Inside China Today

Psychiatrist: China’s psychiatric treatment system is used as a political tool

Outpatient surgery nurse at Hunan’s Child Health Bureau He Xiang-gu has been illegally detained at the 4th ward of the Hunan’s Neurology Hospital for three months for following the cultivation practice of Falun Gong. Earlier this month, she released a voice recording to seek outside assistance for her brutal persecution, and says that during her detention at the hospital, she was forcibly injected with the psychiatric drug Risperidone whilst being held down by 4~5 people. Having been targeted by the Chinese communist regime for the past 8 years for practicing Falun Gong, Nurse He said a similar incident occurred in 2000 when she was kidnapped to the hospital and given brain destroying drugs.

Psychiatrist and Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Cincinnati Dr Sunny Lu commented on the recording of nurse He Xiang-gu and said that psychiatric treatment should be used to assist patients to regain normal thought processes, but it is instead used by the Chinese Communist Party as a means of oppressing spiritual groups. He says the treatment system has entirely become a political tool of the CCP and this is heartbreaking. Dr Lu pointed to the communist regime’s persecution of the Falun Gong cultivation group and says that there are at least over one thousand confirmed cases of persecution through psychiatric methods, and there are perhaps much more that are not known.

Dr Lu stressed that there are plenty more cases in China like that of nurse He’s, especially given the revelation of the large scale persecution of the Falun Gong spiritual group by the Communist regime through psychiatric means. During an agreement between the World Psychiatric Association and the Chinese Psychiatric Association, the communist regime admitted to numerous wrong diagnosis, but denied using the psychiatric treatment system to carry out religious persecution. Dr Lu however believes the Chinese Psychiatric Association has been politically exploited by the CCP, and says that as long as there is no systematic change in China, and no changes to the crackdown of Falun Gong, there will be further cases like this.

Dr Lu believes that the Chinese communist regime’s use of the psychiatric treatment system to persecute the Falun Gong cultivation group is against medical ethics, and they should be held legally responsible. She says that the recording of He Xiang-gu shows that her thought process was logical and that she does not have a psychiatric illness at all. Dr Lu says any medicine given to someone without an illness will have side effects, and the incident shows that psychiatric treatment administered by the CCP is brutal torture.

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