ABSTRACT
In a nutshell, the article portrayed mentally ill Chinese as treated like animals, locked up by his ignorant and heartless families, awaiting a liberating and humanitarian rescue by the psychiatric science. e authors of the article used this image to lament the shortage of professional mental health care in China, to establish psychiatry’s authority against other practices of care, and to legitimize the profession’s expansion. is international discourse of psychiatric liberation vis-à-vis familial constraint has been circulated and utilized within China as well. For example, Dr. He quoted in the New York Times article was very likely a participant in the ‘Unchaining Movement’ (Jiesuo Xingdong), a national mental health campaign that began in 2006, and that is aimed at replacing domestic con nement with free or low-cost treatment for rural patients.2
