In A Legal Analysis Report of Hospitalized System of Mental Diseases in China, Huang analyzed 300 news reports and 100 cases involving the hospitalization of suspected mentally ill patients.

Zhou Mingde

She then unraveled 30 mental health laws and regulations, pointing out eight problems and concluding with the greatest contradiction of all: On the one hand, three out of every four seriously mentally ill could not be hospitalized, according to the latest figures from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

On the other, many of those hospitalized in Huang's report appear to be suffering no mental illness at all.

In other words, those who need to be institutionalized aren't. Those who don't need it, are.

Huang not only blames regulations, but also cites something altogether more sinister.

"It's become a trade between the hospital and guardians," Huang says. "Hospitals are only responsible to those who paid the fees and as long as they pay, patients might be stuck in there forever."

Doctors simply assume all patients sent to the hospital are sick and need treatment, she explains. And if Zhou's case shows anything it is that once in, it's hard to get out.

Few hospitalized patients represent a true danger to society, Huang argues, and suggests a joint diagnosis involving medical experts and judicial expertise to help rescue them.

"Mental disease is a common concept in terms of medical opinion," she says. "But now they are using medical standards to violate citizens' personal rights that eventually make it possible for anyone to be hospitalized as a mentally ill patient.

"This is terrible and wrong."