nearly 800,000 yuan ($128,109) from his bank account and taken all of the jewelry in his store. "The same happened to many other victims and the mental hospitals tend to believe the family members. We can't deny making profits is another reason for the hospitals to admit them," Li said.

Li said that there are no limits placed on the number of patients that mental hospitals can receive, so they can easily profit from falsely diagnosing healthy people with mental illnesses and receiving them for compulsory treatment.

"The loopholes in current system made compulsory mental health treatment ripe for abuse," Huang said. "Under that system, there is no standard verification for sending a person to a mental hospital for forceful treatment provided he or she is accused of having a serious mental illness. Those who forcibly sent their family members to mental hospitals just take advantage of this."

A step forward

The new law grants mental health patients rights to education, work, medical insurance, privacy and social assistance. It states that tests must be carried out only at the discretion of the patient or their guardian, and people who have recovered from illness can be discharged from hospitals at their discretion.

Under the law, every mental illness diagnosis should be made by a qualified psychiatrist. Patients and their relatives can seek a second opinion from another professional, and if they still disagree with the diagnosis, they can turn to another qualified medical institution for verification.

To cope with such a situation, the law requires general hospitals to train medical workers to perform basic psychiatric evaluations, and sets up mental illness clinics under the guidance of government health departments.

"Patients who go to general hospitals may have both physical and mental illnesses. If hospitals provide a better psychiatric service, they will be treated properly and promptly and valuable medical resources will not be wasted with inappropriate therapy," said Wang Shaoli, Vice President of Beijing Huilongguan Hospital, a leading psychiatric hospital in the country, in an interview with Xinhua News Agency.

The law includes a provision asking the government to provide a special allowance for medical workers at mental health institutions, as their work is of high risk and their incomes are relatively low. This has been widely welcomed by psychiatrists. They have also called for more investment in education.

"With this law, there will be clear nationwide procedures to appeal involuntary institutionalization," said Liu Xiehe, one of the drafters of the Mental Health Law who is also a doctor at West China Hospital affiliated to Sichuan University. "But it fails to address the power of the police in the mental health industry, and it doesn't state clearly what to do if the guardians have different ideas in sending the patients for tests."

According to Huang, a few other regulations in the law may also trigger controversies. "It says psychological consultants don't have the right to make diagnoses, only certificated psychiatrists have such a right. It is very confusing as it is hard to distinguish between consulting and diagnosing," Huang said.

Huang admits that it is impossible for the law alone to eliminate malpractice regarding hospitalization. "Besides the law, we need well-designed medical protocols and strict implementation of laws and protocols," she said.

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