Between families and institutions mental health and biopolitical paternalism in contemporary China

"Between Families and Institutions is an ethnographic portrait of mental health care in China, focusing on the aftermath of a 2012 Mental Health Law, which affirmed patients' rights around hospitalization. Despite this reform, the role of the family remains central. Zhiying Ma considers the social, economic, and biopolitical entanglements of the family in Chinese psychiatry, especially in regards to patients with severe mental illnesses. She analyzes the increasing involvement of families in medical care amid shifting technological, institutional, and ideological configurations and offers a fuller understanding of the affects, ethics, and political economy of care and population governance in the country. Drawing on a wide-ranging ethnography of patients, psychiatrists, family members, and activists, Between Families and Institutions illustrates the many ways that biopower requires, enables, inhibits, and transforms different forms of care in Chinese psychiatry and medicine"--