Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/chinese-dissidents-committed-to-mental-hospitals Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Transcript Special correspondent Shannon Van Sant reports on political dissidents being committed to mental hospitals in China. Read the Full Transcript Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors. JIM LEHRER: Next tonight, a diagnosis of mental illness for political dissidents in China. Special correspondent Shannon Van Sant has our Global Health Unit story. She has reported from China for our PBS colleagues at the "Nightly Business Report," among other programs. SHANNON VAN SANT: Qin Xinan is a long way from home. He has traveled from Wuhan, 700 miles away in central China, to Beijing, where he stays in this one-room shack. Every morning, he goes to government offices, pleading for help. QIN XINAN, petitioner: I strongly ask Hu Jintao and the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee to punish corruption. Save Chinese people, ordinary people, the weak in society. Save China.I'm not only standing on my own ground. I speak for thousands of people who get persecuted as mentally ill patients. SHANNON VAN SANT: A former officer in the People's Liberation Army, Qin has been forcibly hospitalized six times, accused of being mentally ill. He says he's not the only one with grievances who's been treated that way. QIN XINAN: The first time the diagnosis was acute stress disorder. The second time was paranoid schizophrenia. The third time, just like all the other petitioners, doctors diagnosed me with paranoid psychosis.