China has outlawed the use of electric shock therapy to treat internet addiction, after a scandal at a hospital in the Northern province of Shandong.
Internet addiction has become a growing problem in China, where officials believe as many as four million people spend more than six hours a day online.
Several clinics have sprung up, offering parents the chance to “cure” their children of the uncontrollable urge to blog or play online games.
Tao Ran, from the Beijing Military General Hospital, runs a camp which gives addicts a mixture of counselling, military discipline and hypnosis.
However, a psychiatric hospital in Linyi, Shandong, charged parents £500 a month to apply “xingnao”, or “brain-waking”, electric shocks to their children.
Some children suffered painful burns, but no parents had complained, according to the Chinese press.
Nevertheless, the health ministry has asked all hospitals to stop “electrical stimulation” for internet addiction while the treatment is investigated.
Yang Shuyun, an official, said the hospital in Shandong had already stopped using the treatment in response to media pressure.
Electric shock therapy is used in Britain, but only as a treatment of last resort when all other conventional cures have failed.
