Measures for Reporting and Managing Serious Mental Disorder Onsets (Provisional)

Health departments and bureaus (health and family planning commissions) in all provinces, autonomous regions and directly governed municipalities , and health departments of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps:

Article 24 of the [Mental Health Law] provides for the nation to implement a reporting management system for onsets of severe mental disorders, and that the methods for severe mental illness onset reporting are formulated by the State Council Administrative Department of Health. To implement the above provisions, our commission has developed the [Severe Mental Disorder Report Management Measures (provisional)], which is hereby issued to you , please faithfully implement them in accordance with actual conditions.

National Health and Family Planning Commission

July 29, 2013

Measures for Reporting and Managing Serious Mental Disorder Onsets (Provisional)

Article 1: These measures are formulated on the basis of the [Mental Health Law of the People's Republic of China] (Mental Health Law) so as to complete reporting and management efforts for serious mental illnesses.

Article 2: The nation is to establish a Serious Mental Illness Information Management System (hereinafter the information system), and severe mental disorders are one of the component parts of that information system.

Article 3: Medical establishments shall make a Severe Mental Illness Onset Report for those who meet the requirements of paragraph 2(2) of the Mental Health Law's Article 30, and who have been indicated as someone suffers from a severe mental disorder in diagnostic conclusions and symptom appraisals.

Article 4: Medical establishments with credentials for diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders are the work-units with principle responsibility for reporting onsets of severe mental disorders. Work-units with responsibility for reporting shall designate an appropriate department to undertake the unit's information reporting efforts for confirmed cases of severe mental disorders, and that department shall appoint specialists responsible for inputting or reporting the information.

Certified psychiatric physicians are the reporters with responsibility for reporting severe mental disorder onsets. After a certified psychiatric physician diagnoses a person with a severe mental disorder for the first time, he shall promptly report the relevant information to the department responsible for information reporting described in the preceding paragraph.

Article 5: Work-units with reporting responsibility shall input the relevant information into the information system within 10 working days of confirming a diagnosis of a severe mental disorder. Work-units with reporting responsibilities that do not have network access shall report the relevant patient information in writing to the county-level mental hygiene prevention and control organization within 10 working days. County-level mental hygiene prevention and control organizations receiving relevant patient information from a work-unit with reporting responsibility that does not have network capacity shall input it into the information system within 5 days working days.

Article 6: Work-units with reporting responsibility discovering that a person already reported as a person with a serious mental disorder has conditions provided for in the first paragraph of article 35 of the Mental Health Law, and upon re-diagnosis or re-evaluation cannot be confirmed to be a person with a serious mental disorder shall make corrections in the information system before the 10th of the following month. Work-units with reporting responsibility that lack capacity for online reporting shall promptly transfer it in writing to the mental health prevention and control organization, and it shall make corrections to the information system before the 10th of the next month.

Article 7: Where persons with severe mental disorders are discharged from the hospital, work-units with reporting responsibility shall input the discharge into the information system within 10 work days of the discharge. Work units with responsibility for reporting that lack capacity for network reporting shall report the discharge in writing to the county level mental hygiene prevention and treatment management organization within ten work days of the discharge. Mental hygiene prevention and treatment management organizations receiving the discharge report from the work-unit with reporting responsibility that lacks capacity for network reporting, shall input this into the information system within 5 work days.

Article 8: County level mental hygiene prevention and treatment management organizations shall inform the base level medical health establishments at the place of the persons residence within 15 work days of a person with a sever mental disorder being discharged. Base level medical health establishments shall follow the requirements of article 55 of the Mental Health Law and the national basic public health services standards to establish a health archive, perform regular follow-up visits to the persons with disorders, guide them in taking their medicine and launch rehabilitative trainings.

Article 9: Administrative departments of health and family planning at all levels, mental hygiene prevention and control technology management institutions, work units with responsibility for reporting sever mental disorders, and basic level medical treatment and hygiene establishments shall strictly safeguard persons with severe mental disorders' information, and must not disclose it to other organizations or individuals except as provided by law or regulations.

Article 10: Administrative departments of health and family planning at all levels conduct oversight management of their region's severe mental disorder onset report management efforts.

Article 11: All levels of mental health prevention and treatment management organizations undertake operational management of their region's reporting of onsets of severe mental disorders, personnel training and technical guidance efforts. Responsible for review, management, data analysis and quality-control of that regions reporting on onset occurrences of severe mental illness, and efforts to transfer cross-regional diagnosis and case confirmation, as well as the daily maintenance and operation the region's information system.

Article 12: Work-units responsible for reporting serious onsets of mental illness shall periodically review the organization's reports of onsets of mental illness. Local administrative departments of health and family planning at the county level or above shall include the reports of onsets of severe mental illness within the scope of their performance review of medical establishments and conduct supervision and review of that region's efforts in reporting onsets of severe mental illness, and quickly report any problems and order their corrections.

Article 13: Where schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, persistent delusional disorder (paranoid psychosis), bipolar (affective) disorders, mental disorders due to epilepsy, and mental retardation with comorbid mental disorders have circumstances complying with those provided for in article 3 of these measures, a report shall be made; where the circumstances do not comply with those in article 3 of these measures, it shall be registered and managed in accordance with the existing national basic public health services norms and other related provisions for registration and management.

Article 14: Mental hygiene prevention and treatment organizations refers to specialized psychiatric hospitals, general hospitals with psychiatric departments, or centers for disease control, which have been designated by administrative departments of health and family planning at any levels to undertake guidance and routine management for the region's mental health prevention and treatment.

Article 15: These measures take effect beginning on the date of their promulgation.