World group to investigate political use of psychiatric hospitals in China. (Justice).YOKOHAMA -- The World Psychiatric Association The World Psychiatric Association (WPA) is an international umbrella organisation of psychiatric societies. Originally created to produce world psychiatric congresses, it has evolved to hold regional meetings, to promote professional education and to set ethical, scientific and will send a delegation to China next spring to investigate charges that psychiatric hospitals are being used to silence political and religious dissidents. The issue has been the subject of much debate and some delegates to the association's meeting had supported a stronger resolution from the British Royal College of Psychiatrists The Royal College of Psychiatrists is the main professional organisation of psychiatrists in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, responsible for representing and certifying psychiatrists, psychiatric training and providing high quality public information about mental . It would have established a more independent commission as well as possibly barring the Chinese Psychiatric Association if evidence of abuse was found. That resolution was based on a report by human rights scholar Robin Munro, who catalogued accounts of Falun Gong Falun Gong or Falun Dafa Controversial spiritual movement combining healthful exercises with meditation for the purpose of “moving to higher levels.” Its teachings draw from Buddhism, Confucianism, Daoism, and the Western New Age movement. members stuck in psychiatric hospitals and receiving powerful medicines and electroshocks. The spiritual movement, which is banned in China, says more than 300 of its members have been hospitalized and some have died. Dr. Arthur Kleinman Arthur Kleinman (b. 1941) is a prominent American psychiatrist and professor of medical anthropology and cross-cultural psychiatry at Harvard University, USA. He is well known for his work on mental illness in Chinese culture. , a psychiatrist at Harvard University, countered that psychiatric confinement Psychiatric Confinement Definition Psychiatric confinement is the use of restraints to detain a person in need of care and further evaluation. Purpose of "troublemakers" was common in the Mao years but rare today. Chinese psychiatrists have told him that security authorities sometimes deliver Falun Gong members for evaluation. If no diagnosis of mental illness is made, the person is immediately removed from hospital, they said. Commitment problems are due more to lack of training than malice, Kleinman said, noting that of the 13,000 doctors working in mental health in China, only about 1,000 are fully trained. |
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