Realistic version : Flying over the lunatic asylum
Xu Wei’s current home is in an ordinary community in Baoshan District, Shanghai. During lunch time, fragrance first greets the reporters with a table full of dishes. In order to invite defense lawyer Yang Weihua’s family for dinner, Mr.Xu and his girlfriend Yingchun, who are both a mental patient, has been busy all morning.
（This is the first time Xu Wei has met public interest lawyer Yang Weihua since he came out of the mental hospital. In order to treat his family, Xu Wei and Yingchun make a large table of dishes early in the morning.）
After the meal, Xu Wei and Yingchun wash the dishes and clean the table. They cooperate very well. If you are not informed, it is difficult to tell that they both have mental illness. Although just over 51 years old, Xu Wei's hair is almost completely white. Because he lost two front teeth, air leaks through his mouth. But he still talks a lot. Being kind and talkative is Xu Wei's first impression for reporters.
(After the meal, Xu Wei and Yingchun wash the dishes together. If you are not informed in advance, it’s hard to imagine that they both have mental illness.)
On the other side of the city, the gate of Shanghai Youth Psychiatric Rehabilitation Hospital in Jinjiatang, Qingchun Village, Xinzhuang Town, Minhang District, is closed. It is hard to imagine that Mr.Xu lived here two months ago. What is even harder is that he had live there for 14 years. "There is generally nothing to do in there. Just eat, drink, sleep and think about how to escape."
（In the psychiatric hospital for 14 years, Xu Wei, who has just turned 51 this year, has gray hair, loses two teeth, gets wrinkles on his face, and looks like a 60-something person.）
From an overseas returnee to a mental patient
Xu Wei was born in Shanghai in 1966. In 2001, after studying and working in Australia for 11 years, he was denied a visa and was forced back to China. After returning, Xu Wei always felt that someone was "stalking" him. In 2001, his family sent him to the Mental Health Center in Putuo District, Shanghai for the first time and he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. He went home after nearly a year of treatment. In 2003, due to work problems, Xu Wei had a big fight with his father. Soon, his father and brother sent him to the enclosed Shanghai Youth Mental Rehabilitation Hospital. This time, they did not plan to let Xu Wei out.
Shenzhen Equity Agency is a charity organization that specializes in caring for people with mental disorders. For many years, it has been trying to help Xu Wei leave the hospital. It also helped Xu Wei hire a charity lawyer. According to the charity lawyer Yang Weihua, Xu Wei had a conscious mind during his stay in the rehabilitation hospital, and there has never been an act of hurting others. However, Tao Naiqiang, director of the Shanghai Youth Rehabilitation Hospital, said that this does not mean that Xu Wei is not ill: "Mental activities are complicated. For mental disorders, making a loud noise may not necessarily be severe, and being silent may not necessarily be healthy. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia, a paranoid type, which is difficult to cure. Now under the supervision of the hospital, it can only be said that he can cooperate with the treatment."
(Even in the mental hospital, Xu Wei tried his best not to derail himself from society. He figured out a way to build a smart phone and learned to use WeChat, Weibo, and online shopping by himself.)
Because of his good performance, Mr.Xu even gained the "privilege" of free entry and exit to the rehabilitation hospital, often helped doctors and nurses go out for shopping, and accompanied other mental patients to see a doctor outside. After being sent for treatment, Xu Wei once said that he had no problems and wanted to leave the hospital. But the hospital insisted on the principle of "who brings him back should be the one who sends him here". Unless the guardian agreed, it was impossible for Xu Wei to leave by himself. "He asks to be discharged from the hospital, but cannot be allowed. If his guardian proposes, it can definitely be agreed. If he leaves from the hospital alone, I must be responsible for it. Even if nothing happens, what happens if his guardian comes to me and asks for his whereabouts? How can I explain it?"
In Tao Naiqiang's view, letting Xu Wei go out is like throwing a time bomb outside. Obviously, the hospital should not be allowed to bear the risk of the bomb exploding at any time.
The family refused to answer and the hospital did not let him go. In order to prove that he was a normal person, Xu Wei had asked various relevant departments in Shanghai for help. But in the end, there was no reply. "Complaints, go to the municipal government, the National People's Congress, and the Health Bureau. Numerous calls have been made, but there is no way. They just said that they would investigate. It is useless if they don’t give specific answers."
