Beijing - A man who caused a nationwide sensation when he fled from a mental hospital has finally been released from the hospital and has returned home.

Xu Wu, 43, who used to work for Wuhan Iron and Steel (Group) Co in Wuhan, capital of Central China's Hubei province, has been taken home by his family although a team of psychiatrists had diagnosed him as suffering paranoid personality disorder.

Xu fled twice from a psychiatric rehabilitation facility affiliated to his company, insisting he was sane and had been sent to the facility because his employer wanted to punish him for his longstanding petitioning over a wage dispute.

After his second escape from the facility, on April 19, he went to Guangzhou in South China's Guangdong province, where Xu and his father resorted to the media, blasting the company and Wuhan police for "persecuting him".

The media reports soon attracted a wave of public criticism of the company and Wuhan police, with most people saying they believed Xu had been persecuted.

However, a joint investigation team organized by provincial authorities found that Xu was a regular troublemaker and the victim of paranoid personality disorder.

The team, which was established on May 6 by the Hubei provincial government, released the result of the investigation on Friday.

The result shows that Wuhan Iron and Steel (Group) Co had been deducting Xu's bonus since 2003 due to his lengthy absences from work, and that Xu had filed many lawsuits against the company.

According to the investigators, in March 2006, an angry Xu injured two co-workers and damaged a car. In December that year, he threatened to make explosives and detonate them in Tian'anmen Square in Beijing. Later that month, Beijing police caught him in possession of explosives and a knife.

Xu was sent back to Wuhan, where the police asked the Wuhan Mental Health Hospital to make a psychiatric assessment of him. After he was diagnosed with paranoid personality disorder, Xu was sent to a mental hospital affiliated to his company. He considered this was retaliation by his employer.

"I never thought I had any mental problems, and the first day they put me there I wanted to escape," he told China Central Television.

In March 2007, Xu escaped and went to Beijing again, where he hurt a policeman's wrist during an argument, and later was seized and sent back to the mental hospital.

Xu escaped to Guangzhou on April 19 this year, and was found by police and his employers on April 27.

He was sent back to the hospital, but the media coverage of his sufferings triggered wide calls for his mental status to be assessed properly and sparked heated discussions about whether the authorities have the legal right to force people to undergo psychiatric assessment.

"In this case, the police or the employer can freely force a person to be mentally assessed, and then send him to a mental institution," said Wang Xixin, a law professor at Peking University.

"If their power is abused in some circumstances, any of us might be forced to undergo a psychiatric assessment. The good news is that the legislature is taking this into consideration in drafting the law on mental health."

On Friday the Legislative Affairs Office of the State Council made public the draft law on mental health, which stipulates that no one has the right to force a person to undergo psychiatric assessment.

China Daily

(China Daily 06/11/2011 page3)