China bans electric shock therapies for web-addiction

The Ministry of Health (MOH) on Monday issued a new regulation, banning all electric shock therapies for treating young people who are addicted to the Internet, and shut down a related clinic.

The clinic, located in Linyi city of Shandong province, was taken charged by Yang Yongxin, a local psychiatrist who initiated the therapy in 2006. Yang's treatments include electric shock of between one and five milliamperes and psychiatric medication. At first, he was highly praised by the Chinese media as he successfully treated over 3,000 patients who used to be addicted to online games, such as Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft. However, as more and more patients were talking about the feeling of pain and being tortured, experts started to question his therapy. "Electric shock therapies are suggested to be applied to those with severe depression and psychiatric disorders," said Wang Xianglan, another psychiatrist from a hospital affiliated with Guangzhou-based Sun Yan-sen University. Many children said they had to experience huge pain like "millions of needles piecing through the brain." "It's inappropriate to treat these people like they are psychos as it's not clear if web-addiction should be attributed to mental illness," said Wang. A draft which intends to define people who hang out online over six hours per day as psychos was submitted to the MOH by The Military General Hospital of Beijing last December,but didn't get approved yet.