During the hospitalization, because of the death of his father, the guardian was changed to his elder brother. However, his elder brother neither agreed with him to be discharged from the hospital, nor did he often come to see Xu Wei. Not seeing his father for the last time became Xu Wei’s biggest regret. “After my stepmother passed away, he had symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease, and he had mild dementia before. But he became more serious as soon as my stepmother passed away." Many years later, when Xu Wei finally escaped from the mental hospital after a lot of hardships, the first thing he wanted to do was to sweep his father’s grave. But he suddenly found out that he did not know when his father passed away, nor did he know where the tomb is.
"I don't know, because they didn't tell me when I was in the hospital. It's still not clear yet."
Escape! Escape! Escape!
Normal channels were not available, so Xu Wei desperately wanted to escape by himself. But the first time he fled, he didn’t even step out of the door of the mental hospital. “Once a new patient came in, we both wanted to get out after talking. Then we implemented it. I wanted to overturn the wall. I stepped on his shoulder to overturn the wall. , But I could not reach it, so it failed."
After more than ten years of hospitalization, Xu Wei and a female patient Yingchun got closer and closer. Xu Wei smiles and recalls that the two people’s monthly minimum living allowance plus maintenance subsidy was about 3,000 yuan, and the self-paid part of the drug and board and lodging expenses to the mental hospital was more than 2,000. After saving for several years, he finally had about 30,000 yuan. It became their "new life fund."
Xu Wei contemplated his "escape plan." In order to make the doorman not suspicious about him going out with his girlfriend, every time Mr. Xu ran errands for the hospital staff, he would bring his girlfriend. Sometimes they just went out for a walk, and they deliberately said hello to the guard. At 4 a.m. one day in February 2011, Xu Wei and his girlfriend packed their luggage, each carried a bag, and called the guard to wake up. "I told him that we were going out to help the cafeteria buy snacks. She opened the door soon. We ran out. For this time, I had tried many times to take my girlfriend out and back so as to let them get used to it. So this time she didn't doubt it at all."
Then, according to the pre-planned route, the two arrived Shanghai South Railway Station, the nearest station to the mental hospital, bought a 7 o’clock ticket to Guangzhou. Because they were too sleepy, they took a nap in the waiting room. They didn’t expect that when they woke up, the doctor was already in front of him. After planning for many years of "escape", what he got only three hours of freedom. Xu Wei smils bitterly.
Mental patient sued mental hospital: the first case in the "Mental Health Law"
On May 1, 2013, the "Mental Health Law" was formally implemented. It is clear that the inpatient treatment of patients with mental disorders is based on the principle of voluntary. Five days later, Xu Wei commissioned a lawyer to sue the Shanghai Youth Mental Rehabilitation Hospital and his elder brother as guardian to the court on the grounds of violating personal freedom. This case received public attention for a time and was called the first case of the Mental Health Law.
(In 2013, Xu Wei took the psychiatric hospital and his elder brother to court. The court repeatedly considered whether to open the case. The picture shows Xu Wei appealing to the court to open the case through the Internet.)
However, defense lawyer Yang Weihua tells reporters that due to the original judicial appraisal that Xu Wei belonged to the residual period of schizophrenia and other reasons, Xu Wei was ruled to lose in both the first and second trials. “Perhaps for the referees, their imagination of future risks, which is the so-called public safety, such kind of concern may exceed the concern about the legal principles and facts of the case. They might think that if I sentence you to go out, and problems occur in the future, people will ask why this person comes out? Who made the judgment? The judge is overwhelmed with the potential consequence."
After more than ten years of hospitalization, Xu Wei refused to give up despite repeated attempts to escape. "There is no way. It can only be done like this. Try as a last resort to save a hopeless situation. Although this time fails, it may be succeed next time. Continue to do it again. If the third judicial appraisal of my mental illness is not better, I may not live anymore, suicide. If suicide fails, then I will continue to do judicial appraisal of mental illness in another six months. Just keep going until I can't do it anymore."
(This is Xu Wei's third judicial appraisal. In the end, he was appraised as having full capacity for civil conduct. In a sense, this paper appraisal is proof of his freedom.)
