China treats mental illness with surgery
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| News Archive
| Topics: depression, human rights, schizophrenia, therapies
The Wall Street Journal reports that in China some doctors routinely perform surgery on people suffering from schizophrenia or depression, a practice abhorrent in the West. The procedure destroys part of the brain and while doctors claim improvement more than 90 percent of the time, families see failures and new disabilities, and they are fighting back. In 2004, China banned similar procedures, called “ablative” surgery, for drug addiction.
