Beijing subsidizes custodians of the mentally ill

Beijing will subsidize custodians of 58,000 people registered as severely mentally ill to encourage them to take better care of the patients and prevent unwanted incidents, the municipal health and family planning commission announced Monday.

Custodians who fulfill their caring responsibilities will be eligible for a monthly subsidy of 200 yuan (30.7 U.S. dollars), as long as the patients are not responsible for any violent incidents, said Gao Xiaojun, an official with the commission.

Custodians, normally family members, should regularly report the patient's mental health condition to the neighborhood committee and must not abuse or abandon them, said Gao.

China has seen a spate of fatal attacks by the mentally ill in recent years. In May 2015, a man suspected of having a mental illness stormed into a restaurant in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, killing one child and injuring seven others with a kitchen knife.

China had 4.3 million severely mentally ill patients on official record at the end of 2014. More than 55 percent of them live in poverty.

According to goals set in the 2015-2020 plan for mental health work, more than 80 percent of severe mental illness cases should be "managed" by 2020, with at least 80 percent of schizophrenia patients receiving treatment. Endit