China’s Use of Psychiatric Detention

In 1992 on the eve of the third anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown Wang Wanxing (pictured on the left) displayed a banner critical of the Chinese government. He was arrested shortly after that and kept in a high security psychiatric hospital for the next 13 years. According to Chinese documents Wang’s diagnoses was paranoia and he was treated with Thorazine. The Chinese report claimed that “When the topic of conversation turned to politics, he displayed impairments of thought association and of mental logic.”

Since Wang’s release to Germany last year he has been given an independent psychiatric evaluation. The Dutch psychiatrists that tested him found no form of mental disorder and no reason for him to have been hospitalized.

Human Rights Watch has documented 3,000 cases of psychiatric punishment for political prisoners in China since the early 1980s.

Los Angeles Times article about Wang’s recent exam

Human Rights Watch website

The Art of Mibi

I first started looking at this guy’s art because of his fabulous “Death and Taxes” piece. Its a visualization of how your tax dollars got spent in 2004.

Click here for a large version.

I was planning on posting about this piece alone because in my opinion if the government allocated a little more money towards education, healthcare, programs for the homeless, etc. it would go a long ways towards improving the state of mental health in this country.

Browsing through Mibi’s profile I saw his piece called “Perscription.” Then I knew I had to blog about it.

Click here for a larger version.

Ehh… not a big fan of the last statement on there, but it does make you think.

Mibi’s DeviantArt.com profile