In September 2016, Xu Wei appealed to the court for the third time. At the end of that year, Xu Wei's mother filed a lawsuit on the grounds of applying for revoking the custody of her elder brother and determining that Xu Wei has full civil capacity. In March 2017, they applied to the court for a new judicial appraisal of Xu Wei's mental illness. On July 6, the judicial appraisal agency entrusted by the court issued an appraisal: Xu Wei was assessed as having full capacity for civil conduct. With this paper judgment, Shanghai Youth Mental Rehabilitation Hospital finally stated that Xu Wei could be discharged at any time.
(On September 25, Xu Wei officially moved out of the mental hospital with a smile on his face.)
End
Lawyer Yang Weihua recalls that there was an intriguing detail when cooperating with the doctor to go through various procedures. The document prepared by the rehabilitation hospital was informed to the patient's guardian, not the patient himself. But in fact, as a person with full capacity for civil conduct, Xu Wei no longer has a guardian in law. "This detail shows that this case has changed a certain amount of history in the end. There are probably really rare people who go through the discharge procedures by themselves, so the hospital does not have such procedures at all, and there is no such prepared format document. There is no such documents, and they will not design such documents specifically for him. So they finally took an ordinary guardian’s document."
On September 25th, Xu Wei officially moved out of the Shanghai Youth Mental Rehabilitation Hospital. Mr. Xu says that after some time, when he finds a stable job, he will get marriage with his girlfriend. He says that the freedom he now understands is very narrow and ordinary. But from his mouth, there was a "hiss" sound that kept leaking the air. With the smell of food in the living room in the afternoon, and the smell of alcohol from his body, people couldn't help being happy for him:
"I can go to the park when I want to go to the park. I can take a bus when I want to get on the bus. If I want to watch this programme today, I will watch TV. It’s impossible to do this in a psychiatric hospital. It’s impossible to do it. These are very tiny things that are not worth mentioning for ordinary people. They think it doesn’t matter. But when you are admitted to a psychiatric hospital, if you lose your freedom, you will feel that this is precious, extremely precious."
(After being discharged from the hospital, Xu Wei cooked himself a meal. We could feel his satisfaction through Weibo.)
【Reporter's Notes】
The diagnosis and treatment of mental illness in Chinese laws have always been more scientific and rational.
Whether a person suffers from a mental illness can only be determined after diagnosis by a professional medical institution. Such a professional appraisal system plays an important role in curing diseases and saving people and maintaining social stability.
On May 1, 2013, the "Mental Health Law" was formally implemented. Article 30 stipulates: "The hospitalization of mental disorders follows the voluntary principle. Only those whose diagnosis conclusion and condition evaluation show that the patient is severely mentally disordered and has one of the following circumstances should be hospitalized: (1) Behaviors that have harmed themselves or risk of harm to themselves; (2) Behaviors that endanger the safety of others have occurred, or the safety of others has been threatened.
The law both medically and legally protects the rights of people with mental disorders, and plays a major role in maintaining social stability. However, in the actual implementation process they encountered embarrassment.
First, due to the peculiarities of mental illness, the diagnosis of the same person by different institutions at different times may have different results. And does a person suffer from mental illness? Has his illness reached the point where he needs to be forced to a doctor? The criteria for determining these issues depends on the professional appraisals of psychiatric institutions.
Second, although the "Mental Health Law" stipulates that "inpatient treatment of mental disorders follows the voluntary principle," judges often still consider the potential risks to public safety of people with mental disabilities when making specific judgments. Such "considerations" may ultimately affect the judgment. Take Xu as an example. In the case of Xu Wei vs. Mental Hospital and Guardian for human rights violations in 2012, Xu Wei neither harmed himself nor harmed others. In line with the Mental Health Law, “people with mental disabilities can voluntarily choose whether hospitalize or not. However, during the judgment process, the judge interpreted the law as “only those who volunteer come to the hospital can be discharged voluntarily” and pointed out that Xu Wei was forced to be sent to a hospital in 2003, so it was difficult to meet his request for self-discharge. Xu Wei lost the case. In the end, it went back to the guardian principle of "who sent in and picked it up" in mental hospitals.
It is hoped that in an increasingly sound social system, researches on "mental diseases" can be more precise and refined, and laws related to people with mental disorders can be more and more perfect, so as to more fully respect and protect the legitimate rights and interests of relevant people .